Bob played Rock’n Roll music in high school with quite a few different bands that he mostly founded himself. In this article, we will dive deep into his early musical endeavours and follow the information available until reaching the point where he got struck by the concept of folk music.
Bob’s exact timeline of involvement with different bands during his high school years is not extensively documented, so it’s difficult to determine everything in clear detail, but we try to dig as deep as possible.
It is known that Bob started playing the guitar when he was about 10 years old. He played the piano. He listened to the radio a lot. From early on, he had a strong sense of identity and where he was heading to, leading him to found rock&roll bands in his teens, in a time where many teenagers around the country founded rock&roll bands.
So today, let’s start with the first band that Bob has created.
The Shadow Blasters (fall of 1956 – early summer of 1957) – (Bob Zimmerman on piano, Bill Marinac on bass, Larry Fabbro on guitar, Chuck Nara on drum and cymbal)
From Clinton Heylin’s book “behind the shades revisited”:
“Unbeknownst to his father, he had already conceived of a need for Hibbing’s first homegrown rock & roll band. So, in the fall of 1956, sufficiently sure of himself on the piano, Robert approached a trio of players in the high school band, asking of they would be interested in putting a band together to play something other than polkas.”
Larry Fabbro: “None of us had ever heard the music he wanted us to play. Chuck and I were into jazz; Bill Marinac learned the string bass from a Yugoslavian folk-dance group in the area.”
The band name was Bob’s idea. Soon after founding, they played at a school talent show on April 5th 1957, meaning the annual Jacket Jamboree Talent Festival.
The student council at Hibbing High had arranged a variety show and announced that a local jazz quintet, including Larry Fabbro, would perform.
According to the school newspaper, the Hi-Times, “Surprise numbers are also on the program, and there are rumors concerning a sensational novelty number which at the moment is top secret.” This “sensational novelty number” turned out to be Bobby doing Little Richards “Jenny, Jenny” until he broke the piano pedal.
Little Richards “True Fine Mama” is also rumored to have been performed by them.
We find additional info in The New Yorker:
“As he was rehearsing with the Shadow Blasters, the most thrilling song in the air was “Tutti Frutti,” sung by a flamboyant piano player from Macon, Georgia, who had once gone by Princess Lavonne and now performed as Little Richard. And what Zimmerman was hearing he wanted to make his own. His father ran an appliance store in town and kept an old piano in the back. When Bobby was supposed to be sweeping the floor or stocking the shelves, he was trying out hand-splaying boogie-woogie chords on the piano instead.
On April 5, 1957, The Shadow Blasters played at a variety show organized by their school’s student council—Bobby Zimmerman’s début. “He started singing in his Little Richard style, screaming, pounding the piano,” his friend John Bucklen recalled. “My first impression was that of embarrassment, because the little community of Hibbing, Minnesota, way up there, was unaccustomed to such a performance.”
According to Clinton Heylin in his book “The Double Life of Bob Dylan – A restless, hungry feeling 1941 – 1966”:
“His first band The Shadow Blasters lasted just long enough to play a talent show at the high school on April 5th 1957.”
So, The Shadow Blasters soon after that show faded into the shadows of time, but, unless there appears new info, they might go down in history as Bob Dylan’s first real musical combo.
In part two we are going to explore the very first Bob Dylan record which he recorded with his second band, followed by The Golden Chords and a very interesting rivalry between two teenage bands, until the point when he switched his electric guitar into an acoustic one.