hen the young Robert Zimmerman discovered folk music in the late 1950s, he was transfixed. It seemed weightier and more serious than anything he was hearing on the radio. Overnight, he shunned his old favourites Little Richard and Fats Domino for singers of songs that he considered to be deeper, sadder, more despairing and more triumphant than regular pop music. Having created a new persona and invented a wandering minstrel backstory he became a figurehead for the folk movement.
