Robert Alan Zimmerman (1941-), a.k.a. music icon Bob Dylan, was born on this day in in Hibbing, Minnesota.  With supreme instinct and genius, the singer-songwriter altered the course of popular music from the minute he started strumming his guitar in Greenwich Village in the 1960s.

"Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything," he once said.

Dylan's gift to Rock and Roll was intellectual credibility. With Dylan, lyrics became passionate tools of self-expression. He inspired others to open up and speak their minds about the things that mattered most to them. To look at pressing social issues. To make the lyrics poetic. To create complex messages.

For over 40 years, Dylan has stayed true to his heart. In 2008, he became the first musician to win a Pulitzer Prize.

"The highest purpose of art is to inspire," Dylan said, "What else can you do? What else can you do for anyone but inspire them?"

John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Kurt Cobain, Alanis Morissette...the list goes on and on. Dylan inspired them all. With his wonderful, sneering nasal delivery, the confidence in his message, his put downs and complexities, and his passionate insistence that each of us sing our own song.

Respect instinct.