Bob Dylan Secret Archives to Be Displayed in Tulsa

A secret archive of Bob Dylan memorabilia – including several decades’ worth of unreleased recordings and concert footage, manuscripts and letters, notebooks with handwritten lyrics and annotations, instruments, and more – will take up residence in Tulsa, Oklahoma, The New York Times reports. The collection, which includes more than 6,000 items, was sold to the George Kaiser Family Foundation and the University of Tulsa for an estimated $15-20 million, according to the Times. The collection currently is being transported to Oklahoma, where, after two years’ cataloguing and digitization, it will be permanently exhibited for the public in the Brady Arts District, near the Woody Guthrie Center.

According to a press release, items in the archive include a notebook inscibed with lyrics circa Blood on the Tracks, Dylan’s wallet from 1966 containing paper with Johnny Cash’s address and phone number, as well as a business card from Otis Redding, the leather jacket Dylan wore at his infamous 1965 Newport Folk Festival appearance, his “earliest music recordings from 1959,” and much more.

The material will eventually be displayed alongside “a rare copy of the Declaration of Independence, a cache of Native American art and the papers of Guthrie,” the Times reports. In a press release, Dylan said, “I’m glad that my archives, which have been collected all these years, have finally found a home and are to be included with the works of Woody Guthrie and especially alongside all the valuable artifacts from the Native American Nations. To me it makes a lot of sense and it’s a great honor.”

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