Born Robert Allen Zimmerman,
May 24, 1941, in Duluth, MN

Band of the hand cover

Bob Dylan - bluesman? Dylan is known as a rock and folk musician, and as a great songwriter. Early in his career he covered some blues songs, and some of his compositions such as "Temporarily Like Achilles" from Blonde on Blonde were definitely blues songs. Still the words "Dylan" and "blues" are not often used in the same sentence. Yet with these two albums [Good as I Been To You and World Gone Wrong], especially World Gone Wrong, the recipient of the 1994 Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album, Dylan establishes yet another identity as a great bluesman.

Quote from World Gone Wrong at the site maintained by Tim Dixon and Mitch Gart.
his 1961 debut album was an exploration of black styles with a preoccupation with death and a gnarled, hardscrabble voice trying to sound like a blues singer three times his age.… Highway 61 Revisited was, courtesy of young guitar gun Michael Bloomfield, his 1965 version of urban Chicago blues filtered through his own adrenaline-rushed lyrics, and his appearance with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at Newport that year was one of the pivotal events in American popular music. 

Though he prefers emotion over technology in most of his recordings and uses blues forms in many of his compositions, Dylan hasn't tried consciously to be a bluesman--his songs and albums have reached far beyond any single genre--but there is considerable evidence of his love for the music throughout his lengthy career.

Quote from Borderline.com.

With a Huge Zippo 66
Minnesota 60-61
 Bob Dylan not only revolutionized popular music by incorporating poetry into his compositions, he also helped create a more inclusive and progressive socialconsciousness in American culture. I suspect there's a lot of old blues greats up in heaven sitting around, sucking back on a few cold ones and chuckling. With Time Out of Mind, Bob Dylan has done to the blues what only the rare ones do: he's bent substance, style and structure in an indelible, distinctive and very personal way -- but kept it all, well, bluesy. 
Quote from "Bob Dylan: Time out of Mind" at Drop-D Magazine.
Three quotes from "If There's An Original Thought Out There, I Could Use It Right Now: The Folk Roots of Bob Dylan" by Matthew Zuckerman at The Ultimate Dylan Resource Guide.

"If you take whatever there is to the song away - the beat, the melody - I could still recite it." (Bob Dylan 1965 )

"It's the sound and the words. Words don't interfere with it. They punctuate it." (Bob Dylan 1977 )

"I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet." (Bob Dylan 1978)

At home Woodstock 69
Biographies:

A number of Dylan photos at Bob Dylan: Inner Vision owned by Dave & Tina.

A biography at RollingRollingStone.com. 

A biography at Wall of Sound.

Family Man

**The photos above are from Bob Dylan: Inner Vision.