Notebooks that are part of the Bob Dylan archives. Courtesy.
As Rolling Stone so perfectly phrased it: Tulsa is about to become the center of the Bob Dylan universe.
The most exciting news in Tulsa this past week is that Dylan is coming to town. Not the singer himself (yet), but rather a collection of the beloved American songwriter’s rare, highly coveted archives.
For an estimated $15 to $20 million, the University of Tulsa and George Kaiser Family Foundation have acquired the ultimate music nerd’s dream: A collection of Dylan’s handwritten lyrics, photos, contracts, letters, drawings, video and audio recordings that will soon be housed in Tulsa on the campus of the Gilcrease Museum.
In this week’s Listen Frontier podcast, we sit down for a visit with Ken Levit, executive director of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, and Michael Chaiken, the archive’s inaugural curator, to talk about the depth of the collection and how Tulsa landed such a sought-after trove of musical history.
