On This Day: Bob Dylan Becomes First Rock Musician to Receive Pulitzer Prize in 2008

On April 7, 2008, Bob Dylan received a Special Citation Pulitzer Prize. Considered the highest honor in music, literature, and print journalism, the prize wasn’t awarded to Dylan in the Music category but was given to him for his “profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”

Mostly reserved when it comes to special honors, Dylan was said to be “in disbelief” over the Pulitzer, but never commented publicly on winning the Prize, nor did he attend the ceremony in 2008. Jesse Dylan accepted the award on his father’s behalf from Richard Oppel, co-chair of The Pulitzer Prize Board.

The Pulitzer in music is often awarded to artists in the jazz and classical genres with Special Citations, like Dylan’s, given to honor achievements that don’t fit into existing categories. Posthumous honors have also been given to other musicians including jazz legends Duke Ellington in 1999, Thelonious Monk in 2006, and John Coltrane a year later, along with Hank Williams in 2010 and Aretha Franklin in 2019.

In 2018, rapper Kendrick Lamar also won the Pulitzer for Music for his 2017 album Damn and was the first honoree that didn’t fall in the classical of jazz category.

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[RELATED: On This Day in Music — Bob Dylan Wins a Nobel Prize]

Nobel Peace Prize

In 2016, Dylan also became the first musician to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature, which he said left him “speechless.”

During the Nobel Banquet ceremony on December 10, 2016, in Stockholm, Sweden, Patti Smith performed a moving rendition of Dylan’s 1963 Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan classic “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” accompanied by an orchestra, and Dylan’s speech was read by Azita Raji, the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden.

“I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person, but please know that I am most definitely with you in spirit and honored to be receiving such a prestigious prize,” wrote Dylan. “Being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is something I never could have imagined or seen coming. From an early age, I’ve been familiar with and reading and absorbing the works of those who were deemed worthy of such a distinction: Kipling, Shaw, Thomas Mann, Pearl Buck, Albert Camus, Hemingway.”

He continued, “These giants of literature whose works are taught in the schoolroom, housed in libraries around the world, and spoken of in reverent tones have always made a deep impression. That I now join the names on such a list is truly beyond words.”

Unlike his quieter acceptance of the Pulitzer nearly a decade earlier, Dylan also recorded a Nobel Lecture in 2017 and elaborated on how his music was linked to Literature.

“Our songs are alive in the land of the living,” he said. “But songs are unlike literature. They’re meant to be sung, not read. The words in Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page. And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days.

I return once again to Homer, who says, ‘Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story.’”

Photo: KMazur/WireImage