Bob Dylan almost chose ‘Little Willie’ as his stage name
Choosing a stage name is a tricky affair. Before Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan, the moniker Little Willie was in the running after the future folk star eliminated other potential names ‘Stumpy Dick’ and ‘Stubby Johnson’.
While the latter two might be childish make-believe, it has been revealed in an old love letter that ‘Little Willie’ really was in the running for the ‘The Man in Me’ singer. While much has been made of the whys and wherefores behind the choice of ‘Dylan’, this news represents an alternate history that is quite hard to wrap your head around.
The potential nickname came into light after a collection of love letters handwritten by Dylan between 1957 and 1959 were purchased at an auction for a whopping fee of $670,000.
Dylan penned the letters to his history class high school sweetheart Barbara Hewitt beginning as a tender 16-year-old. Not only does he muse over the nicknames ‘Little Willie’ and ‘Elston’, but he lays down his desire to sell millions of records making the love letters among the most truthful ever written by a teenager.
When Hewitt passed away two years ago, the letters were discovered by her daughter. She decided to put them up for auction and the bidding was won by a Portuguese bookshop, Livraria Lello.
The auction lot described the letters as the “formative years of Bob Zimmerman transforming into Bob Dylan” and the “beginning of the Bob Dylan myth”. Lord only knows how close we came to the Little Willie myth as he planned to form the band The Night Gales adding a whole new flatulent undertone to ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’.
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