OCTOBER 17 • 2019 | 45
New book details 50 years of friendship
with Bob Dylan, starting at a Jewish camp.
J
ewish summer camp is
such a crucial part of the
American Jewish experience
that many Jewish adults, even in
their older age, likely remember
the names of many of the kids
in their cabins from when they
were 11 years old.
One of those cabins — more
than 60 years ago — contained
a couple of interesting young
Jewish boys.
Louie Kemp would go on to
head his family’
s seafood com-
pany and played a key role in
introducing imitation king crab
to the United States. Robert
“Bobby” Zimmerman went on
to become Bob Dylan.
Kemp has written a memoir
called Dylan & Me: 50 Years of
Adventures (WestRose Press),
detailing his friendship with the
iconic singer.
The author lived with Dylan
for a time in Los Angeles in the
early 1980s, during the period
when Dylan briefly became a
Christian. Kemp, who then was
becoming a more observant Jew,
which he remains to this day,
claims credit, along with some
rabbis, for bringing Dylan back
into the Jewish fold a couple of
years later.
Kemp’
s book is full of
delightful, specifically Jewish
details, such as Dylan’
s years of
participation in Chabad tele-
thons, the time he opened the
ark on Yom Kippur while being
mistaken for a homeless
man and the story of how
Kemp arranged for Kaddish
to be said for Allen Ginsburg
each year on his yahrtzeit. All
that, and many, many visits to
Canter’
s Deli.
He writes specifically about
how he believes Dylan’
s Jewish
background informed his later
success.
“[Jews] have a passion to
seek out meaning and give it
new expression, morally and
artistically,” Kemp wrote. “That
drive — along with another
Jewish trait known as chutzpah
— have always been strong in
Bobby, and his gifts have made
his expression worthy of the
ages,” Kemp told JTA.
Herzl Camp, where it all
began, has taken notice of
Kemp’
s book.
“Part of our mission is to
build lifelong Jewish friend-
ships, so it is wonderful to see
the story of a group of camp
friends and how their friend-
ship spanned decades,” Holly
Guncheon, Herzl Camp’
s devel-
opment director, told JTA in
an email. She added that Dylan
sent his children to the camp.
At Herzl, like many camps,
campers write their names
on walls for posterity, and
Guncheon said that “for many
years, searching for ‘
Robert
Zimmerman’
written on a cabin
wall was a com-
mon activity.”
The journey
begins when
they were pre-
teen campers
at Herzl Camp
in Webster, Wisc.,
from 1953 through 1957. In
’
54, Kemp witnessed a cabin
rooftop concert that he consid-
ers the then-11-year-old Bobby’
s
first public performance.
Following the stories of
summer camp concerts and
hijinks, the book follows Dylan
and Kemp’
s time together as
teenagers in Kemp’
s home-
town of Duluth, Minn., where
Dylan was born, and later in
Minneapolis, where Kemp
attended college and Dylan
briefly moved to pursue music.
Even after Dylan went to
New York and became one of
America’
s most famous men,
they continued their friendship.
Kemp frequently stepped away
from his lucrative business,
which sold fish to the restau-
rant industry, to hang out with
Dylan for weeks at a time in
the city, Malibu, Mexico or
wherever the singer was on the
road. Dylan was the best man
at Kemp’
s wedding.
Kemp said he hadn’
t always
intended to write a book about
his friendship with Dylan, but
he had been telling the stories at
parties and Shabbat dinners for
years and was told frequently he
should collect them.
A close friend of Kemp’
s — a
former television producer who
was dying of cancer — made
him promise to write the book,
so he agreed.
Kemp produced Dylan’
s
Rolling Thunder Revue, which
Martin Scorsese made into an
embellished documentary film
.
While the two men, now
both in their late 70s, have
known each other for more
than 60 years, the book’
s subti-
tle is “50 years of adventures,”
and it’
s notably missing any
stories from after 2001. Kemp
admits he and Dylan have lost
touch of late although he said
it wasn’
t due to any particular
falling out, and he did send
Dylan a copy of the book.
“I would think he’
d enjoy
it; it’
s all positive, fun adven-
tures that we had together
over a 50-year time period,”
Kemp said. “To me, it’
s like a
modern-day Jewish version of
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry
Finn.”
h 1957 In
STEPHEN SILVER JTA
COURTESY OF LOUIS KEMP/JTA
Bob Dylan, left, was the
best man at his friend
Louie Kemp’
s wedding.
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