Bob Dylan – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963):  The fact that Bob Dylan is the only musician to have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature tells you all that you need to know about his towering stature in popular music.  Bob Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan was his breakthrough to stardom, particularly after Peter, Paul and Mary took its best-known song (and one of Bob Dylan’s most celebrated compositions), “Blowin’ in the Wind” to #2 on the Billboard charts.  In addition to “Blowin’ in the Wind”, other songs that could be classified as protest songs include “Masters of War”, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”, and “Oxford Town” – the latter song is about the experience of James Meredith as the first Black student at the University of Mississippi, but it is easy to miss that if you don’t know that “Ole Miss” is located in Oxford, Mississippi, since the song doesn’t mention Meredith or the college.  Other well-known songs on the album include “Girl from the North Country” – which borrows from the English folk song “Scarborough Fair” that was later a hit song for Simon and Garfunkel – and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”.  “Talkin’ World War III Blues” is Bob Dylan’s best known “talking blues” song and exhibits the humor that is often present in his work.