Dylan's 1960s Super-Rich Vanderbilt Dynasty Connection Revisited

Like the longtime 21st-century CNN tv news show anchor Anderson Cooper--the son of the now-deceased super-rich Vanderbilt Dynasty heiress Gloria Vanderbilt--the singer-songwriter/musician (who wrote and recorded the pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and helped Big AIPAC Donor Les Wexner's Victoria's Secret firm market its products in a 2004 commercial), Bob Dylan, historically had a connection to a now-deceased member of the Vanderbilt family in the early 1960s, named John Hammond.

According to a 2006-published book by Dunstan Prial, titled The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music, Hammond--the then-CBS/Columbia Records business executive who provided Dylan with a Columbia Records contract in late 1961 and helped produce Dylan's initial Columbia Records label vinyl album recordings--as long ago as 1931 had been "bankrolled by a Vanderbilt-channeled annual trust-fund allowance of about $12,000 [equal to around $250,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars] a year...around the same amount high-level corporate executives were paid at the time;" and Hammond, historically, "used his inheritance to create opportunities for himself, and he never shrank from the charge that he had used his wealth to buy into the music industry."

And, according to the same book, the father of early Dylan record producer Hammond, in the early 20th-century had "dedicated himself...to helping maintain the Vanderbilt fortune in his various roles as banker, lawyer and railroad executive."

In his 1977 autobiographical book, titled John Hammond On Record: An Autobiography, Dylan's early vinyl album record producer Hammond also recalled:

"My father married Emily Vanderbilt Sloane, the daughter of Emily Thorne Vanderbilt...Emily T.V. Sloane, my maternal grandmother was the eldest daughter of William H. Vanderbilt and granddaughter of the first Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad tycoon...

"My mother was born in 1874 in East 44th St., between Madison and Fifth Ave., but before my great-grandfather, William H. Vanderbilt, died, he built twin mansions on 5th Ave. between 51st and 52nd Streets for my Great-Uncle William K. Vanderbilt and Grandmother Emily...

"...Mother was not one to hide her wealth completely, although she was careful never to reveal its extent. She would never allow my father to sell any of her securities, even to advantage, for fear someone would find out how much she had...

"...My grandmother did for my mother and my Aunt Adele (Mrs. James A. Burden) what her father had done for her. She built twin houses on East 91st St. for them and their families...Located just east of Fifth Ave. and Central Park...among the most elaborate private mansions in the city...

"A few years before I was born my father bought a dairy farm in Mount Kisco, a fashionable retreat in Westchester County, as the Hammond Country house...Dellwoods..."