(JTA) — American singer and songwriter Bob Dylan has been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Dylan, 75, was awarded the prize for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” the Swedish Academy announced on Thursday.

Born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941 and raised Jewish in Minnesota, Dylan wrote some of the most influential and well-known songs of the 1960s. His hits include “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” and “Times They Are a-Changin’.”

He is the first American to receive the prize in more than 20 years. Novelist Toni Morrison won in 1993.  He will receive the prize of $927,740 in Stockholm on December 10, which is Alfred Nobel’s birthday.