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Slim Dunlap was born on August 14, 1951, in [[Plainview, Minnesota]].<ref name="Strong2006">{{cite book |last=Strong |first=M.C. |date=2006 |title=The Essential Rock Discography |url=https://archive.org/details/essentialrockdis0000stro/ |location=New York |publisher=Canongate |page= |isbn=978-184195-860-6 |access-date=2024-12-25}}</ref><ref name="MStarTribune-obit"/><ref name="Pitchfork-obit" /> Replacements biographer Bob Mehr wrote that Dunlap's family was a "distinguished clan of newsmen, lawyers, and politicians" and that Dunlap "had been expected to follow their path."<ref name="Mehr2017">{{cite book |last=Mehr |first=Bob |date=2017 |title=Trouble Boys: The True Story of The Replacements |url=https://archive.org/details/troubleboystrues0000mehr/page/246/ |location=New York |publisher=Da Cao Press |page= |isbn=978-0306825361 |access-date=2024-12-25}}</ref> His grandfather, Roy Dunlap Sr., was the managing editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch newspaper for 35 years, and was succeeded as managing editor by his son and Slim's uncle Roy Jr. Slim's father, [[Robert Rankin Dunlap]], was a lawyer and World War II veteran who moved to Plainview in 1946 with his wife, Jane. The couple had five children, Slim being the third. Slim's father also was elected to the Minnesota Senate as a Republican, where he served from 1953 to 1956. He was also an amateur piano player fond of [[Hoagy Carmichael]]. Dunlap told Mehr that he thought this was why his father allowed him to pursue a risky career a musician: "That's probably why his tolerated my ambitions toward music and would help me along, even though he worried about it."<ref name="Mehr2017"/>
As a boy, Dunlap was "highly intelligent, somewhat eccentric, and incredibly skinny," according to Mehr. The nickname Slim, which would stick with him for life, began as a childhood playground taunt.<ref name="Mehr2017"
Dunlap started playing guitar when he was about ten.<ref name="Tan" /> At first, he borrowed his older sister's guitar, but his father bought him his first six-string as a teenager. Dunlap said that he practiced for hours every day for years, often late into the night.<ref name="Mehr2017"
The family moved to the nearby, larger city of Rochester when Dunlap was beginning high school. By this point Dunlap was an indifferent student who often skipped class and was more interested in hitch-hiking to see the country, inspired by Woody Guthrie's Bound For Glory. His father "had to pull strings to get his son a diploma," Mehr wrote. <ref name="Mehr2017"/>
In the early 1970s, Dunlap teamed up with Minneapolis rock musician and visual artist [[Curtiss A]], also known as Curt Almsted, and together they formed Thumbs Up, an "unusual mix of rhythm and blues with pop [that] has been described as early new wave".<ref>{{cite book |title=Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Locations |url=http://www.credoreference.com/entry/contpmwl/minneapolis_st_paul_mn |publisher=[[Continuum International Publishing Group]] |year=2005 |chapter=Minneapolis/St Paul, MN |access-date=June 14, 2011 |url-access=subscription}}</ref> He also joined Almsted's punk-rock group Spooks, and featured on all but one of Spooks's albums.
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