Paris. 2013. Paul Goldfinger photo.©
By Paul Goldfinger, Music Editor @Blogfinger 2013.
BOB DYLAN: This is from his new album Triplicate, just released a couple of days ago. We knew from his last album Shadows in the Night, that Bob Dylan could apply his immense talent to popular music from the Great American Songbook. He just won the Nobel Prize in Literature, so we know that his choice of such songs would always stress the words as well as the phrasing and the arrangements.
That is how Sinatra viewed the music that he performed. Now Dylan has come out with an album where he presents songs that Sinatra had recorded. And he brings a wonderful and touching emotion, style and meaning to these 30 compositions.
Jonathan Schwartz, the guru of the Great American Songbook, said that Dylan loves Sinatra’s work (who could have known?), and Dylan pays homage here by his meticulous choice of songs done with unassailable attention to detail.
From Triplicate, here is “Once Upon a Time”, a 1962 piece from the musical All American. Dylan’s version is beautiful.
“Once upon a time
The world was sweeter than we knew
Everything was ours
How happy we were then
But somehow once upon a time
Never comes again.”