By Rick Banas of assisted living provider BMA Management, Ltd.
Our daughter, Elizabeth Clark, left me a voice mail a couple mornings ago. “Dad, I want to give you a heads up on something you might be interested in for a Blog. I heard a report on NPR about how Bob Dylan had just put out an album of Frank Sinatra re-make songs. He only did one interview for promotion, and it was with AARP (Interview).”
Wow! As a child of the 60s, I grew up listening to Bob (Robert Zimmerman) as a folk singer, performing such great hits as the “Subterranean Home Sick Blues,” “Just Like a Woman,” “Positively 4th Street” and “Like a Rolling Stone.”
A couple of decades later, Dylan joined up with George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty as a member of the Traveling Wilburys. The group recorded its first album at Dylan’s home studio in Malibu, California, in 1988. I have a copy of the CD, which we purchased used for just $2, in my collection. “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” is one of my favorites.
But, raspy voiced Bob Dylan doing 10 Frank Sinatra classics such as “Some Enchanted Evening,” “Autumn Leaves,” and “Why Try to Change Me Now” in his new album “Shadows in the Night.”
Be careful not to prejudge about how people can change, I reminded myself. After all, take a look at Joni Mitchell. In my late teens and early 20s, I was listening to her as a folk singer, sounding off about how “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot” in “Big Yellow Taxi.” Her “Both Sides Now” CD, which was released in 2000, features beautiful versions of Joni singing “At Last,” a popular song from the 1930s that was made famous by Billie Holliday, and “You’re My Thrill,” a song written in the 1940s for a musical. I have played the CD for many family and friends without telling them who is performing the songs. They are so surprised to hear that it is Joni Mitchell.
Then there is Robert Plant. Back in the early 1970s, I saw him singing with the hard rock band Led Zeppelin at the old Chicago Stadium, performing such classics as “Stairway to Heaven.”
Forty some on years later, I had the opportunity to see him perform with Alison Krauss at Ravinia, the oldest outdoor musical festival in the United States. He had transformed himself into a highly successful bluegrass musician. The “Raising Sand” CD by Plant and Krauss won five Grammy Awards in February 2009.
So I mentioned it to my wife. Bob Dylan doing Frank Sinatra, she cringed.
And, as for Dylan only doing an interview with the AARP magazine, he is 73, she reminded me.
I’m thinking, why would Dylan try to change himself now, at this point of time in his life, and do an album of songs that are at least a half a century old and performed by Old Blue Eyes. He explains why in his interview with AARP.
As for the “Shadows of the Night” album itself, Rolling Stone magazine gives it 4 out of 5 stars. In his review that is posted on USA Today, Chris Chase notes that “quite remarkably, Dylan sounds great.”
Respectfully, I have to disagree. Yes, Dylan does the songs “His Way” rather than simply covering the songs. Yes, the quality of Dylan’s voice is much better than it has been in recent years; you can actually understand most of the words. Yes, I like the musical accompaniment. To me, however, Dylan’s voice never sounded great. But his unique vocal style and quality that worked so well on such albums as “Blonde on Blonde,” “Highway 61 Revisited” and “The Times They Are A Changin” do not work on “Shadows of the Night.”
What are your thoughts about his new album and about his only doing one interview to promote the album – with AARP rather than with a publication like Rolling Stone.
All affordable assisted living communities managed by BMA Management, Ltd. are certified and surveyed by the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services. All assisted living communities are licensed and surveyed by the Illinois Department of Public Health.
“BMA Management, Ltd. is the leading provider of assisted living in Illinois
and one of the 20 largest providers of assisted living in the United States.”
What are your thoughts? Leave a comment and let us know.
