Bob Dylan, explored
‹ The Standards
Cover of Shadows in the Night

2015

Shadows in the Night

The Standards · 2015–2017

Listen to the album

Why it matters

Dylan's first album of standards strips songs Frank Sinatra once recorded down to his small touring band, recorded live in the studio.

For Shadows in the Night, Dylan took ten songs that Frank Sinatra had recorded and cut them at Capitol Studios in Hollywood, where Sinatra had made many of his records. Rather than copy the big orchestral arrangements, he scaled them down for his own five-piece band, with Donnie Herron's pedal steel carrying the lines once played by strings, and a few horns on some tracks. The musicians played together live around a small number of microphones, with engineer Al Schmitt capturing them with little or no overdubbing. The result is hushed and slow, and Dylan sings with surprising care and steadiness, staying close to the melodies. He said he saw the project not as covering Sinatra but as uncovering the songs. Many critics were moved by it, and he gave away copies to readers of a magazine for older Americans. It began the run of standards albums that filled the next three years.

Track list · 10 songs

  1. 1I’m a Fool to Want You
  2. 2The Night We Called It a Day
  3. 3Stay With Me
  4. 4Autumn Leaves
  5. 5Why Try to Change Me Now
  6. 6Some Enchanted Evening
  7. 7Full Moon and Empty Arms
  8. 8Where Are You?
  9. 9What I’ll Do
  10. 10That Lucky Old Sun

Where its songs lead

I’m a Fool to Want You · Same theme asCan't Help Falling in Love1973Decades before his Sinatra albums, he sang an Elvis ballad on Dylan (1973).That Lucky Old Sun · Same theme asWorkingman’s Blues #22006Both are sung from the view of a worn-out laboring man.

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