FRIDAY NIGHT BOY COOL #388

Peter Skellern RIP

Peter Skellern dead: 'You're a Lady' singer dies, aged 69

'The love he brought to us will continue to be shared with everyone through his music. We will miss him with all our hearts,' says singer's family

Maya Oppenheim 

The Independent

17 February 2017

Musician and "You're a Lady" singer Peter Skellern has died, aged 69.

The singer and pianist, who rose to fame for the hit single in the 1970s, revealed he had an inoperable brain tumour last October.

His family announced his death in a statement, saying they would miss the singer with all their “hearts”.

"Peter's creativity in art, comedy and music stand as his legacy to love and laughter,” they said in a statement sent to The Independent.

"The love he brought to us will continue to be shared with everyone through his music.

"We will miss him with all our hearts."

The former pop star, who was born in Bury in Lancashire, was ordained as a priest and deacon by Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the same day last October.

After playing organ in his local church and becoming the choirmaster, Skellern went on to study piano at Guildhall School of Music and Drama. It was his wildly popular hit single “You're a Lady", which reached number three in the UK Singles Chart in 1972, that brought him into the limelight.

Three years later, he again made it into the charts with the song "Hold On to Love" which reached number 14. Skellern was best known for his love songs and ballads which drew on old folk traditions.

He continued to make records on and off throughout the 1970s and 1980s but spent more energy honing his career as a stage writer and composing scores for musicals.

More recently, Skellern has been writing choral music, including "Waiting for the Word", which was written for the BBC's Songs of Praise programme, Six Simple Carols and The Nativity Cantatawritten for a Hemel Hempstead choir called the Aeolian Singers.

People have paid tribute to the singer on Twitter.

"A sad day today. My musical mentor and Dad's best friend Peter Skellern died this morning. The loveliest, most brilliant man," said Joe Stilgoe.

Skellern is survived by his wife Diana and his two children.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/peter-skellern-dead-youre-a-lady-singer-dies-musician-aged-69-a7585476.html

Ten Best Simon and Garfunkel...

Simon and Garfunkel – 10 of the best

Their friendship hit troubled waters at the height of their fame, but from The Sound of Silence to Mrs Robinson they created some of the most memorable music in the pop canon

Alexandra Pollard

The Guardian
Wednesday 8 February 2017 

1. The Sound of Silence

Given that they had one of the most fractious relationships in music, it should come as no surprise to learn that Simon and Garfunkel almost didn’t make it beyond their time as a rock’n’roll duo named Tom and Jerry. They had one moderately successful single during high school, and three subsequent ones that sank without a trace, but Tom and Jerry fizzled out when the pair went off to college. Their death knell came when Paul Simon released a solo single, True Or False, the perceived betrayal of which Art Garfunkel carried with him for decades. “That solo record I made at the age of 15,” Simon told Playboy in 1984, “permanently coloured our relationship.” Still, they reconciled several years later in 1963, this time using their real names, and in the space of three recording sessions had produced an album – Wednesday Morning, 3am. To promote it, they performed a handful of terribly received shows. The Sound of Silence in particular was treated with derision. “[The song] actually became a running joke,” said folk singer Dave Van Ronk, who was at the shows. “It was only necessary to start singing ‘Hello darkness, my old friend …’ and everybody would crack up.” Discouraged and dispirited, and selling just 3,000 copies of their album, the pair split up once again, and Simon moved to London. That might easily have been the end of the duo, if it weren’t for the album’s producer, Tom Wilson, overdubbing electric guitars and a drumbeat to the melancholic, acoustic ballad and rereleasing it without their consent. That version reached No1 in the US Billboard Hot 100, and catapulted the pair to fame, though the haunting original has also come to be revered.

2. I Am a Rock

The duo – keen to capitalise on their sudden success and with Simon more than happy to come back from Europe, where he was failing to make waves as a solo artist – now hastily returned to the studio. The quickest way to create a second album was to repackage several songs Simon had released on his largely ignored solo album, The Paul Simon Songbook. One of those songs, I Am a Rock, served as the closing track to The Sounds of Silence (1966). The jangly electric guitar and driving drum beat of I Am a Rock followed the precedent Wilson had set with the repurposed title track, only this time they weren’t shoehorned into an existing recording. Given that it was written when Simon was convinced his career was failing, it’s perhaps understandable that the song’s lyrics are almost comically morose: “I have no need of friendship / Friendship causes pain / It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.”

3. Homeward Bound

Homeward Bound, whose every line aches with nostalgia, doesn’t exactly make for cheery listening either, but it serves as something of a balm for anyone who’s experienced homesickness. It first appeared on the UK release of The Sounds of Silence, but turned up again on the duo’s third album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966). Written during Simon’s time in England, when he was touring the country while pining after his new girlfriend Kathy Chitty, it speaks to a sense of solitude and longing. “And each town looks the same to me,” sings Simon, as Garfunkel’s falsetto harmony sweeps in. “The movies and the factories / And every stranger’s face I see / Reminds me that I long to be / Homeward bound.” Simon has since said: “It’s like … a photograph of a long time ago. I like that about it, but I don’t like the song that much. First of all, it’s not an original title. That’s one of the main problems with it. But there’s something naive and sweet-natured, and I must say I like that about it. … And that’s my memory of that time: it was just about idyllic.”

4. For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her

After rushing through the process of recording their second album, Simon and Garfunkel were adamant that they would take their time with their third (though it came out just nine months after its predecessor). A handful of the songs from Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, including Homeward Bound, were recycled from older releases, but the duo took great pains over its recording and production. Simon’s song For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her is a hazy, guitar-led love song. “And when you ran to me / Your cheeks flushed with the night / We walked on frosted fields / Of juniper and lamplight.” Introducing the song at a concert, Garfunkel told the crowd: “This is a song about a girl who is fictitious. Her name is Emily. Neither of us know her, but the song is written about her. I’m sure she will appear someday.” Later, Simon contradicted this interpretation, saying it was not about a girl at all, but a “belief”.

5. Bookends Theme – Reprise

At 26, Simon believed he had reached the upper echelon of rock’n’roll without compromising his integrity, according to biographer Marc Eliot, but the duo continued to be met with sniffiness from critics. Their fourth album, Bookends (1968), wasn’t universally panned, but it was hardly acclaimed, either. “The music is, for me, questionable,” wrote Rolling Stone’s Arthur Schmidt of the album. “But I’ve always found their music questionable … I admit to liking it, but it exudes a sense of process, and it is slick, and nothing too much happens.” The album has since, like their debut, been significantly reappraised. To dismiss the 32-second Bookends Theme, which opens the album, and its lengthened reprise, as slick is to do it a grave disservice. It’s achingly poignant, sheltering in the comfort of the past while lamenting its loss. “Preserve your memories,” concludes the reprise, which adds strings, and then words, to the crawling, minimalist guitar melody. “They’re all that’s left you.” The vagueness of those last five words – are the memories all that remains, or all that has now gone? – renders the song even more arresting.

6. Mrs Robinson

The film director Mike Nichols had become fascinated with the duo’s music and approached them about his next film project, The Graduate. Simon was initially reluctant, but after meeting Nichols and reading the script, agreed to write a couple of songs for the film. The two he came up with, Punky’s Dilemma and Overs, weren’t quite what Nichols had in mind. So they decided to show him an incomplete song they’d initially called Mrs Roosevelt, changing it to Mrs Robinson after the film’s seductive female lead. It wasn’t finished – they even had to fill in parts with “dee dee dee” because they’d not come up with lyrics yet – but Nichols loved it. He even insisted they keep the “dee dee dee” part.

7. America

Is there a lyric more heartbreakingly, beautifully restrained than this: “‘Kathy I’m lost,’ I said / Though I knew she was sleeping”? The song America – as musically sprawling as the journey it recalls – was inspired by a road trip Simon took with Kathy Chitty. As its narrator searches for a country that seems constantly beyond his grasp, the song flits in tone between youthful playfulness and a deep-rooted, intangible sadness. One minute they are “laughing on the bus” as the pair make up stories about their fellow passengers (“I said, ‘Be careful, his bow tie is really a camera’”), the next there is an “empty and aching, and I don’t know why”. The latter confession only emerges when the narrator knows no one is listening.

8. The Boxer

By the time Simon and Garfunkel limped towards their fifth album, Bridge Over Troubled Water, their relationship was irreparably damaged. Many of the tracks on what would turn out to be their final album together were littered with allusions to their relationship. But The Boxer is more insular than such interpersonal turmoil, speaking of of a private, inner struggle: “I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises.” For many years it was assumed to be a diatribe against Bob Dylan, the “lie-la-lie” in the song’s chorus a comment on Dylan’s artistic disingenuousness. That assumption was baseless; the “lie-la-lie” was simply a placeholder lyric that stuck. “I didn’t have any words!” said Simon. “But, it’s not a failure of songwriting, because people like that and they put enough meaning into it, and the rest of the song has enough power and emotion, I guess, to make it go, so it’s all right. But for me, every time I sing that part … I’m a little embarrassed.

9. The Only Living Boy in New York

If Simon and Garfunkel began with a perceived betrayal, they ended with one, too. The pair were cast in Mike Nichols’ 1970 film adaptation of Catch-22, which was due to be filmed in Mexico. At the last minute, realising he had too many characters, Nichols cut Simon’s role and Garfunkel flew to Mexico without his bandmate. Simon was left alone in New York for what turned out to be many months. “Tom, get your plane right on time,” the song opens, the smoothness of Simon’s voice veiling an edge of bitterness. (Tom was a reference to Garfunkel’s moniker during their Tom and Jerry days, “I know your part’ll go fine. Fly down to Mexico … and here I am / The only living boy in New York.” In 2013, Garfunkel credited the incident as one of the driving factors in the pair’s split: “I had Paul sort of waiting: ‘All right, I can take this for three months. I’ll write the songs, but what’s the fourth month? And why is Artie in Rome a fifth month? What’s Mike doing to Simon and Garfunkel?’”

10. Bridge Over Troubled Water

It often seems as if bands produce their most heart-stirring material at the height of their turbulence, and Bridge Over Troubled Water is surely a shining example of this. “When you’re weary / Feeling small,” sings Garfunkel, “When tears are in your eyes / I will dry them all / I’m on your side.” His wavering falsetto is almost a whisper at first; later it soars. Simon would come to regret insisting that Garfunkel provide the vocals: “Many times on a stage, when I’d be sitting off to the side and Artie would be singing Bridge, people would stomp and cheer when it was over, and I would think, ‘That’s my song, man.’” The pair split up months later, with Simon calling Columbia Records chairman Clive Davis to say: “I want you to know I’ve decided to split with Artie. I don’t think we’ll be recording together again.” He wasn’t quite correct, though most of their brief attempts to record new material in subsequent years were fairly fruitless. They have since performed a handful of reunion shows and tours, but after Garfunkel referred to Simon as a “monster” in a 2015 interview with the Daily Telegraph, it seems unlikely they’ll be touring again any time soon. Still, troubled though the waters may have been, what a team they once were.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2017/feb/08/simon-and-garfunkel-10-of-the-best

Personally, I would replace either Bookends Theme – Reprise with My Little Town and possibly ditch I Am Rock for either Hazy Shade of Winter or Fakin' It...

Wednesday night's set lists

At The Habit, York: -

Ron Elderly: -
Autumn Leaves
Happy Meal
Da Elderly: -
Love
Romancing Tonight

The Elderly Brothers: -
Love Hurts
When Will I Be Loved
Crying In The Rain

Da Elderly: -
I'm Just A Loser

After heavy early evening rain, the Wednesday open mic could have been a wash-out, but it was not to be! There was a sizeable and attentive audience and some fresh players. A young lass on ukulele strummed some Elvis and got everyone singing along. Another lass, short in stature, but tall in talent wielded a Gretch resonator guitar, and my could she play and sing; a powerful vocal and some of the best country blues you'd ever want to hear - awesome! Ron debuted his own song Happy Meal about the woes of taking the grand bairns to a certain fast food outlet, with a none too happy outcome - it went down well. The Elderly Brothers stuck firmly to Plan A, delivering 100% Phil and Don! There was even time for another song from those players still willing and able at the close. Our host was joined by York song-smith Sam Griffiths for the very last song of the night - a wonderful acoustic reading of Bob Dylan's Tomorrow Is A Long Time.

John Burnside - Blues

© 2000, John Burnside
From: The Asylum Dance
Publisher: Cape, London, 2000
ISBN: 0224059386

Jazz Exiles in Scandinavia...

Blue Notes, Cold Nights...

Thanks to films like "Round Midnight" we all know about black American musicians escaping racism and putting down roots in Paris. But the story of the African-American and African presence in Scandinavia has been one of Europe's best-kept secrets. 

Country blues singer-guitarist Eric Bibb, who learned his craft in the coffee houses of Greenwich Village but has spent much of his career in Sweden and Finland, explains how jazz and blues players such as trumpeter Don Cherry - step-father of R&B star Neneh Cherry - built new lives in exile. 

Dexter Gordon - the star of '"Round Midnight" was one of the pioneers, settling in Copenhagen in the early 1960s. 

Over the decades generous state support for musicians has helped the music scene in the region to flourish. But now that the host nations are facing their own immigration crisis, will musicians continue to find a welcome? And how easy is it to sustain creativity thousands of miles from your roots?


Listen now while you still have the chance: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0184rg8

Elvis Costello - Night Rally

FRIDAY NIGHT BOY COOL #387

David Bowie Stamps...

The Royal Mail are to release a set of David Bowie postage stamps.

The set of 10 stamps will be on sale from March 14 from either local Post Offices or online by clicking here.

The stamps will feature the album artwork for Hunky Dory, Aladdin Sane, “Heroes”,Let’s Dance, Earthling and ★ as well as four additional stamps of Bowie live from the 1973 Ziggy Stardust Tour, the 1978 Stage Tour, the 1983 Serious Moonlight Tour and 2004’s A Reality Tour.

The stamps will also be available as a range of limited edition sets, including a presentation pack, a First Day Cover set with the six David Bowie Special stamps and a First Day Cover set with the David Bowie live stamp sheet.

There will also be individual framed stamp and print sets, a Berlin Years souvenir cover and an Album Art fan sheet.

Dead Poets Society #26 John Clare: I Am

I Am by John Clare

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

Alan Simpson RIP

Alan Simpson obituary

Co-writer of TV comedy classics such as Hancock’s Half Hour and Steptoe and Son

Dennis Barker

The Guardian
Wednesday 8 February 2017

Alan Simpson, who has died aged 87, was half of one of Britain’s most successful comedy writing partnerships. Simpson, it is always said, patiently banged away at a manual typewriter while his partner, Ray Galton, strode up and down the room declaiming ideas or dialogue. They made an odd couple, but it worked. Together they wrote the scripts for Tony Hancock’s radio and TV shows, and for many comedy plays, and they created Steptoe and Son, which ran for eight series between 1962 and 1974, with a peak audience of nearly 30 million. Simpson said he always wanted to write about working-class characters – mostly losers – whom he felt he understood.

He was born in Brixton, south London, the son of Francis and Lilian, and moved at a young age to Mitcham where his family lived in a two-up-two-down terrace house; his father, a milkman, died when Alan was 16. He attended Mitcham grammar school but left early and worked as a shipping clerk. Aged 17 he contracted tuberculosis and spent two years at the Surrey County Sanitorium in Milford, near Godalming. The only other young patient in his ward, feeling equally isolated and lonely, was Galton. The two youths became soul mates. And they made each other laugh.

They had another piece of luck: what amounted to an apprenticeship in radio comedy. Another patient, an engineer, got a radio from an old RAF Lancaster bomber working so that they were all able to listen to the American Forces Network from Munich. Their rations of British radio comedy from the BBC were augmented by American shows featuring Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Don Ameche, Phil Harris and Amos ’n’ Andy. The pair began to see the value and mechanism of situation comedy, which Simpson was later to define as: “Half an hour, with no funny voices or jokes as such, all comedy inspired by the characters, and a complete storyline, with no interruptions by a singer or instrumentalist.”

Using a broom cupboard as a studio, and recruiting a radio engineer and special effects man from other patients, the two of them wrote and presented on sanitorium radio their first show, Have You Ever Wondered? According to the 89th issue of the sanitorium’s Milford Bulletin, published on 9 May 1949, it was “slick, up-to-the-minute, with a dash of satire, a worthy effort indeed”.

Once they were discharged (thanks to the arrival of antibiotics), they produced sketches for a church concert party in Mitcham. Beryl Vertue, an old school friend and later collaborator, remembered Simpson at that time as being very tall and an elegant dancer.

But his horizons were broadening. He and Galton wrote to Frank Muir and Denis Norden, the most successful broadcasting comedy writers of the day, offering to work for them in the most menial capacities. This they were never obliged to do so. They sent in a script and were invited to the BBC’s Broadcasting House for a “chat”.

Though Simpson gave up his job as a shipping clerk, his mother ruled that if he was not able to pay his 30 shillings a week contribution to the household budget within a month, he would have to return to it. With Galton, in 1951 he supplied the well-known comic Derek Roy with jokes at five shillings a go for his Happy Go Lucky radio programme, after which the duo were put on the show’s payroll at eight guineas a week. They ended up writing all the shows, an hour once a fortnight, for 20 guineas each.

They knew they had “arrived” when Hancock offered them 25 guineas. The comedian had made a name for himself in the BBC shows Educating Archie and Kaleidoscope and in 1954 he was given his own radio series, Hancock’s Half Hour, in which he played an exaggerated version of himself. Galton and Simpson wrote the scripts, establishing a form of comedy based on character and situation, rather than sketches and gags. They continued to script the show when it was adapted for television in 1956, altogether writing 160 radio and TV programmes for Hancock between 1954 and 1961.

The pair also joined forces with the funny men Eric Sykes, Spike Milligan, Frankie Howerd and Johnny Speight, who went on to create Till Death Us Do Part, to form their own co-operative writers’ agency, Associated London Scripts. Vertue started as a typist and ended up running the company, which merged with the Robert Stigwood Organisation in 1968.

Galton and Simpson wrote every word Hancock uttered in his show for seven years. Eventually, though, the comedian fell out with his writers and thought he could do better. The cinema film The Punch and Judy Man, in which Hancock played an ill-fated impresario, and for which Galton and Simpson were originally to write the script, turned out to be a sea of disagreements, and Hancock sacked his scriptwriters.

After their association with Hancock ended, the BBC commissioned Galton and Simpson to write 10 one-off short plays, which became the first series of the long-running strand Comedy Playhouse. Number four in the series, The Offer, featured two rag-and-bone men living in Shepherd’s Bush.

When Tom Sloane, the head of BBC light entertainment, offered the writers their own series based on the characters, Steptoe and Son was the result, wringing uproarious comedy from the plight of the elderly Albert Steptoe, played by Wilfrid Brambell, and his would-be upwardly mobile son, Harold (Harry H Corbett), trying to earn a living out of collecting and selling junk. The show was an immediate success, with the BBC running a second series straight after the first. Altogether four series aired between 1962 and 1965, with another four between 1970 and 1974.

Further work for the pair included a seven-part series for ITV called Galton and Simpson Playhouse, in 1977, and some other stage and television plays. By now, Galton and Simpson worked from a Mayfair office, and Simpson lived in a large house in Sunbury-on-Thames. When his wife, Kathleen, died suddenly in 1978, he vacated their home for a smaller house built in its grounds, and more or less retired from writing.

Among the many awards he received, jointly with Galton, were the Guild of TV Producers and Directors’ Scriptwriters of the Year (1959), the Screenwriters’ Guild best comedy series for Steptoe and Son (1962, 1963, 1964 and 1965), the Screenwriters’ Guild best comedy screenplay in 1972, and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain lifetime achievement award (1997).

After the shock of his wife’s death, Simpson became a bon vivant and sports supporter – he had already been president of Hampton Football Club for many years – and made a career for himself as a professional after-dinner and business conference speaker. He also spent a lot of time driving in his Rolls-Royce around France, exploring restaurants and vineyards.

But he remained close friends with Galton, and they collaborated again in 1998 for the BBC’s Galton and Simpson Radio Playhouse series, celebrating 50 years of their writing partnership, in which they adapted four of their early TV scripts for radio: Clicquot et Fils, Nought for Thy Comfort, A Clerical Error and The Offer.

Both writers were appointed OBE in 2000.

• Alan Simpson, comedy writer, born 27 November 1929; died 8 February 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/feb/08/alan-simpson-obituary

Beach Boy and Beach Boyo...

Magritte? Reet?

This is not Magritte

To coincide with a major exhibition of Surrealist artist, Rene Magritte's work at Tate Liverpool, Richard Strange broadcasts from Magritte's former apartment and the recently opened Magritte Museum in Brussels to piece together the exceptional vision and by contrast, determinedly ordinary life of this outwardly conventional man who constructed intriguing and bizarre images, imploring us to "put the real world on trial".

Monty Python's Terry Jones holds forth about Magritte's genius for juxtaposition, eminent writer, Suzi Gablik recalls staying with the Magritte's during the 1960s, Naresh Ramchandani explains why Magritte's paintings underpin advertising and artist Gavin Turk pays homage to the master.

Ever since the 1960s, we've seen Magritte's works, eager to find hidden meanings within them. But the artist fiercely resisted interpretation, imploring us to question our own inquiry and what reality we believe to be true.

His famous painting - "Ceci n'est pas une Pipe", (This Is Not A Pipe), shows the image of a pipe "You can't smoke it, you can't suck it - it's no more a pipe than an apple!" implored the artist.

"My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does that mean?'. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable."


Magritte used a language of brick walls, sky, apples, rocks, bowler-hats and drawn words, to explore how images work and how strange they are. He played with scale, perspective, shadow and illusion. A rock floats, an apple fills a room, suited men rain down on a city...

He was often mistaken as a bank clerk; his external appearance (in bowler hat) at odds with his anarchist heart.

Producer: Kate Bland.

Listen to it now - but hurry: you only have 29 days to do so...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011vh4t

Pat Ffrench and The Orchid House Project: Living on the Streets

FRIDAY NIGHT BOY COOL #386

Daryl Hall and Smokey Robinson at the Split Chimp, Newcastle

Dead Poets Society #25 John Betjeman: Business Girls

Business Girls by John Betjeman

From the geyser ventilators
Autumn winds are blowing down
On a thousand business women
Having baths in Camden Town

Waste pipes chuckle into runnels,
Steam's escaping here and there,
Morning trains through Camden cutting
Shake the Crescent and the Square.

Early nip of changeful autumn,
Dahlias glimpsed through garden doors,
At the back precarious bathrooms
Jutting out from upper floors;

And behind their frail partitions
Business women lie and soak,
Seeing through the draughty skylight
Flying clouds and railway smoke.

Rest you there, poor unbelov'd ones,
Lap your loneliness in heat.
All too soon the tiny breakfast,
Trolley-bus and windy street!

Bob Dylan - Triplicate

Bob Dylan’s First Three-Disc Album — Triplicate — Set For March 31 Release

31 January 2017

Each disc to be presented in a thematically-arranged 10-song sequence, illuminating compositions from great American songwriters interpreted by Dylan through his artistry as a vocalist, arranger and bandleader.

(Columbia Records; New York, NY; January 31, 2017) A three-disc studio album from Bob Dylan,Triplicate, will be released on March 31, featuring 30 brand-new recordings of classic American tunes and marking the first triple-length set of the artist’s illustrious career. With each disc individually titled and presented in a thematically-arranged 10-song sequence, Triplicateshowcases Dylan’s unique and much-lauded talents as a vocalist, arranger and bandleader on 30 compositions by some of music’s most lauded and influential songwriters. The Jack Frost-produced album is the 38th studio set from Bob Dylan and marks the first new music from the artist since Fallen Angels, which was released in early 2016.

Triplicate will be simultaneously released in several configurations, including a 3-CD 8-Panel Digipak, a 3-LP vinyl set and a 3-LP Deluxe Vinyl Limited Edition packaged in a numbered case. Triplicate is also available for pre-order on iTunes, and one of its recordings, “I Could Have Told You,” can now be streamed via a “Vinyl Video” on YouTube. All physical products are also available for pre-order in the bobdylan.com store.

For Triplicate, Dylan assembled his touring band in Hollywood’s Capitol studios to record hand-chosen songs from an array of American songwriters including Charles Strouse and Lee Adams (“Once Upon A Time”), Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler (“Stormy Weather”), Harold Hupfield (“As Time Goes By”) and Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh (“The Best Is Yet To Come”). The titles of the individual discs are ‘Til The Sun Goes Down, Devil Dolls and Comin’ Home Late.

The artist’s two previous albums of classic American songs, last year’s Fallen Angels and 2015’s Shadows in the Night, were both worldwide hits and garnered Grammy Award nominations in the category of Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. Fallen Angels achieved Top Ten debuts in more than a dozen countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, The Netherlands and Austria, while Shadows in the Night debuted in the Top 10 in seventeen countries, with #1 debuts in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden and Norway.



Both albums received worldwide critical acclaim, with Randy Lewis writing of Fallen Angels inThe Los Angeles Times, “[Dylan] immediately liberates songs from the big band/big orchestra world from which they emerged, and in which they are most frequently revisited…. [He] reaches to the blues at the core of many of these songs. Thus, they elicit the ache of romantic yearning and loss that often gets subsumed by swelling orchestral forces, background choirs or by singers who are more focused on crafting elegant vocals than finding emotional resonance.”

The Telegraph’s Neil McCormick awarded Shadows in the Night five out of five stars and described the work as “spooky, bittersweet, mesmerizingly moving [with] the best singing from Dylan in 25 years.” Jon Pareles wrote of that album in the New York Times, “Mr. Dylan presents yet another changed voice…a subdued, sustained tone….Shadows in the Night maintains its singular mood: lovesick, haunted, suspended between an inconsolable present and all the regrets of the past.”

https://bobdylan.com/news/bob-dylans-first-three-disc-album-triplicate-set-for-march-31-release/