Talkin' Bob Dylan: Exploring Bob Dylan's Great American Songbook Arrangement Sources

Intro:

Lately I’ve been listening to an album called Peter Stampfel’s 20th Century in 100 Songs. On this 5-disc epic, Americana legend Peter Stampfel covers a song from each year of the 20th Century (which, as this album taught me, spans 1901-2000, rather than 1900-1999 as I had previously thought) to demonstrate the evolution of American music over that time.

It’s a quite a ride, but the music is only half the story. In his liner notes, Stampfel unpacks some of the history behind each song, offers biographical information about the songwriters, and tells personal anecdotes about the part these songs have played in his life. Reading Peter’s notes got me thinking: what if Bob Dylan had written liner notes for his three Great American Songbook albums?

It could be said that he did exactly that: there is a case to be made that Dylan’s interviews on the subject in 2015 and 2017 are actually liner notes disguised as interviews. Even though Bob doesn't talk about each song individually, what he does say is fascinating, particularly when he gets onto the subject of arrangements during the 2015 conversation. When asked if he arranged the songs himself, Dylan answers:

“No. The original arrangements were for up to 30 pieces. We couldn’t match that and didn’t even try. What we had to do was fundamentally get to the bottom of what makes these songs alive. We took only the necessary parts to make that happen. In a case like this, you have to trust your own instincts.”

A little later on, Bob talks about the arrangers Frank Sinatra - who was presumed to have been the inspiration for these albums - had worked with:

“People talk about Frank [Sinatra] all the time — and they should talk about Frank — but he had the greatest arrangers. And not only that, but he brought out the best in these guys. Billy May and Nelson Riddle or Gordon Jenkins. Whoever they were. They worked for him in a different kind of way than they worked for other people. They gave him arrangements that are just sublime on every level.”

While Dylan included songwriter credits on Shadows in the Night (he discontinued the practice for Fallen Angels and Triplicate, although credits can be found on his website), none of the albums cite arrangement sources. Since many of these songs had been recorded by a wide variety of artists, I was curious about which arrangements Bob had chosen to adapt. As a result, I decided to see if I could track down the arrangements used by Bob on all three of his songbook albums, with the intention of trying to write my own Peter Stampfel-style liner notes.

(While I did check the web to see if anyone had attempted to track down Bob's arrangement sources for these albums before, I stupidly only remembered to check Spotify after I had finished compiling my list. As far as I can see, two people have previously attempted this task, with slightly different results to both me and each other: Pete Trallhatten’s ‘Dylan’s Great American Songbook: Where he heard them...’, and 12655544451’s ‘Dylan/Sinatra: Original Versions of Frank Sinatra Songs)

While the vast majority of Dylan's versions of these songs are derived from Sinatra arrangements, this isn't quite as clear-cut as it sounds. Sinatra often recorded the same song multiple times throughout his career, in various arrangements, and Bob often bypasses a well-known Sinatra performance in favour of a much more obscure recording.

Fascinatingly, while a handful of the songs on Fallen Angels and Triplicate were never recorded by Sinatra, the arrangements chosen by Dylan always reveal a link to Frank, occasionally in surprising ways. Despite not explicitly promoting these albums as Sinatra tributes, every arrangement on these five discs is either adapted from a Sinatra recording, or from a recording by someone Frank was strongly associated with in some way.

And that wasn’t all. Even though Bob was adapting arrangements previously used by others, I assumed he would still have had to alter the key of each song to accommodate his vocal range. Incredibly, this is not the case: of the 52 songs Dylan recorded for his standards project, 50 of them are sung in the keys the arrangements were originally performed in by Sinatra and others. Only ‘All the Way’ and ‘Day In, Day Out’ have been lowered by half a step, presumably out of absolute necessity.

As Bob was keen to point out in his interviews, this is not a copy-and paste job. These arrangements were mostly written for massive orchestras and big bands, and paring them down for just five instruments – without really losing anything – is no small feat.

Before we get started, here’s a quick list of sources:

Sinatra! The Song is You: A Singer's Art by Will Friedwald

The Rough Guide to Frank Sinatra by Chris Ingham

Sinatra! The Complete Guide

Richard Cook and Steve Albin’s Sinatra Sessionography

The Café Songbook Catalogue of the Great American Songbook

Frank Sinatra Wiki

Olof Bjorner's notes on the Triplicate songs

YouTube channels like the78prof, tommy194970, catman916 and MrRJDB1969, all of who provide detailed and informative descriptions to accompany their Sinatra videos.

Shadows in the Night

I’m a Fool to Want You

Written by: Jack Wolf (lyrics), and Joel Herron (music), Frank Sinatra (lyric rewrites), 1951

Arrangement used by Bob written by: Gordon Jenkins, 1957

Frank Sinatra recorded this song twice, in 1951 (with the Ray Charles Singers) and 1957 – both years in which he got divorced. Bob goes for the 1957 arrangement, from the album Where Are You? (albeit with a slightly shortened intro), although it sounds like some of his vocal inflections have been influenced by Sinatra’s 1951 take. The intro to Jenkins’ arrangement also sounds like it was inspired by the earlier recording.

This song also marks a rare writing credit for Sinatra, as he changed some of Jack Wolf’s lyrics during the 1951 recording session. Sinatra was the second artist to tackle the song (just one month after Billy Eckstein recorded his version) and the tune has been recorded frequently ever since. 'I'm a Fool to Want You' was also the opening track to Billie Holiday's 1955 Columbia album Lady in Satin.

The Night We Called it a Day

Written by: Matt Dennis (music) and Tom Adair (lyrics), 1941

Arrangement used by Bob written by: Axel Stordahl, 1942

This was the first song recorded by Sinatra at his very first session as a solo artist on the Bluebird label in January 1942, and this arrangement, which Sinatra re-recorded for Columbia in 1947, is the one Bob chooses to adapt. Dylan also had the option of Sinatra’s 1957 Capitol recording, which appeared with an arrangement by Gordon Jenkins on Where Are You?.

The 1947 version:

Stay With Me

Written by: Jerome Moross (music) and Carolyn Leigh (lyrics), 1963

Arrangement used by Bob written by: Don Costa, 1963

Sinatra recorded ‘Stay With Me’ in 1963 for the soundtrack of the film The Cardinal, and two years later it appeared on the Reprise singles compilation Sinatra ‘65. In the context of the film - which concerns a newly-ordained priest suffering a crisis of faith - the lyrics of the song take on a religious meaning. The lyrics and sentiment of 'Stay With Me' are also quite similar to the hymn 'Stand By Me' (published in 1905 by Rev. Charles Albert Tindley), which Bob Dylan performed in 1990 and recited during his MusiCares speech in 2015.

Barring Dylan’s previous performances of ‘That Lucky Old Sun’, 'Stay With Me' was the first song from Shadows in the Night to be performed live (in October 2014, several months before the release of the album.) It's also an extremely obscure song choice – SecondHandSongs reports that Bob is only the third person to record it, the second being Jackie Richardson in 2003.

Autumn Leaves

Written by Joseph Kosma (music), Jacques Prevert (French lyrics) and Johnny Mercer (English lyrics), 1945 (Mercer’s lyrics first sung by Jo Stafford in 1950)

Arrangement used by Bob written by: Gordon Jenkins, 1957

Bob must be a big fan of the Where Are You? Album, as he returns to it here for this stirring arrangement of 'Autumn Leaves'. Interestingly, although the original French lyrics were written by Jacques Prevert, the English lyrics are not a translation - Johnny Mercer wrote entirely new words that retained only the ‘falling leaves’ from the original.

Why Try to Change Me Now?

Written by: Cy Coleman (music), Joseph McCarthy Jr. (lyrics), 1952

Arrangement used by Bob written by: Gordon Jenkins, 1959

Another song that Sinatra recorded twice: once for Columbia in 1952, and again for Capitol in 1959 for the album No One Cares. As the title suggests, No One Cares is perhaps Sinatra's bleakest album. Once again, although Dylan chooses to adapt Gordon Jenkins’ 1959 arrangement, his phrasing sounds like it owes more to the 1952 performance.

Some Enchanted Evening

Written by: Richard Rogers (music), Oscar Hammerstein II (lyrics), 1949

Arrangement used by Bob written by: Axel Stordahl, 1949

According to a the78prof, a YouTube channel that specialises in these matters, Sinatra was the very first artist to record this very popular song, beating Perry Como by one day in February 1949. Frank recorded it again in 1967 in a very unusual arrangement, but Bob sticks with the 1949 original. According to Olof Bjorner, Dylan previously attempted 'Some Enchanted Evening' during the sessions for Under the Red Sky in 1990, an outtake that is yet to see the light of day.

Full Moon and Empty Arms

Written by: Buddy Kaye (music) and Ted Mossman (lyrics)

Arrangement used by Bob written by: Axel Stordahl, 1945

I can still remember that surprise that greeted Bob Dylan releasing this song, out of nowhere, in May 2014. While it was acknowledged that the track was from an upcoming studio album scheduled for later in the year (it was subsequently pushed back to make way for the Basement Tapes Bootleg Series release), no one knew at the time that Dylan was planning a full album - much less three - of Great American Songbook standards. Besides the choice of song, the other surprise was Dylan's voice; where his singing on 2012's Tempest had been more gravelly than ever, here he was two years later singing better than he had for decades.

The melody of 'Full Moon and Empty Arms' is derived from the third movement of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2. Bob's version is based on Sinatra's 1945 recording for Columbia.

Where Are You?

Written by: Jimmy McHugh (music), Harold Adamson (words), 1937

Arrangement used by Bob written by: Gordon Jenkins, 1957

The title track from what appears to be one of Dylan’s favourite Sinatra albums. In The Rough Guide to Frank Sinatra, author Chris Ingham quotes Sinatra as saying that arranger Gordon Jenkins was “the one man that I felt I could almost leave alone – just let him work by himself. I think he was probably the most sensitive man about orchestrations.”

What’ll I Do

Written by: Irving Berlin (music & lyrics), 1924

Arrangement used by Bob written by: Axel Stordahl, 1947

Irving Berlin was one of the few Great American Songbook writers who wrote both music and lyrics. Peter Stampfel, in his notes for the album Peter Stampfel’s 20th Century in 100 Songs, writes that Berlin “didn’t believe in inspiration, but was said to write a song every day, from after dinner until 4 or 5 am, implying that for every hit he accomplished there were many, many hundreds of misses (or more).” One of Berlin’s earliest hits was 1911’s ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’, which is all about “the best band in the land” - the same phrase Bob Dylan sometimes used to introduce his band during the Larry Campbell-Charlie Sexton era.

Written in 1924,‘What’ll I Do’ is the oldest song on Shadows in the Night, and one of the oldest songs on all three of Bob's standards albums. Here in the U.K., this song is probably best known as the theme tune of the sitcom Birds of a Feather, which makes it slightly strange to hear Dylan singing it. Nevertheless, he does a great job, using Sinatra’s 1947 Columbia recording as a template. In 1962, Sinatra would rerecord 'What'll I Do' for the Reprise album All Alone, a record comprised entirely of songs in 3/4 time.

That Lucky Old Sun

Written by: Beasley Smith (music) and Haven Gillespie, 1949

Arrangement used by Bob written by: Jeff Alexander, 1949

Dylan first performed 'That Lucky Old Sun' at the original Farm Aid event in 1985. It went on to appear frequently during his 1986 tour with Tom Petty, before making the occasional surprise appearance on the Never Ending Tour between 1991 and 2000. Although his love for the tune has always been clear, it could be argued that he never truly got to grips with the song until he recorded it for Shadows in the Night. This version is based on Sinatra’s recording from 1949 (the same year the song was written). It made three post-Shadows Never Ending Tour appearances: once per year in 2015, 2016 and 2017.