Bob Dylan’s next album will be titled Shadows In The Night, and released in 2015, according to an insert included in Dylan’s new boxed set, The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11.
In May of this year, Bob Dylan released a cover of Frank Sinatra’s 1945 hit “Full Moon and Empty Arms” on his website.
“Full Moon and Empty Arms”:
“Full Moon and Empty Arms” was written by Ted Mossmann and Buddy Kaye and based around Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 1901 composition “Piano Concert No. 2 in C Minor.”
Also on Dylan’s site was what looked like an album cover, a mostly black and blue image with a picture of Dylan and the words: “Bob Dylan Shadows In The Night.”
The retro nature of “Full Moon And Empty Arms,” sparked speculation that Dylan’s next studio album of new recordings would be a cover album of standards.
”This track [“Full Moon And Empty Arms”] is definitely from a forthcoming album due later on this year,” a spokesperson for the singer who wouldn’t confirm the title told Rolling Stone in May.
A month later a source who has heard the album enthused about it to me. “It really is a great album,” my source said, offering no additional details.
Obviously plans changed, and it was announced earlier this year that most of Dylan and The Band’s Basement Tapes recordings would be released as Dylan’s next album. The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11, a 6-CD set (as well as a 2-CD version of highlights), will be released on Tuesday, November 4.
Now, based on an insert in the box that The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11, comes in, I can tell you that the title of Dylan’s next album is Shadows In The Night,, that it will be released in 2015 and that for now at least, the Shadows In The Night image seen on Dylan’s website is the cover (unless of course something changes).
No track listing has been released.
In addition to “Full Moon and Empty Arms,” which is still expected to be on the album, Jerome Moross and Carolyn Leigh’s “Stay With Me,” which was recorded by Frank Sinatra in December 1963 and released a month later, could be included.
Dylan performed “Stay With Me” for the the first time the other night at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. So this is speculation. There is no confirmation that “Stay With Me” will be on the album. “Stay With Me” was the main theme of the Otto Preminger film “The Cardinal.”
“Stay With Me” as performed at the Dolby Theater, October 26, 2014.
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Really interesting to see and hear this. I shall look forward to the new album, and the idea of the covers, à la “Stay with me”, will be intriguing. I wonder if it will elicit similar reactions from some in the way that “Christmas in the Heart” did? Incidentally, the band are all in red jackets there – would that be another link to days of yore when bands did exactly that and wore a kind of uniform. I have to say I agree with one reviewer of one of the L.A. shows that Bob’s clothes, whilst looking very smart, don’t always seem to sit on him well these days. But hey, small comment given the way he is sounding which is rathert more important!
I remember a TIME magazine article he did in ’85 or ’87 where he talked about how he feels he’s strong at phrasing and how he digs Bing Crosby (along with Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf). He covered the Gershwins’ “Soon” around the same time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdJ8Z2A7Jlc). “Floater (Too Much To Ask)” allegedly borrows from “Snuggled On Your Shoulders,” which Crosby did, and when tempest came out he mentioned Crosby & Nat King Cole as his father’s favorite singers. Dylan’s performance of “Restless Farewell” at Sinatra’s 80th celebration is something else and, of course, he’s been recently performing more front & center into a ribbon mic like a classic crooner. It’s as if he’s been dropping clues for some time that he’d be doing something like this.
Do you have a picture of the insert that came with the bootleg release?
I did a followup post with a scan of the insert.
If its anything like the sinatra song last spring, or the one in the video above, It will be the first Bob record i will refuse to buy. His singing sucks for crooning.
Does anyone know who designed this album cover/graphic? I kind of liked that too 🙂