As if Bob Dylan’s ambivalence about being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature wasn’t clear enough from his deciding to skip the ceremony, he’s commemorating the honor by releasing his third consecutive album of songs written by other people. Triplicate, which has just been announced for a March 31 release, will be the first triple album of Dylan’s career, with 30 songs spread across three individually titled discs, called “ ’Til The Sun Goes Down,” “Devil Dolls,” and “Comin’ Home Late.” Like last year’s Fallen Angels and 2015’s Shadows in the Night, Triplicate focuses on songs popularized by Frank Sinatra, with, to quote the announcement on Dylan’s website, “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’).” (If you’re keeping track, that makes five years since Dylan’s last album of original songs, 2012’s Tempest.) Sinatra himself isn’t mentioned by name in the announcement. Whether that has anything to do with the new president’s choice of a first-dance tune is anybody’s guess, but here’s hoping the writer of “Masters of War” doesn’t spend the next four years crooning standards.
Here’s the first single from Triplicate, “I Could Have Told You,” written by Count Basie and Arthur Prysock and released by Frank Sinatra in 1965.
