Stories behind memorable albums of the 1970s as told by the artists

Tag: Frank Sinatra

Paul Anka capable and comfortable being the ‘Keeper of the Cool’

Paul Anka is a lot of things: singer, songwriter, entertainer, actor, author, one-time teen idol, boyfriend of Mouseketeer Annette Funicello when they were kids and de facto Rat Pack member and confidante.

Add Keeper of the Cool to that list.

Frank, Dean and Sammy would be proud. Anka is a professional, a showman and has always realized the importance of being a snappy dresser. At age 75, he still dances with the one that he brought and closes his show with “Diana,” a song he wrote as a teenager and recorded in 1957 that was a No. 1 hit in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and reached No. 2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart.

Certainly one’s level of cool is subjective in the eye of the observer. And this was my first time seeing Anka perform live. But here’s how cool he was at his Dec. 16 … Read more

My inaugural Dylan concert: It was Bob being Bob . . . with a little swagger and prancing

dscn5771The between-song banter by Mavis Staples – who is opening for Bob Dylan on his summer tour – Wednesday night at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia included an interesting and somewhat unexpected observation.

“Oh, that Bobby Dylan. I love listening to him sing, but I also love to watch him move,” said Ms. Staples, 77, a longtime member of the gospel, soul and R&B family singing group The Staple Singers and later a solo artist, who revealed last year that Dylan once proposed to her when they were teenagers and she turned him down. “He’s got that swagger.”

“Does Bob move with a swagger?” I asked my friend Ted, who has seen Dylan approximately 25 times in concert and had driven all the way from Illinois (919 miles and 14-and-a-half hours in what has been dubbed the 2016 Iron Undershorts Tour) to accompany me to my … Read more

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