Take This Waltz, wow. I first bumped into that as a cover sung by Cohens son, Adam.
In 2009, the charity War Child released an interesting concept album, War Child Presents Heroes. They selected some musicians and had each pick a personally admired cover artist of their works. Each cover artist then picked a song from works of the original artist and either recorded it for the album or chose an extant performance for inclusion in the album. I loved the idea of the original artists picking the cover artists but then the cover musicians making their own pick of which song to offer. Maybe I'm just drawn to the possibility that one of the original artists heard the cover's pick and thought, "ach... not THAT one!"
Charity compilations are sometimes a bore but this one seemed mostly otherwise to me. Anway I liked that Leonard Cohen chose his son Adam, and that Adam then picked his fathers Take This Waltz but sang it with the partially translated title Toma Este Waltz in the Spanish from which the original lyric had been adapted: Federico García Lorcas poem Pequeño vals vienés (Little Viennese Waltz). I suppose that in liking Leonard Cohen, then youd know that he was so taken by García Lorcas works in his youth that he had named his own daughter Lorca Cohen. Take This Waltz is profoundly moving, no matter whose take on it one considers.
Lovely and informative post, I hadn't known the story about the concept album and covers. Extraordinarily interesting.
I did know - because my brother made a point of reminding me (again) when we were discussing this very topic quite recently - that Leonard Cohen had been a poet before he chose a career in music, hence, his exquisite mastery of words and knowledge of meaning, and matching that with melody, is really unparalleled.
And, no, I hadn't known that he had named his daughter after Lorca. Fascinating.