No one knows what powers of performance and stamina a proper purple zoot suit confers on its wearer—no one except for perhaps Little Richard and Bob Dylan, who sported one with a black bolero-style hat at the Aragon last night. The suit must have some magic in it, for Dylan, who plays the second of three nights in Uptown, had a sprightly way about him last night. He knee-bopped a bit, almost dancing at times. This is a revelation, because as even casual Dylan fans know, the man was known to turn in just as many half-baked sets as fearsome ones back in the ’90s. I had heard such good things about Dylan tours around the albums Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft when Charlie Sexton was on board, but even so, I wasn’t confident he’d be with-it and suitably accompanied.

There’s no getting around it—Charlie Sexton puts on a damn good show, plays a mean rockabilly-style guitar and looks so ridiculously cool doing it, you get a bit of the buzz that young folks must have had seeing Elvis or Eddie Cochran the first time. Texan Sexton’s guitar work provided a counterpoint, not just to Dylan’s warm growling vocals—which sometimes slip into an inarticulate croak, but to Dylan’s work on the (portable-style) Hammond organ. The two seemed to trade some riffs when the band slipped into a rockabilly, Sun-studios, It Came From Memphis mode, as it often did. But they never cheesed it up—thank the Lord.

As for a set list, the band stuck pretty close to Dylan’s recent studio albums (with tunes such as “‘Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum’”), ignoring his slightly bizarre holiday album from this year, and peppering us with Dylan classics with special attention to the material from Blonde on Blonde. “Just Like a Woman” came early in the set, “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” a bit later.

While many might know the names of Dylan’s classic material, he and band gave many of the tunes a roadhouse boogie or a pre-’60s feel that they don’t have on album—toss in Dylan’s gruff delivery, and some songs were less than instantly recognizable. Many artists head down the retro path, but few change the course of the culture only to decide to reference the mythic time that came before them like a musical Eden. Dylan seems to find some legitimacy and inspiration in playing the part of a rocking journeyman who’s never heard of Woodstock or Newport Folk. But some tunes did betray more modern arrangements. “Like a Rolling Stone” was performed with an unusual amount of barnstorming flourish with some nods to the melodicism of the Byrds. The regular set ended with “Ballad of a Thin Man,” and the encore closed out with “All Along the Watchtower,” both down with the rockin’ flair of the Sexton band.

Live, of course, Dylan doesn’t give a lot away emotionally outside of his songs—but as a presence, he’s large enough that he doesn’t need to charm. Todd Haynes might have had us believe Dylan is the nowhere man of modern culture—but last night, he was in the same room with us and sounding pretty great. Can you ask much more from a legend in a purple suit?