First in a series of short posts coming up over the next couple of weeks, highlighting some of the lesser-heard Bobby Darin “deep cuts” as we approach the fiftieth anniversary of his passing on December 20th. I don’t pretend that all of these songs are Bobby’s absolute best, but I think they are some of the most interesting.
Bobby Darin’s 1968 album Bobby Darin born Walden Robert Cassotto was an intensely personal project, and very few heard it at the time, but for anyone trying to understand the Bobby Darin story, this is essential listening.
In The Proper Gander, we have an allegorical tale about a group of mice encouraged by their leader to go to war to fight a Siamese Cat that doesn’t actually exist, with the leader being found out as the song comes to the end of its seven verses. Everything here is tied up in the lyrics. Out of each verse’s 28 bars, 22 of them are simply the chord of G.
The lyrics more than make up for the harmonic simplicity, however, with Darin writing them in such a way that they can not only relate to the Vietnam war but to any propaganda/spin produced by a government on any issue in order to win votes and confidence. In other words, he’s talking about “fake news” albeit fifty years before the term was first used, and from the opposite side of the political spectrum when compared to those we associate with the term today. Despite the musical simplicity, there is a remarkable confidence in the writing of the song, with Darin having complete trust in his work as a lyricist, and his use of wordplay is both intelligent and fun and shows a different side to his songwriting.
Today (November 25th, 2023) sees the publication of the The Ultimate Listener’s Guide to the career of Bobby Darin. I want to take this opportunity to tell you a little about the book, and how it came to be.
Those of you who bought the 2nd edition, published back in 2018, will probably remember that I said quite clearly in that book that there wouldn’t be a 3rd edition. However, some things happened that meant it was sensible to go back on that promise. The first of these was covid. I spent the first lockdown making a video essay/documentary about early film. In the second lockdown, I started work on a sessionography for Bobby Darin. For those of you that don’t know, a sessionography compiles information about each recording session: time, place, musicians, songs recorded, their composers, the number assigned to the recording by the record label, how and when it was first released, and (in my case) where alternate takes etc can be found.
Many great musicians already have very detailed sessionographies completed. For example, Elvis Presley has one in a book called A Life in Music by Ernst Jorgensen, and there is also an indispensable website by Keith Flynn, with everything listed that you could possibly imagine. We know everything about Elvis’s recordings that we could possibly wish to know. Alas, the same isn’t true for Bobby. The new official website doesn’t even have a complete list of his albums.
There were previously two sessionographies of Bobby: one on the Praguefrank website, and the other by Jan-Jaap Been. I really want to take time out to thank them for their work. While those sessionographies are now somewhat out of date (in that they don’t include more recent releases), they were (and still are) huge achievements that have laid the groundwork for someone like me to come along and build on.
The problem with this endeavour for Bobby is that so much information is still not known – especially regarding musicians in some sessions, but also even dates of sessions are uncertain – but I have done everything I can to bring together everything we do know about Bobby’s recordings. There are still gaps, but I have been honest where we don’t know something, rather than make guesses. There’s a lot of misinformation online about Bobby, and I’d rather say we’re unsure of something rather than add to it. The session information in the new book looks something like the following – it is then followed by the kind of critiques and information that owners of a previous edition will already expect.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Kenneth Kelly Jr. and David Ortoleva for all the information they passed on to me regarding alternate takes that have been issued through the years, and for providing me with the audio of some of them.
So, when the session info was getting close to being finished, my plan was to issue it as a 100 page book that could sit on the shelf alongside the 2018 edition of the “Listener’s Guide.” And then something weird happened – unreleased Bobby recordings started appearing in the most unlikely of places, most notably various auction sites. There was an inexplicable flurry of them over a period of eighteen months or so. While they all remain unreleased for now, I was given access to them by the new owners for the purposes of this book, meaning I could add in analysis of music that not only have we not heard before, but also didn’t know existed! There are some significant (and historical) surprises among them, and I hope you will get to hear them in the not-to-distant future, but it was great to be able to include them in the book so that it is already up to date when they find their way out into the Bobby world. And so, bearing in mind the new musical material AND the sessionography AND it being the 50th anniversary of Bobby’s passing, the decision was made to re-release the book.
Another sample page:
The decision was made to include everything that Bobby recorded that has been included on audio-only releases (official and unofficial). So, for example, the duet with Judy Garland from The Judy Garland Show is included because it was released on the Judy Duets CD album. Some might be surprised to see the inclusion of the songs from the Seeing is Believing DVD, but just the audio did actually get its own release in a digital album back in 2006, and so those songs are included within the book (both in session information and critique/analysis). I have also included info on all of Bobby’s officially-unreleased audio recordings that we know of, such as the 1959 recording at the Hollywood Bowl, and radio recordings from 1960 and 1966. As stated earlier, I have gone into details about unreleased material when it was made available to me.
It is now a rather hefty tome – A4 size. 135 images. 540 pages. 225,000 words!! It’s been a long (and sometimes very trying) endeavour, particularly with technical proofing issues delaying the book’s release by about two months. All but two images from the previous edition have been retained, and some new ones added. The book is being published in hardback and paperback options. I recommend the hardback (although I get less royalties from it!), but Amazon have about a 4 week delay on dispatching that in the USA, hence why I have also done a paperback option. There are no hardback delays outside of the USA.
And so, at this point, I release this commemorative 50th anniversary edition of the book into the wild! Many thanks to everyone who helped me during the writing of this or the previous editions, especially Karin Grevelund, Matt Forbes (whose cover design is stunning), Alex Bird, and L. Vergara Herrero. I really hope you like it, and that you feel it does Bobby’s legacy justice.
A couple of months ago, it was announced that Bobby Darin’s Direction label was going to be relaunched, some fifty-three years after its demise. We were told that, “Direction Records will expand to include previously released albums as well as newly found recordings.” The first announcement was that five of Bobby’s Atlantic albums would be available to stream for the first time. This happened on July 14th, 2023. But what are we to make of what Direction might have to offer?
Forgive me for not applauding wildly about this first set of releases. While it is great, of course, to have these five albums available on streaming platforms for the first time, the real question is why hasn’t it happened before? Only a couple of songs from 1965 to 1967 have been (officially) available in the past. Was this to do with the label in question not putting them out there? Hardly, for the Estate owns those recordings – so why put them out a decade later than they should have been? Your guess is as good as mine.
The good news is that the five albums in question sound fine – The Shadow of Your Smile album is in mono, which is particularly good news as the stereo mix is appalling. The bad news is that these are bare-bone releases. There are no bonus tracks at all, despite the fact that there have been plenty on the CD releases of the same albums. This is a huge shame, as it means a significant amount of Bobby’s Atlantic output is still unavailable. The single sides Breaking Point and Silver Dollar were recorded during the Shadow of Your Smile sessions, and so would have found a good home here (and they’re actually much better than most of the album!). Likewise, Weeping Willow, recorded at the same session as the album’s Rainin’, remains unreleased. As a reminder, this has been out there amongst collectors in perfect sound for two decades.
The Shadow of Your Smile isn’t the only album here bereft of bonus tracks that should have been included. The remarkable Manhattan in My Heart remains officially unreleased, despite the fact that it would have been perfect as a bonus track on In a Broadway Bag, as it is very much in the same vein as the ballads on that album. Its release was announced in a radio interview eight years ago, but the album never came out. Quelle surprise. Likewise, Walking in the Shadow of Your Love was the B-side to the single release of Mame, the album’s opening track. That’s not here either.
Criminally, the A-side of Bobby’s first single for Atlantic, We Didn’t Ask to Be Brought Here, is still not available on streaming services, despite being a Darin classic. In fact, there are still at least fifteen tracks from the Atlantic years (that have been previously issued or are known to exist) that still are unavailable for streaming. On top of that is an entire live album, Something Special, which hasn’t ever been reissued officially, and has therefore been out of print for more than fifty years. One also has to wonder where the two albums released on Direction in 1968 and 1969 are. They also have never been issued in complete for on streaming platforms. The situation is ludicrous.
The Only place to hear “We Didn’t Ask to Be Brought Here” online is on YouTube.
Is this just a case of me being a glass half-full kind of guy? Not really. While the Direction announcement a couple of months ago seemed promising, what’s happened since has been disappointing at best. Most notably, there seems to be no movement when it comes to Bobby’s online presence. If people hear these new-to-streaming albums, where can they go for more information about Bobby? Can they go to the new website, http://www.bobbydarin.com? Well, they can, but, despite going live two years ago, the discography on there is less than half complete when it comes to Bobby’s original lifetime albums. What’s more, the dates attached to most of the albums are the year of CD or streaming release dates and not the original year of release. Go figure.
And, get this: the albums released on July 14th aren’t mentioned in the discography at all!
Beyond that discography, there is precious little there, other than a brief biography. It’s an empty shell of a website that is not going to spur visitors on to find out more about Bobby. It feels like a holding space – but it’s been up for two years. It’s pathetic.
But that’s only half of it. The social media presence for Bobby remains utterly appalling. The twitter, instagram and facebook accounts are vapid, mostly consisting of nice pictures and bland captions to go with them. Oddly, they have barely talked about Direction being relaunched other than the initial announcement. Even worse is Bobby’s presence on YouTube. The “official archivist” has spent years uploading incomplete songs, horrible colourised videos of TV performances, and other TV performances in the ratio of a mobile phone or, conversely, squashed into widescreen. No, Bobby never was that shape.
A new official YouTube channel launched a couple of months ago with two videos and fans waited with bated breath.
And they waited.
And waited.
Finally, another video appeared yesterday – Bobby singing If I Were a Carpenter from a show most fans own on DVD, and with the picture again squashed into widescreen. You couldn’t make it up.
Squished Bobby. He wasn’t tall, but he sure as hell wasn’t this shape!
Forgive me for saying that Bobby’s online presence (outside of Facebook groups run by fans) is a joke.
It sucks.
And what seems to be missed is that these social media accounts are of vital importance if this relaunch of Direction is going to be a success. It is so important these days for people new to Bobby to have somewhere to go to find out information and to see interesting, imaginative posts on social media. In 2023, official social media accounts HAVE to be helmed by professionals – and I don’t say that to dig at whoever does run them and has kept them for the last ten or fifteen. But times have changed, and Darin’s online presence has to change with it. One has to only look at the official Sammy Davis Jr social media accounts to see just how it could be done.
What will happen if nothing changes? Someone will hear the If I Were a Carpenter album (for example), and then their interest will fizzle out quickly. That means there is no interest in future releases from Direction, and then the label folds again, with the Estate making out there is a lack of public interest in the venture. That isn’t true. Bobby and his music are as vital now as they were sixty years ago, but you can’t just release something and sit back, waiting for the views and listens to mount up. Believe me, as an author, I know that all too well. And if you want real proof of that, check out the YouTube video the official channel uploaded 6 weeks ago: it’s had just 47 views.
And what about the Direction relaunch? Well, we have yet to see if it will actually result in some physical product rather than just digital albums – and digital albums are pretty useless if you actually care about the music. There’s no booklet, and so no way of knowing what version of a song you are getting to hear, or on what date it was recorded etc. Check out the Rare Capitol Masters release for proof of that. It includes unissued material, but Bobby attempted some of those songs on three occasions, and we are none the wiser as to which version is on that digital album.
So, whereas the news of the relaunch was welcomed, it hasn’t been accompanied by a professional online presence, or, it seems, the dedication to get Bobby “out there” again following what has been a pretty barren fifteen years or so, with the exception of discs covering the Motown years and the Godawful The Milk Shows set, which sounds like a ten-year-old edited it together with Goldwave.
And let me make one thing clear: I moan because I care. As do others – but sadly, it appears, not the people in the right places.
The report card most definitely reads: “must do better.”
In 2023, it’s difficult to remember life before YouTube. What started off as a relatively banal endeavour has, inadvertently, morphed into one of the greatest archives of music, television and film in the world. Forgotten performances have appeared on there by some of the greatest musicians and singers the world has seen, often from private archives. So here’s a look at some of Bobby’s greatest, and most obscure, TV performances available on the website that have never appeared commercially. The second part of this blog post will appear in a week or so!
The Midnight Special, 1973
We start at the end and work backwards, as that allows me to highlight first and foremost a new addition to YouTube. This weekend, the entire Midnight Special episode from March 16th 1973 appeared in wonderful quality. Many Darin fans are familiar with this performance through an “OK” version that has been on YouTube for years, but here it takes on a whole new life. This was Bobby’s penultimate performance recorded for television before his passing in December 1973. It contains a nice version of If I Were a Carpenter (although Bobby looks rather ill during it, seemingly holding on to the piano for support), and this is followed by Dream Lover and a medley of Splish Splash and Roll Over Beethoven. This might have been once of his last TV appearances, but it’s also one of his best. He sings and rocks with an abandon that is missing from 95% of his TV series, recorded around the same time. Bobby’s contribution starts at 7:51 in the following video.
The Bobby Darin Amusement Company, 1972
While The Bobby Darin Show series was released (kind of) on DVD about ten years ago, the Amusement Company series remains hidden away for the most part. Here’s an episode featuring Dionne Warwick. It’s in black and white for the first 25 minutes or so, and then the rest is in colour. What’s interesting is just how much better it is than the later series. Bobby is in better form, the arrangements are better, and it is more engagingly presented, complete with split screens etc.
The Irish Rovers, 1972
1972 was a good year for Bobby on TV. Here he is on the Canadian series hosted by The Irish Rovers, singing Beyond the Sea and his protest anthem Simple Song of Freedom.
The David Frost Show, 1972
Also from 1972 comes this wonderful performance on The David Frost Show, where we get to see him play harmonica, drums, and rock out on Splish Splash. It’s a first class, showstopping performance that displays Bobby’s on-stage magnetism in all its glory.
The Mike Douglas Show, 1970
During the summer of 1970, Bobby co-hosted The Mike Douglas Show for a week, which resulted in him singing a number of songs that he never returned to on TV and never recorded in the studio. He was also interviewed, and even entered into political discussions when the guests required it. Here we have a complete episode, spread over two videos. It includes Bobby singing And When I Die and If I Were a Carpenter, and speaking about his sojourn in Big Sur.
The Sounds of the Sixties, 1969
Bobby was great in the Kraft Music Hall series of TV specials that he was occasionally the star of. We have two clips from this one. Let’s start with Bobby duetting with Stevie Wonder on If I Were a Carpenter.
From the same TV show, we have this “mini-concert” of sorts. Sadly, the quality of the copy isn’t great, but it’s a delight, nonetheless. He begins with a rendition of Splish Splash and follows that with a performance of Honey, Take a Whiff on Me. It has recently come to light that Bobby attempted a studio recording of this song in late 1967, but only got as far as getting the backing track down, and never returned to record his vocal. And so this live performance is about as close as we can get to hearing what that studio version might have sounded like. Finally, there’s a dynamic (and possibly the best) TV version of Long Line Rider.
This is Tom Jones, 1969
In 1969, Bobby was in full “Bob Darin” mode, but not everything he wrote and performed during the period was a protest song. Here, on This is Tom Jones, he shows his humourous side, and reminds us that he didn’t always take himself too seriously.
Bobby Darin in London (recorded 1966, broadcast 1967)
Here we have Bobby fronting his own one man show on prime-time BBC TV. The soundtrack from the special was released on the album Something Special, available only in the UK. Here we have Bobby singing his blues number Funny What Love Can Do in a version very different to his studio recording.
From the same TV show comes this beautiful rendition of Once Upon a Time from Bobby’s In a Broadway Bag album.
That brings us to the end of part one of Bobby on YouTube. Part 2 will cover the period 1957-1965. However, I will leave you with discussion from The Mike Douglas Show, where Bobby butts heads with Mary Avara on the subject of film censorship. It’s just as fine a performance from Darin as any song in the main section of this post, putting his beliefs across with both firmness and politeness.
I recently uploaded four videos to YouTube. Each one is around half an hour in length, and contains rare Bobby Darin performances and some obscurities that are quietly hidden away on various releases. To compliment these videos, the following is a guide to the recordings and their sources. I have indicated when a track has been lifted from a particular CD. “Private source” indicates that it’s from my own collection and not commercially available either officially or on bootleg.
Volume 1
You Never Called (Stereo Version). Recorded on January 24, 1958. The mono version of this song, written by Woody Harris, was first issued over two years after it was recorded, on an album of leftovers entitled For Teenagers Only. The stereo version was issued several years later on a compilation album on the Clarion label. That stereo version was reissued in 2009 on the Collector’s Choice label’s CD of For Teenagers Only.
Distractions Part 1 (alternate take). There has always been some mystery as to why this song was called Part 1, as part 2 never appeared! The song is best known as being part of the Bob Darin album, Commitment. The alternate take heard here, though, mysteriously appeared on the Songs from Big Sur CD compilation. Was it released by mistake, or was it a different take used for one of the single releases back in 1969?
Wait by the Water (alternate take). Wait by The Water was recorded on January 13th, 1964. It was Bobby’s last recording session for eight months, partly due to arguments with his label at the time, Capitol. The track was released as a single. The song made its CD debut on the Capitol Collectors Series CD, but, at the time of that release, the stereo master was missing, and so this alternate take was used instead.
The Shadow of Your Smile (live). In the early 1990s, a Bobby Darin bootleg CD appeared called Rare Performances, featuring an edited set of recordings from a live show at Lake Tahoe in 1967. These were recorded from the soundboard, and the sound was not the best, but the show included some songs not included on other live albums. This arrangement of The Shadow of Your Smile was arranged by Roger Kellaway, and is different to the studio version. While the sound is still problematic, the version here is an improvement on that 1990s CD.
A Grand Night for Singing (demo). We now travel to some point in 1962 (date unknown), for a song featured inthe remake of State Fair that Bobby was part of. This recording was a try-out/demo version of a duet in the film, here with just piano accompaniment. The duet voice is that of Anita Gordon. This was issued a few years back as a bonus track on a digital release of the film’s soundtrack.
Drown in My Own Tears (TV performance). We go from A Grand Night for Singing to A Grand Night for SWINGING, a TV special starring Bobby that aired in 1968. No video has surfaced of the show, but we are lucky enough to have the audio of this song circulating amongst collectors. It is a very different performance to the one on the Bobby Darin Sings Ray Charles LP: much slower and much longer! It’s remarkable that Bobby was willing to risk something of this length on a prime-time TV special. Private source.
Sixteen Tons(TV performance). Bobby never recorded Sixteen Tons, but we do have a couple of TV performances of it. This one is from late 1967 or early 1968, from an appearance on The Jerry LewisShow. It’s another powerhouse performance, and a complete reinvention of the song. Bobby also included the number on his 1973 TV series The Bobby Darin Show, but it was edited out of the DVD release. Private source.
Queen of the Hop (take 9). Queen of the Hop was recorded at the same April 1958 session as Splish Splash. Here we have an alternate take, with the key difference being the prominent use of a bass singer in the arrangement. This was released on the bootleg disc Robert Cassotto: Rare, Rockin’ and Unreleased.
Here I’ll Stay (alternate version). This comes from the same Collector’s Choice CD as You Never Called. Here, the song is not just in stereo, but has a notably different arrangement compared to the finished version. The master take was recorded on October 30th, 1958. This may or may not be from the same date.
I Wish I Were In Love Again (live). In 1966, Bobby came to the UK to record a TV special for the BBC. This was aired in 1967, and a UK-only soundtrack LP was also released, entitled Something Special. This audio is taken from that album, which has never been officially re-released since the 1960s. This Rodgers & Hart song had also been recorded in the studio by Bobby, but went unreleased, and is now thought to have perished in a 1978 vault fire. (I mistakenly also included this song on volume 3 of these videos, for which I apologise!)
Volume 2
Hello Young Lovers (live). This track was recorded at the same November 1963 Las Vegas season as the The Curtain Falls Capitol CD. Matt Forbes informs me that these were overdubbed with some dialogue (not on this particularly track) and used on Here’s to the Veterans V-disc. Thanks, Matt. The source for this recording is the aforementioned Rare Performances bootleg disc.
A Sunday Kind of Love (studio recording). The recording of Bobby’s This is Darin 1959 album wasn’t particularly smooth, and a number of songs were recorded and discarded, including this one. It finally surfaced in 1976 on a record set entitled The Original Bobby Darin. The song has never been reissued and remains unavailable.
Weeping Willow (studio recording). This song remains officially unreleased. It was recorded in 1966 at the same session as Rainin. Very little is known about the song itself. In 2015, it was announced that it would finally be officially released on a forthcoming CD. Neither the song or the CD have materialised. Private source.
Love Look Away (alternate take). Most Bobby Darin fans know this song from a rather odd compilation called A&E Biography that brought together a strange mix of unissued and well-known songs. Love Look Away, recorded in early 1963 for the As Long as I’m Singing album (which was never issued) turned up on this disc. But, earlier, this alternate version had popped up unexpectedly and unannounced on a various artists compilation called Capitol Sings Rodgers & Hammerstein.
Leavin’ Trunk (live) This live recording of the Taj Mahal song is from 1969 (during the Bob Darin phase), and probably from a performance at The Troubadour. It has never been issued on an official disc or on a bootleg CD. Private source.
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (studio version). Most fans know of Bobby’s live version of this number (in a medley with Lonesome Road) which is featured on Darin at the Copa and a couple of TV appearances. This early 1960 studio recording is very different, though. It was recorded at the same sessions as Bill Bailey and the Winners album, and, like both of those, uses only a jazz combo as backing. It was released as a single in 1964, and has never been officially reissued since.
Lovin’ You (live). Lovin’ You was one of the highlights of the If I Were a Carpenter album, and here it gets a live outing in the same show as The Shadow of Your Smile on volume 1. An attempt has been made to improve the sound.
Autumn Blues (studio recording). Another single side, this time an instrumental. It was released as the B-side of Beachcomber and, outside of Europe, hasn’t been available since. In Europe, it can be found on The 1956-62 Singles CD set on the Jackpot label.
Trouble in Mind (live). After the November 1963 Las Vegas season, Bobby stopped performing live for over two years. In 1966, he made his return, and this number was recorded at the Copa on March 31st. The performance is from a radio broadcast. Some of the show has circulated among collectors for years, but the entire unedited show exists in the Paley Center for Media. Private source.
Mack the Knife (alternate take 3). Mack the Knife changed everything for Bobby, and this is alternate take 3 from the studio session for the song. It’s slightly more laid-back, but it just needed a bit of tweaking before the hit version was taped. This is lifted from the Rare, Rockin’ and Unreleased bootleg CD mentioned earlier.
Volume 3
That Darn Cat (film soundtrack). This number was recorded as the theme song for Disney’s 1965 film. Sadly, Bobby was with Capitol at the time and so the song couldn’t be released at the time. It still hasn’t been officially released, and this version is lifted from the opening credits.
Splish Splash (alternate take 1). This is the very first recorded take of Splish Splash. Most of the ingredients are already in place, but it’s still rough around the edges, and needed some work. From the Rare, Rockin’ and Unreleased bootleg disc.
Come-a-Rum-Rum (live). Another live recording from the 1969 live season at The Troubadour. Sadly, I know absolutely nothing about this song! Private source.
Tall Story (single side). Another single side that has been notoriously hard to find. This one was written by Andre and Dory Previn, and was probably recorded at the same session as That’s How It Went, Alright, which was sung in Pepe, Bobby’s film debut. Warner have recently made Tall Story available digitally.
Schatten auf den wegen (German single). Bobby recorded this German version of Eighteen Yellow Roses exclusively for the German market. It was released in 1963, with the German version of You’re the Reason I’m Living on the B-side. The German translations have, so I’m told, no real relationship with the English words.
Ace in the Hole (live). This live version takes us back once again to November 1963. This is from the same source as Hello Young Lovers on volume 2, and was used for the Here’s to the Veterans V-disc. The original song would have had the verse included, but it was removed at some point.
All By Myself (TV performance). Bobby was always a great guest on TV, and he made over 200 such appearances in a span of just 17 years! This is from a spot on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1962, and may even be better than the studio take that appeared on Oh! Look at Me Now! Private source.
Mack the Knife (live). This live version from November 1963 was released officially on the A&E Biography CD mentioned earlier. Bobby fluffs the words, and equates forgetting the lyrics to his signature song to Moses forgetting The Ten Commandments. This alternate version tells us that more than one show was recorded during this season.
That Lucky Old Sun (alternate take 11). We go back to 1958 again for another outtake, this one of the faux-gospel That Lucky Old Sun. This is from the same studio date as Here I’ll Stay, which is featured on volume 1. This outtake is sourced from the Rare, Rockin’ and Unreleased bootleg.
I Wish I Were in Love Again – see volume 1!
Beyond the Sea (TV performance). This TV performance comes from The Bobby Darin Amusement Company series from 1972. It first appeared on the Seeing is Believing DVD. This audio however is, oddly, from a various-artist Reader’s Digest set called The Swinging Sound of Easy Listening. Quite how it landed up there is something of a mystery, as it hasn’t appeared on any other audio release before or since. The fade out is on the CD set, and not through tinkering by me.
Manhattan in My Heart(studio recording). This unreleased song from 1966 is quite possibly the most famous of the Darin unreleased recordings because it has been kicking around amongst collectors for a couple of decades, and also because it is one of the best ballad performances of Bobby’s career. As with Weepin’ Willow, a CD release was announced about seven years ago, but never came to pass.
Volume 4
Beach Ball, Sun Tan Baby, Powder Puff, Fifty Miles to Go(studio recordings by the City Surfers). The City Surfers were a short-lived surfing group featuring Bobby on drums and backing/harmony vocals, with Roger McGuinn and Frank Gari. To my knowledge these four sides haven’t been reissued since they first appeared back in 1963.
You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You (live, 1963). This is another alternate version from the November 1963 Las Vegas season. This one was released on a Here’s to the Veterans disc. Bobby had recorded the song in the studio in a very different arrangement earlier in the same year. It finally got issued in the late 1990s.
The Girl Who Stood Beside Me (live, 1966). Here we have a track from London in 1966, which was issued on the UK-only Something Special album. The noticeable difference between this and the studio version is that the bagpipes (or similar) are not present here, and we can here much more of Bobby’s lovely vocal.
Judy Don’t Be Moody (alternate take 2). This song (hardly Bobby’s best) became the B-side of Splish Splash. This is an alternate take lifted from the Rare, Rockin’ and Unreleased bootleg CD.
Bullmoose (alternate take). The single version of Bullmoose must surely be Bobby’s best rock ‘n’ roll recordings, but an alternate stereo take was used to open the Twist with Bobby Darin album. Sadly, it doesn’t have the same impact as the single version – both because of the performance and the unsatisfactory stereo sound.
I’ve Got the World on a String/Yesterday (live, 1966). This rather strange medley comes from a radio broadcast from the Copa in 1966, a season that saw Bobby introduce much new material to his live act, but which was not professionally recorded.
Let the Good Time Roll (TV, 1973). We close this final volume with a staggeringly good performance from Bobby’s 1973 TV series. Inexplicably, this was edited out of the series when it was released on DVD, despite being one of Bobby’s very best moments from his final years.
It might be hard to believe, but Bobby Darin only released two live albums during his lifetime, and one of those was only issued in the UK. Despite this, there are a number of live recordings which have appeared posthumously, and this post takes us on a little tour through them.
The earliest live recordings that have been released come from Australia in early 1959. Bobby was there as part of a rock ‘n’ roll package, and so his four songs all fit into that genre. It is, perhaps, rather fitting that this short set exists as it allows us to hear Bobby performing in a way very different from even just a year later. Bobby’s banter with the audience tends to fall rather flat, and his jokes and stage patter are pretty awful, but once he sings he gets the young audience in the palm of his hand. You can find this set on a bootleg CD entitled From Sea to Sea.
Later in 1959, Bobby was recorded at a tribute concert for songwriter Jimmy McHugh at the Hollywood Bowl. He was part of an event that also featured Vic Damone and Anne Marie Alberghetti, and not only did Bobby sing solo, but also in a series of duets and trios. The concert was recorded by arranger Buddy Bregman, but, for whatever reason, it has never been released, and the location of the tapes is now unknown. This is a shame as Bobby performed some songs here that he didn’t revisit later, such as On the Sunny Side of the Street, I Feel a Song Comin’ On, and Let’s Get Lost.
The following year came Bobby’s first live album, Darin at the Copa. It was perhaps inevitable that ATCO would record Bobby’s season at the venue, although the venue itself wasn’t exactly a great place for live recording. The acoustics rather remind me of the live albums recorded over the years at Ronnie Scott’s in London. The sound is a little lifeless – a word that couldn’t be used to describe Bobby’s performances. The resulting album is a bit of a strange one. For all the fine performances, it’s badly edited together, and some strange choices were made. For some reason, My Funny Valentine, Splish Splash, and The Birth of the Blues were left off the album, but Alright, Okay, You Win was included – despite part of it being a dance number. Interestingly, the highlights are the songs that Bobby hadn’t previously recorded: I Have Dreamed, Love for Sale, and You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To. But the album desperately needs someone to go back to the master tapes (if they exist) and remix them from scratch. And, in all honesty, there’s little chance of that happening!
Bobby’s next live album was recorded in November 1963 in Las Vegas, in what was his final season before he was to retire permanently from live performances. For some reason, the album wasn’t released until the year 2000, although a handful of tracks had emerged on a boxed set in the 1990s. The first thing we notice here is that Bobby’s act is much more refined. Instead of sprinkling every song with an impersonation or an aside, he now separates that from the rest of the act with a comedy routine, which is a huge improvement. Perhaps the most impressive section of the act is the folk sequence near the end. Bobby reworked Eighteen Yellow Roses earlier in the show, but here continues with Work Song, Mary Don’t You Weep, and I’m on My Way. Mary Don’t You Weep is exquisite in this setting, with Bobby managing to get a campfire atmosphere in a Vegas showroom.
In 1966, Bobby returned to live performing. In January of that year, he was performing a season at the Flamingo in Las Vegas, and his show brought in reviews that most people could only dream of. Sinatra was performing at the same time in the Sands hotel – and told his audiences that they should take in Bobby’s show while they were in town. In April of the same year, Bobby was back at the Copa, and some excerpts from these shows circulate amongst collectors, albeit in dubious quality. Bobby had completely altered his show by this point, now including Yesterday, I’ve Got the World on a String, Trouble in Mind, I Got Plenty of Nothin’, and I Left My Heart in San Francisco.
In November, Bobby was in London, and was recorded at the Shepherd’s Bush theatre for a BBC TV special broadcast in 1967. The soundtrack from this was released in the UK (but not elsewhere). The Something Special LP is the same as the TV show, except for a few edits. Again, Bobby had altered his repertoire, and the highlights of the show were a new arrangement of Once upon a Time and a slow blues version of Funny What Love Can Do. The disc also includes the only official version (on album) of Bobby singing A Quarter to Nine and I Wish I Were in Love Again. It has not been issued officially on CD.
In the 1990s, a bootleg album appeared called Rare Performances, and this included an edited version of a concert in Lake Tahoe in 1967. Recorded from the soundboard, with rather a hissy sound, this demonstrates how Bobby’s performances were always changing. Here, he incorporates a fun version of (Sittin’ Here) Lovin’ You and I’ve Got You Under My Skin, a song he never recorded professionally.
We now move on to the Direction years, when Bobby turned his back somewhat on the traditional nightclub show and, instead, performed material with social commentary, some blues, and traditional folk songs. Bobby attempted to film the shows, but the resulting footage was not of good enough quality (technical quality, that is) for it to be issued. However, a quartet of songs recorded from his stint at the Troubadour have emerged, and one can only wonder why there hasn’t be a full disc containing a complete show. These live versions of Distractions, Long Line Rider, Questions, and Simple Song of Freedom are delightful – as are Bobby’s humble and amusing introductions to them. They can be found on the Songs from Big Sur CD and also as bonus tracks on the UK release of the Commitment album on CD. Also from the same period is a version of I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight recorded at The Bonanza in Las Vegas. This was on the 1995 Rhino boxed set. Again, nothing else from these recordings have surfaced.
The final set of Darin’s live recordings come from early 1971. These were recorded at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, and are probably the best live recordings we have from Bobby. He is on absolute fire here, giving epic renditions of a Beatles medley, Fire and Rain, Higher and Higher and Hi-De-Ho. A few days after the performance, Bobby was having life-saving heart surgery. Why the Desert Inn album wasn’t released at the time is a mystery – not least because it got shelved in favour of a studio album which was nowhere near the same quality. A couple of songs from the Vegas season were made available as singles and, eventually, Motown issued the whole album in 1987, with an extended version issued in 2005. This later version was remixed and, to these ears, sounds worse than the original version from 1987. Other than Mack the Knife, If I Were a Carpenter, and Splish Splash, it might not have the big Darin hits, but this is still THE must-have disc if you only want one Darin live disc in your collection.
I’ve had a few people approach me on Twitter and Facebook recently, asking me a little more about my book on Bobby, and also about Bobby in general. Bearing that in mind, I thought that, rather than including an excerpt of my book here that centres on an album or a concert, instead I would reprint some of the introduction. It gives some basic information and discussion about Bobby’s career and musical legacy and then goes on to talk about the content of the book. Please be aware this is only a series of excerpts (and doesn’t include the opening of the introduction), and so jumps around a little bit! It’s also rather nice to be able to illustrate the text with some YouTube videos of the music I’m talking about! Anyway, enjoy!
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…And so what are we to make of the legacy that Bobby Darin left behind? It is one that includes rock ‘n’ roll, country, swing, jazz, show tunes, folk, easy listening, spirituals, ballads, protest songs, blues, and even film scores. During his lifetime he was accused of switching styles because he wanted to jump on bandwagons, whereas in recent years he has been viewed as more of a musical chameleon.
The bandwagon-jumping accusation isn’t altogether untrue. After all, it is difficult to imagine Bobby writing and recording the song You’re the Reason I’m Living in the way he did had Ray Charles not recently had huge success with his Modern Sounds in Country and Western LP. But bandwagon-jumping suggests the recording was made simply for financial gain, whereas, considering Bobby’s love of Charles, it was just as likely to have been done to emulate, and pay tribute to, his idol. In reality, it appears that if Bobby heard something and liked it, he wanted to try it for himself. But it was always done Darin’s way, and was never a straight copy of a style or a sound, and that sets him apart.
I have never been happy with people calling Bobby Darin a “musical chameleon.” For me, this has a negative connotation – albeit perhaps an unintended one. I’m no expert on chameleons but, while they can change their colour for any number of reasons, we generally associate it with a kind of camouflage, an attempt to fit in to its surroundings so as not to be noticed or found out. When we transfer this idea on to Darin, it then makes him out to be someone who was just changing his style and genre in order to fit in to (or cash in on) the current music scene – which brings us back to the whole idea of jumping on a bandwagon.
We first come across this idea when he recorded the That’s All album back in late 1958, with the suggestion made that he was somehow trying to be Frank Sinatra. And yet, anyone who knows the music of both men will know that there are actually huge stylistic differences between their arrangements and vocal styles within the big band genre. I don’t know of a single Sinatra arrangement that has the same sound and feel as Mack the Knife or Clementine. Sinatra’s orchestrations swing in a very different way entirely. In fact, perhaps the nearest Sinatra got to that sound was his version of Old MacDonald – recorded after the aforementioned tracks were released, not before – and even then it’s not the exactly the same, despite the slow build-up in sound and the modulations in key with each verse. And it wasn’t often that Sinatra was as downright brash as the arrangements used for Softly as in a Morning Sunrise or Some of these Days. Maybe on I’m Gonna Live Till I Die – but this was the exception, not the rule. Darin’s vocal approach was far different, too – he didn’t sing from a jazz background as Sinatra did, but he brought rock ‘n’ roll vocal stylings to the big band sound. I’m not saying this to knock Sinatra in any way – I adore his music – but my point is just that Darin wasn’t somehow imitating Sinatra, he was doing it his way.
If anything, Darin’s swing sound was more like Sammy Davis Jr’s than Sinatra’s. Check out Davis’s version of There Is a Tavern in a Town, for example, and you will see what I mean. He got much of his material from the same place as Davis too: the current Broadway scene. Whereas Sinatra was normally reaching back to shows of the 1930s and 1940s, Darin and Davis were often culling material from Broadway in the 1960s and, with Darin, the current Hollywood scene too. Hence the albums From Hello Dolly to Goodbye Charlie, In a Broadway Bag, Bobby Darin sings the Shadow of your Smile and individual tracks such as What Kind of Fool am I and If I Ruled the World. Despite these connections with Davis, Darin wasn’t imitating him either, although both crossed over into rock ‘n’ roll material and rhythm ‘n’ blues.
Darin’s last album to be recorded for ATCO was his tribute to Ray Charles, and it is true to say it retains much of the Ray Charles sound. However, even this wasn’t a straightforward album. Bobby was taking risks here. What other pop singer of the time would spend over six minutes on I Got a Woman (and, in a late-60s TV appearance, over seven minutes on Drown in My Own Tears)? Most pop singers of the early 1960s were rarely recording songs over two and a half minutes. Darin’s I Got a Woman doesn’t actually work – it goes on for far too long – but at least he was willing to take risks or, to be less kind in this instance, be self-indulgent. Darin was always his own man and recorded what he wanted. Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Parker, would have run a mile from such an artist. What this ultimately meant was that Bobby was often the only one responsible for the success or failure of an album.
Bobby is again accused of jumping onto bandwagons when he released his folk album, Earthy!. And yet, once more, an actual examination of the LP finds that this wasn’t any normal folk album but an ambitious, daring (from a commercial point of view) collection of folk songs from around the world. What’s more, it is also one of his best albums. In this case, the risk, ambition, and vision paid off artistically. While Peter, Paul and Mary (who he is often accused of copying) were recording songs by Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, Darin was adapting folk music from across the globe along with a handful of new(ish) compositions in the same style. The musicianship here is incredible and yet the album did very little business commercially.
Darin’s next folk album, Golden Folk Hits, was a simple attempt to hone in on the Peter, Paul and Mary sound, but he had gone down the artistic route before turning to the commercial one. Then there have been the comparisons with Bob Dylan when we come to the late 1960s and Bobby’s creation of his own label to record his own songs of social commentary. And yet, once again, there is no foundation in these comparisons, as what Bobby was writing and recording often had very little to do with what other protest singers were doing at the time.
They may have been largely ignored on release but, like Earthy!, the Direction albums have now gained cult status, particularly in the UK and Europe. The first, Bobby Darin born Walden Robert Cassotto, contained songs that were musically simplistic, but the lyrics were what mattered. There is some wonderful wordplay in The Proper Gander, while Sunday lures the listener in before issuing a damning indictment on organised religion. Commitment, the second album, is more interesting musically, and is clearly a more varied selection of songs, and Bobby manages to tie together a beautiful melody with a powerful political comment as in Sausalito. Elsewhere he isn’t protesting at all, but there is great wordplay and musicality in Water Color Canvas, and a dry self-deprecating humour in Distractions (Part 1).
His Motown years were largely disappointing, and yet the 1971 album recorded in Las Vegas (released in 1987) is probably the best live album of his career. Yes, he is relying largely on contemporary covers, but look at what he does with them! People say that Las Vegas saps a singer’s artistic vision – but not Darin’s. While Elvis’s idea of a Beatles medley was a bland re-tread of Yesterday with the refrain of Hey Jude tagged on the end, Darin came up with a multi-song, almost rhapsodic, masterpiece. And, once again, ambition shone through, as in the extended version of James Taylor’s Fire and Rain.
There wasn’t much musical ambition in the Motown studio recordings, with Bobby trying to adhere to the Motown sound to start with before ultimately turning into a bland balladeer with orchestrations that often should have been torn up and thrown out long before they reached the studio. And there wasn’t much ambition on his disappointing TV series either – and yet Darin was still doing what he wanted when he could. What other variety show gave over a few minutes each week to a chess game? Again, this was Darin being self-indulgent and ambitious and this time it didn’t work – but he hadn’t given up despite seemingly losing his way musically in his final years (although appearances on The David Frost Show and Midnight Special showed exactly what he was capable of when he put his mind to it – as did the concert-style final show of his TV series).
No artist leaves a perfect musical legacy. Bobby Darin took risks, and sometimes they didn’t work or he over-estimated his audience. And yet the quality of his recordings is far more consistent than Elvis, Sammy Davis Jr, or even (arguably) Sinatra, who went through several periods of artistic doldrums within his studio work in the late 1960s through to the late 1970s. But one thing I am sure of is that Bobby Darin had no interest in being a chameleon, and changing his genre and style just to fit in or, worse, cash-in. If he changed his style, it was always because he thought he could bring something different to it, that he could add something, that he could move it forward, that he could push the boundaries.
It is not an exaggeration to say that he never made the same album twice. For example, Bobby made numerous albums of standards, or songs in that style, and yet no two of them have exactly the same feel or draw their repertoire from the same place. This is Darin has less rock ‘n’ roll phrasing and edge than That’s All. Love Swings tells the story of a love affair, whereas Two of a Kind is a duets album using mostly novelty songs as the basis for its repertoire. Winners is a wonderful album using just a jazz combo, but Oh! Look at Me Now sees Bobby singing a dozen of the most popular and often-sung standards for the first time in a big band setting. And so it goes on.
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Bobby Darin: Directions, named after the Direction label Bobby founded in 1968, is not a straightforward biography, and is largely not interested in retelling Bobby Darin’s life story. For any reader wanting that, there are fine biographies by David Evanier, Al DiOrio, and Bobby’s son, Dodd Darin (among others). These all tell their stories in different ways and with a different emphasis, and all are recommended. There is also the book That’s All: Bobby Darin on Record, Stage and Screen by Jeff Bleiel, which is a highly informative and remarkably readable biography of Darin as told through his career rather than his personal life.
Alongside my own commentary on the music runs the parallel story of how Bobby’s music, personality and career were discussed, reviewed and reported in the newspapers, magazines and trade journals of the day. In this new edition, there are excerpts and comments from over 550 different reviews and articles, ranging from trade publications such as Variety to major newspapers such as the New York Times to movie and music fan magazines – even Woman’s Weekly! They give us a fascinating picture of Bobby’s career as it happened, from how his music was received to how his comments were skewed and misquoted and dogged him in the media for months and years afterwards.
The ultimate aim here, of course, is to bring the focus back to Bobby Darin’s huge musical legacy. By offering a new commentary on the recordings themselves, andby telling the story of Darin’s reception in the media, I hope that I have created a book that is of interest and use both to the long-time fan and those who are only just beginning to investigate the wonderful work that Bobby Darin left behind. If reading the following pages makes you want to go and listen again (or for the first time) to the albums or songs being discussed (if only to make sure you do disagree with me as much as you think you do), then this book has achieved its aim. Now, make yourself comfortable and let’s travel back to 1956 where a teenaged Bobby Darin is waiting to tell us the story of the Rock Island Line…
Apologies to everyone for the blog not getting updated as often as it used to, but I confess I have been a bit Darined-out following the writing of the book last year! But here’s a new post that I hope will be of interest, bringing together a clutch of reviews of the 1995 career-spanning boxed set from Rhino.
We start with a detailed review from the wonderful Robert Hilburn in the L. A. Times.
The Chicago Tribune
The Daily Advertiser Sun:
The Albuquerque Journal:
Finally, we have a complete review column that rounds up a number of boxed sets that had just been released at the same time as Bobby Darin set. It’s easy to forget just how much of a golden age the mid-1990s were for the music collector, but just look at all these goodies (Bobby, Elvis, Judy Garland, The Beatles!) that might have been under your Christmas tree in 1995!
This list contains recordings made by (or of) Bobby that, as yet, have not been released. Songs tried on multiple dates in the studio before a satisfactory take was achieved are generally not included, but a song such as Some of These Days, recorded in a different arrangement for a different project to the well-known version on That’s All, is included. Dates given are in DD/MM/YY format. Survival status is unknown in all cases except where indicated.
??/??/55-56 Unknown titles. Songwriter demos from this very early stage in Bobby’s career are known to exist.
??/03/56 Rock Pile. Studio recording.
30/10/58 Some of These Days.Studio recording
5/12/58 Didn’t It Feel Good.Studio recording (outtakes have been issued)
19-21/5/59 The Breeze and I; Since My Love Was Gone; The Lamp is Low.Studio recordings for This is Darin
6/9/59 I Feel a Song Coming On; On the Sunny Side of the Street; Exactly Like You; Let’s Get Lost; I Can’t Give You Anything But Love; I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night; Can’t Get Out of This Mood. Live recording, Hollywood Bowl. These are from a concert paying tribute to the songwriter Jimmy McHugh. Buddy Bregman recorded the concert and a release was announced the following year, but never materialised. It has been confirmed that these recordings are known to exist
1-2/2/60 A Game of Poker; I Got a Woman.Studio recording for Winners
15-16/6/60 My Funny Valentine; Splish Splash; The Birth of the Blues.Live recording for Darin at the Copa
21/6/60Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey; That’s the Way Love Is; Beyond the Sea; When Your Lover Has Gone; That’s All; I Can’t Give You Anything But Love; Mack the Knife; She Needs Me. Let’s Go to Town radio programme. This was a programme used as part of a recruitment drive for the National Guard. Bobby sang his songs with Ray Bloch and his orchestra. All eight songs exist and are held at the Paley Center for Media.
17/8/60 Back in Your Own Backyard .Studio recording for Two of a Kind
25/3/61 Bobby’s Blues . Studio recording, instrumental
8/6/61 Special Someone; Teenage Theme; Movin’ On. Studio recordings, probably instrumentals for Come September
??/11/63 Unknown titles. Live recording, Las Vegas. Given that we have alternates of some songs from the The Curtain Falls recordings, it stands to reason that there are likely alternate versions of the other numbers in the vaults. Some have been released on bootleg discs
13/1/64 Maybe Today .Studio recording
24/3/65 King of the Road.Studio recording
24/3/65 The Joker. Studio recording
24/3/65 My Kind of Town.Studio recording
14/8/65 Sweet Memories of You. Studio recording
14/8/65 Ain’t That a Bunch of Nonsense.Studio recording
13/12/65 Ace in the Hole; The Best is Yet To Come; The Sheik of Araby; This Could Be the Start of Something Big; I Got Plenty of Nothin; Baby Won’t You Please Come Home.Studio recordings originally intended to be issued with the standards on the second side of The Shadow of Your Smile.
4/2/66 Weeping Willow. Studio recording. A release for this song was announced in January 2015 but never materialised.
23/3/66 Strangers in the Night.Studio recording
31/3/66 As Long as I’m Singin’; Some of These Days; After You’ve Gone; Mame; I’ve Got the World On a String; Yesterday; Mack the Knife; One for My Baby; One of Those Songs; Gotta Travel On; Brother Can You Spare a Dime; King of the Road; Trouble in Mind; I’ve Got Plenty of Nothin’. Live recording, Copa. These were recorded from/for a radio broadcast. This entire show exists in the Paley Center for Media. Thanks to Matt Forbes for verifying information for this entry.
21/4/66 True Love’s a Blessing.Studio recording
9/5/66 L. A. Breakdown.Studio recording
9/5/66 I Can Live on Love.Studio recording
9/5/66 Manhattan in My Heart. Studio recording. A release for this song was announced in January 2015 but never materialised. It is available on Vimeo.
27/5/66 Merry-Go-Round in the Rain.Studio recording
27/5/66 Seventeen.Studio recording. Could this song by I saw Her Standing There, which starts with the line She was just seventeen? The song is mistitled in this way on an Elvis Presley rehearsal list from 1969, hence the query.
28-30/6/66 Lulu’s Back in Town; For You; What Now My Love; Mountain Greenery; It’s Magic; Danke Schoen; My Own True Love; On a Clear Day; A Quarter to Nine. Studio recordings. A complete unreleased album thought to be lost to a fire in 1978.
20/10/66 Funny What Love Can Do; Good Day Sunshine; Young Girl; Daydreamer. Studio recordings for If I Were a Carpenter that were not included on the album.
2/2/67 Saginaw, Michigan.Studio recording for Inside Out
26/6/67 Biggest Night Of Her Life. Studio recording
19/11/67 Natural Soul Lovin’ Big City Countrified Man. Studio recording. May survive
19/11/67 While I’m Gone. Studio recording. May survive.
??/11/67 Meditation/I Will Wait For You; Prison Of Your Love. Studio recordings. May survive.
??/05/69 Unknown titles,probably including Come a Rum Rum, Leaving Trunk, Me and Mr Hohner, and Lady Madonna. Live recordings, The Troubador. Four songs were released on Songs from Big Sur. More recordings from this engagement must exist, as surely not just four titles were taped. The songs mentioned are songs known to have been in Bobby’s act during this season.
16/7/69 Unknown titles, probably including Simple Song of Freedom, Long Line Rider, Come a Rum Rum, Me and Mr Hohner, Lady Madonna, Distractions. Live recordings, Las Vegas. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight was released on the 1995 Rhino boxed set. More recordings from this engagement must exist, as surely not just four titles were taped.
??/02/71 Unknown titles. Live recordings. Las Vegas. Because Motown have released multiple versions of a few of the songs from Live at the Desert Inn, it stands to reason that more than one show much have been recorded, and there must therefore be more recordings in the vaults, even if they are different versions of the songs we already have.
1972-1973. Recordings from Bobby’s two TV series. Many titles from these series are currently unreleased, but survive.
For more information on these and all Bobby Darin titles, please see Bobby Darin: Directions. A Listener’s Guide. 2nd edition.
In 1969, Bobby became “Bob Darin,” in an effort to break away from his previous showbiz persona. He recorded and released his second album for the Direction label, Commitment, in which he protests against police brutality, has a few thoughts about God, and sings about getting stoned. He was spending much of his time in Big Sur, California, away from the spotlight for the most part, and yet Darin in 1969 was something of an enigma. He was seemingly intent in breaking away from traditional showbiz, and using his music to give a social commentary on the world around him – and yet, as the following newspaper cuttings show, he couldn’t quite make that decisive break with the old Bobby. In one moment he is protesting about the use of violence at the People’s Park protest (“Sausalito”), and at others he is singing a medley of Al Jolson songs with Dean Martin on prime time TV, and appearing at the Illinois state fair on the same bill as Liberace. And, as one of the following articles show all too clearly, at the same time, Bobby/Bob’s health continued to cause him problems.
This is Bobby Darin 