I had a message recently, asking me if The Ultimate Listener’s Guide was going to be issued on the Kindle any time soon. Sadly, the answer is no. This is because of the layout of the book, where the tables and other session information wouldn’t translate to the e-book format. I’m also aware that the sample of the book on Amazon is quite small, and restricted to the introduction. So, here are the first nine pages of Chapter Two, to give an idea of the layout and content of the book, which remains available in hardback and paperback at Amazon stores. Print quality is better in the book than on the screengrabs seen below. The book can be purchased at https://a.co/d/0bdtMhRand all other Amazon stores.
The following post is an excerpt from “Bobby Darin: The Ultimate Listener’s Guide” by Shane Brown, available on all Amazon sites in paperback and hardback.
In November 1966, he flew to the UK where he appeared on television, singing If I Were a Carpenter on both Top of the Pops and Ready, Steady, Go! before filming a special for the BBC at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. He then flew to France to appear in a gala for the United Nations, which was also shown in the UK (and possibly in other countries too).
The BBC TV special was recorded in mid-November 1966, and was finally shown the following May, at which time the soundtrack from the show was released on a UK-only LP, Something Special, which has now become very hard to find. Various tracks from it have appeared over the years on unofficial CDs, but always in less than stellar quality. All songs from the show were released on the From Sea to Sea bootleg CD. Hopefully, an official re-release of this forgotten album will appear at some point in the future, for it deserves to be heard.
The show and the album both start with Don’t Rain on My Parade, with the opening line sung in the special as Bobby enters the theatre from outside. It is not the best start to a show or live album, as the end of that first line is out of tune, but that is soon forgotten once Darin reaches the stage and gives a fun, vibrant performance of what was, at this point, his usual opening number. Bobby spoke at various points during his career about how he was never quite comfortable on television, but this special shows no sign of that, mostly because it is simply a videotaped live performance on stage and not in a studio. The pacing of the show is up to Darin, and there are no guests to introduce to interrupt his momentum. This is, therefore, the television programme in which we get the nearest thing possible to what a Bobby Darin concert would have looked like and how it would have been paced (with the notable exception of the recently-found recording of Bobby at the Cocoanut Grove in 1963).
As if to prove that, he moves into A Quarter to Nine taking barely a second to catch his breath. The song had been recorded in the studio earlier in the year for an album that was never released. This live arrangement is likely to be roughly the same, giving us a glimpse of what that album might have sounded like. Darin is totally at ease on this Jolson classic, playing with the timing at various points, and giving a full-throttled climax to the number.
He asks the orchestra to give him a few extra seconds to catch his breath before he moves into Once Upon a Time, a song that had been released on the In a Broadway Bag LP. Here, though, the arrangement is slightly different, with just a piano rather than the full orchestra at the opening. This allows for a more nuanced vocal than the studio version, despite the fact that Bobby is audibly running out of breath in places. Still, it is this arrangement which is better, and which has more shape, allowing the song and the vocal to build to its heartbreaking conclusion.
I Wish I Were in Love Again was not, as far as we know, ever recorded in the studio by Darin, and so this live version is rather special. This sees Bobby back in show-stopping mode again. The subtleties of Once Upon a Time are thrown out of the window and, instead, this is a jazzy, powerful showstopper of a very different kind.
The inevitable Mack the Knife is up next, and quite similar in performance to the one recorded in November 1963 at the Flamingo in Las Vegas. As with that version, Bobby plays with the song a little, with a few comedic interjections, but otherwise this is a standard Mack.
At this point, the running order of the album deviates from the special. The first side of the album closes with a problematic If I Were a Carpenter. Bobby loses his way towards the end of the song, and the engineers made a valiant attempt to edit the recording to cover it up, but it doesn’t work. It’s strange that the song wasn’t re-recorded for both the special and the album.
In the show itself, and the broadcast, Mack the Knife was actually followed by the impressions routine previously heard on the Flamingo recordings, again using One for my Baby as a hook. As with that earlier version, this is fun, but it doesn’t really bear repeated listens.
The Girl Who Stood Beside Me gets a live outing next (this actually followed If I Were a Carpenter originally), with Darin introducing it as his next single. What’s interesting here is that we get to hear the song without the big production of the studio version and its bagpipe effects. It has to be said that the live version works better. Without the extraneous noise, the vocal can be heard more clearly and the song and recording ultimately become more commercial.
Also interesting is the rendition of Funny What Love Can Dowhich is completely unlike the studio version released on single. Perhaps the live version, which is slower and with a stripped back instrumentation, is a reflection of the later studio recordings made for the If I Were a Carpenteralbum that were never released. Either way, this is stellar stuff, and the gutsy guitar solo by Jim Sullivan is superb. It is a shame this version isn’t better known.
The unedited videotape of the show then sees Bobby introducing a solo sequence in which he plays (in mime) a young boy hoping to be taken home by a couple visiting an orphanage. It is certainly an example of Darin trying new things once again, but is also rather mawkish and doesn’t really fit in the middle of a concert, and it is understandable why it was cut from broadcast.
Bobby takes to the piano for a great performance of What’d I Say that is as much a demonstration of Darin the pianist as of Darin the singer. The song segues into the final number, That’s All, and it is interesting that this song he first recorded in 1959 is back as his closing number.
The album and the television special managed to incorporate swing numbers, show tunes, folk, blues, rhythm ‘n’ blues, and a set of impressions within a fast-moving forty minutes. This was Darin at his best, and the second of the two live albums released during his lifetime, with the result being considerably better than Darin at the Copa, and the act more focussed without the constant asides etc. There is also more range of material here, and it is clear that Bobby is still enjoying his return to live performing.
Whilst in the UK, Bobby also took time to pursue other activities. It was reported that he turned his hand to film directing for the first time when he made a promotional video for his new single The Girl Who Stood Beside Me. It is unknown if the video still exists.
Bobby also filmed his scenes for the film Stranger in the House (dir. Pierre Rouve), released as Cop-Out in the USA. The movie was based on a novel by George Simenon, creator of Maigret. It had already been filmed in France in 1942, but the 1967 version attempted to bring the story up to date, with the aim clearly to portray the hip, happening youth of the swinging sixties. Bobby had high hopes for the film, despite his relatively small role. Just before filming, he said “I’m to play a rather evil sort of fellow in a flashback – they tell me it is type-casting! Geraldine Chaplin and James Mason are in the movie – so I hope it will do my film image a power of good.”[1]
Bobby with Geraldine Chapin in Stranger in the House
When the film was released six months later, Monthly Film Bulletintold readers that the novel had been “preposterously updated,” and that the film was “absurd enough to be riotously funny” – but that was hardly the intention.[2]Variety were oddly enthusiastic about the movie, highlighting “Mason’s first-rate performance [which] holds the pic together and is a fine study of disillusionment.”[3] But the disillusionment came for Bobby himself in that the film did absolutely nothing for his film career, or the studio, for whom the film is said to have lost close to $800,000.
According to Variety, Darin was “asked to direct a film in London following his thesping.” Whether this was simply rumour or had some truth to it is unknown.[4] Either way, Stranger in the House (or Cop-Out if you prefer) is a complete and utter mess of a movie, best viewed today as a curious time-capsule of how the middle-aged adults of 1967 were viewing the youth of the time. However, the British Film Institute has thought it worthy of a restored blu-ray release.
Bobby returned to the UK in 1970. However, Bobby ended up cancelling his proposed march and, instead, he had gone to the UK to appear on the hugely successful game show, The Golden Shot, and to prepare for a show at the Royal Albert Hall in London – a show that now included Mack the Knife, a song that he had turned down requests to sing at the Sahara in Las Vegas in December 1969. Unfortunately, all of his appearances were cancelled due to ill health.
[1] “Darin Has Learnt Humility,” London Life, November 11, 1966, 8.
[2] “Stranger in the House,” Monthly Film Bulletin, July 1967, 110.
[3] Rich, “Stranger in the House,” Variety, May 31, 1967, 6.
[4] Army Archerd, “Just for Variety,” Variety, January 5, 1967, 2.
When Bobby Darin passed away in December 1973, he left behind a substantial legacy, but what most people didn’t realise is how much of his output was still unreleased.
There were numerous unreleased tracks from the ATCO years, including live versions of The Birth of the Blues and Splish Splash from the Darin at the Copa album, a quartet of songs from the This is Darin sessions, a group of tracks from the Two of a Kind duets album, as well numbers originally earmarked for Winners and Bobby Darin Sings Ray Charles. This was nothing compared to what Capitol had left in its vaults: a live album and enough studio recordings to easily fill three LPs. When Bobby returned to Atlantic in 1965, the next two and a half years saw five albums released (six, if you include the live Something Special disc), but, again, there was enough unreleased material to fill three albums. Likewise, the Direction years ended with half a dozen studio recordings left in the can, as well as at least one live album.
Bearing all of this in mind, one perhaps should have expected Bobby’s passing to prompt these labels to release some of the unissued material, but it didn’t happen. ATCO managed to reissue The Bobby Darin Story under a different title, but that was all that these labels managed between them. In fact, the only commemorative album to be released in the wake of Bobby’s death was issued by Motown, with whom hey had been signed from 1970 through to early 1973. As with other labels, Bobby had left a wealth of material in the vaults at Motown, including a complete studio album, a complete live album, and a dozen or so other recordings.
Motown released Darin: 1936-1973 in early 1974, and it’s fair to say it was a strange record, pulling together a disparate group of recordings from various projects. This is a strange choice given that the live album recorded at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas was probably ready to go, given that its release (under the title Finally) had been announced in 1971 before being mysteriously pulled. An album of material from the live dates was finally issued in 1987, and remains Bobby’s greatest live disc. He is stunning throughout, giving brilliant performances of a series of epic arrangements of popular songs of the period and some of his own hits and compositions.
The Motown tribute disc from 1974 opens with I Won’t Last a Day Without You, recorded at Bobby’s last recording session on February 4th, 1973. I should add here that the recording dates for the Motown studio sessions refer to the date when Bobby taped his lead vocal. Backing tracks, overdubs, etc were all done on other dates – sometimes months apart. Written by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols, it finds Bobby in strong voice and paired with an effective arrangement – one that is considerably better than much of the 1972 album released on the Motown label. However, this MOR ballad is a far cry from the type of music that made Bobby a star, and, as with the 1972 Motown album and many of the unreleased tracks, this feels like Bobby making a Motown record rather than a Darin record.
This is followed by Wonderin’ Where It’s Gonna End, a song written by Mike Randall that was recorded on November 3rd, 1971. It’s a decent enough performance, but it’s not really a memorable song, and there were far better recordings languishing in the vaults that could have been used.
Sail Away follows. This Randy Newman song was the highlight of the aforementioned 1972 album, and it made some sense to include it again on the tribute album, although it wasn’t like there was a lack of other material to use. Bobby gives the number a gospel feel, and it is probably his best ballad performance at Motown.
Another Song on My Mind takes us back to the February 4th 1973 session, and it is, in fact, the very last song that Bobby is known to have recorded in the studio. The title was perhaps a fitting end to his recording career, and was written by Bobby and Tommy Amato, showing that, yet again, Bobby was capable of writing in whatever style he chose.
The first side of the LP ends with Bobby’s final single, Happy (Love theme from Lady Sings the Blues). For years, Happy was thought to have been Bobby’s final recording, but we now know that this isn’t true. The song, which adds new lyrics to an instrumental theme from the film Lady Sings the Blues, was a modest hit, and the version included on the LP has a running time that is more than two minutes longer than the single version, although Bobby doesn’t get to sing an extra note, as it’s all an extended orchestral outro. The idea of adding lyrics to an instrumental film theme was quite common. Indeed, songs as well-known as Smile, More, Stella by Starlight and Unchained Melody were born in this way – Unchained Melody was so-called because it’s literally the melody from the film Unchained!
The entire first side of the tribute disc, therefore, is a straightforward MOR effort. Five ballads in a row – some better than others – but hardly representative of Bobby’s output or even of what else was languishing in the vaults.
The second side of the album brings more variety. In the second half of 1971, Bobby recorded an album called Go Ahead. It featured a title song written by Bobby (Go Ahead and Back Up) and then nine covers of popular songs. In this regard, the album was a 1970s attempt at the same formula used on the You’re the Reason I’m Living and Eighteen Yellow Roses albums from 1963. For unknown reasons, Go Ahead wasn’t released, but the compilers of the tribute album took three songs from it: Blue Monday, Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright, and The Letter. These are neither the best or the worst from the unissued album.
Blue Monday is interesting as we know that Bobby was singing a cover of the Fats Domino hit in his live act back in 1957 or 1958. Sadly no recordings of those performances are known to exist, but the 1971 studio version is nicely done, even if it seems somewhat over-produced. It would have been nice to hear just Bobby and his core group go to town on the song, rather than have them surrounded by the brass for the second half of the song.
The Letter is a relatively straightforward cover of The Boxtops hit, but it all ends too quickly after a couple of minutes. A longer version was released in 2017 on the Go Ahead and Back Up CD of unreleased Motown recordings, and works much better.
Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright sees Bobby revisiting the Bob Dylan song that he first recorded back in 1963. It is a very different arrangement, eschewing the folk feel in favour of an MOR backing. Which is better? It’s hard to say, but there were definitely better songs from the Go Ahead album that could have been used – not least the title song, which is probably the best recording he made in the studio for Motown.
The Motown tribute disc ends with two songs from the 1971 live recordings. Mack the Knife and If I Were a Carpenter might have been titles to attract the buyers, but they were in many ways the least interesting of all the songs that were recorded for the live disc. The Beatles medley, Hi-De-Ho, Higher and Higher, and Fire and Rain were all considerably more interesting, are turned into showstoppers by Darin.
The Motown disc, therefore, was a strange mix of good and average material, but there is no real cohesion to the effort – although we should at least be thankful that they bothered to create a tribute LP in the first place. It is pleasant enough, but it certainly doesn’t show Bobby at his best in the way a straightforward issue of the aborted live album would have done. Likewise, there were better studio recordings left in the vaults, including Go Ahead and Back Up, a lengthy version of Proud Mary, a cover of Bob Dylan’s Watch the River Flow, and a song called Young Joe Caldwell (none of these saw a release until 2017).
Bizarrely, the 1974 album got released on CD in the early 1990s in a very different version to the original issue. Several songs were given not just a remix but a completely different arrangement/production, and it wasn’t mentioned anywhere on the packaging. The album was released again on Another Song on My Mind, a double CD that includes both this album and the 1972 studio album, along with all Motown single sides, and the various different edits and arrangements. It is the best place to find the album, but is out of print and currently selling for around £60!
What happened to the unissued material from the other labels? Well, most of the unreleased material from ATCO (1958-1961) and Atlantic (1965-1967) is thought to have been destroyed in a fire in 1978. That said, some tapes from late 1967 were recently discovered, and so there is always hope that others will be, too. The unreleased Capitol material (1962-1965) started to be issued in 1994, with the live album from 1963 issued in full in 1999. Many of the studio recordings were issued around the same time, but others are still slowly escaping the Capitol vaults even now, with the semi-duet with Peggy Lee on Jealous released just last year. Several studio recordings from the Direction years (1968-1970) were issued in the early 2000s, alongside four songs from the live album. However, the rest of that live album inexplicably remains in the vaults of the Darin Estate, where more unissued material is also thought to reside.
More information on Bobby’s time at Motown (and his entire career) can be found in Bobby Darin: The Ultimate Listener’s Guide, available on Amazon in paperback and hardback editions.
Hello everyone. This is a “public service announcement” to try to get the latest information I have about the delays in the USA out to as many fans who might have ordered The Ultimate Listener’s Guide as possible.
The book was intended to be published in hardback only. They are printed on demand – one copy at a time. In the UK and Europe, that has happened as it should, and there are no problems. In the USA, however, Amazon have an issue with their printer of hardbacks, and the delay I was told was 3-4 weeks delivery. That four weeks is now nearly up, and most people who ordered in the US have no book. I was told by a refreshingly candid assistant at the weekend that Amazon had “not been completely truthful” with the extent of the delays. This has caused a mess. Luckily, no-one pays for their items on Amazon until the book is dispatched, but that doesn’t help in getting the book, and I know these kinds of issues are frustrating.
So, I have taken the decision to release the book in paperback as well. I was hoping to get this published by Christmas Day, but I’ve been ill all week, and it will now be the very beginning of the new year. So, if you are in the USA and have ordered the new edition of the book, you have three choices open to you:
1.) Wait until Amazon finally get the hardback out to you.
2.) Hold on until the paperback is released, and, at that point, cancel your hardback order if it hasn’t been dispatched, and then buy (or not buy!) the paperback.
3.) Cancel your hardback now, and buy the paperback when it comes out.
There will be no delays in getting the paperback. They are unaffected by the current issues. Obviously, the paperback will be a bit cheaper for you, too, and it should be available in Australia. I could have coped with all of this better if the problem was caused by something I’d done, but it’s completely out of my hands. Even so, I am really sorry if you have been affected by the delays. There are no delays on Amazon in the UK and Europe with regards to the hardbacks – but shipping to the US obviously adds a not insignificant amount to the price for you.
I will make a further announcement about the “relaunch” in due course.
In a December 1961 interview with Hedda Hopper, Bobby Darin said that “I believe there’s a field for folk songs now and will do some of them.” During the same set of sessions that produced the Oh! Look at Me Now! album in 1962, Bobby was able to do just that. However, rather than simply mimicking the Peter, Paul and Mary sound that was popular at the time, he instead did something completely different, creating an album of folk songs (and songs in the folk style) ranging from prison songs to Latin American material, gospel songs, protest songs and even a song from Haiti. If Oh! Look at Me Now! was one of Darin’s less ambitious albums because of its more traditional repertoire, then Earthy!is at the other end of the spectrum completely.
The remark to Hedda Hopper was not the first time that Darin had referred to his admiration of folk songs. He had also done so just before singing I’m Just a Country Boy with Duane Eddy during the 1960 UK TV special. On record, he had also recorded the faux work song Timber at his very first recording session back in 1956, the slow calypso-like love song Lost Love a couple of years later and, more recently, Jailer Bring Me Water, a Darin song that imitated the folk and prison song genres. He had also added a folk section (including Cottonfieldsand Boil That Cabbage Down, neither of which were tackled in the studio) into his live act by the time that this LP was recorded.
Earthy! opens with two “prison songs,” the first of which is Long Time Man. Long Time Man may have writer’s credits given to Ian Tyson and Sylvia Fricker, but it is based on a traditional African-American prison song that went back decades. Tyson and Fricker were a Canadian folk duo who performed under the name of Ian & Sylvia, and one listen to their rendition of Long Time Man shows just how much Darin’s version owes to theirs, with the arrangement being virtually the same. With Earthy! often being regarded as one of Darin’s most original works, the similarities here come as quite a shock, and yet he still manages to bring things to the table that are wholly his. While Oh! Look at Me Now! smoothed out Bobby’s swinging style, and was devoid of yelps, eeks and groans, here he shrieks, whistles and shouts his way through the song, and also provides his own harmony vocals. It’s a striking opening to what is a contender for Bobby’s best album, and he returns to this raw sound and feel of Long Time Man elsewhere in the album, including on La Bamba and Guantanamera. Long TimeMan was added to Bobby’s live act in early 1963 with the twenty-year-old Jim (soon to be Roger) McGuinn featured on guitar.
Bobby Darin’s career was in a strange place in January 1964, when this song was recorded. Just after this session, Bobby got a release from his contract with Capitol Records, and started the search for a new label. Less than six months later, he re-signed with Capitol, only to seek a further release the following year. Despite recording some very fine music during this period (including the From Hello Dolly to Goodbye Charlie album), he seemed to be lost. At one moment saying he was returning full-time to big band/swing music only for him then to release a couple of singles that were very much in the style of the British Invasion. He had also said he wouldn’t make any more films with Sandra Dee – and then made That Funny Feeling with her. And he had just retired from live performances – a retirement that ended just over two years later.
Four songs were recorded on January 13th 1964, of which Wait By the Water is the best. The song was written by Darin, but is loosely based on a spiritual. This was a contemporary-sounding recording that, for some inexplicable reason, didn’t get much attention at the time. The song is also yet another recording in which Bobby approaches the subject of death, with the lyrics being considerably darker than the pop production might suggest. Bobby himself gives a fine, rocking, slightly bluesy performance, and the result was one of his best recordings for Capitol that was not in the swinging/big band mould. This should certainly have been included on the 4CD Rhino boxed set in 1995. An alternate take appeared on CD in the late 1980s on the Capitol Collectors Series album (it’s the alternate take linked to in this post).
Wait By the Water was originally issued as the B-side to the far less commercial The Things in This House, a parody of country music of the period. The single was released in August 1964, just after Bobby had re-signed with Capitol. Cash Box said that Wait by the Water “is a hard-driving, shufflin’, chorus-backed hope for romance with a fine gospel-style backing,” and that The Things in this House “is a twangy…country-styled affair.”
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.
This is Bobby Darin 