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 While those sessionographies are now somewhat out of date (in that they don’t include more recent releases), they were (and still are) huge achievements that have laid the groundwork for someone like me to come along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.
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.
The following post is a transcript of a 1967 Bobby Darin interview that, it’s fair to say, is the most in-depth that we have yet come across. The audio was found in a corner of the internet by Alex Bird (and if you haven’t heard his own albums, check them out now!). Running for half an hour or so, much of it was distorted or playing at the wrong speed. Alex got everything running at the right speed, and then did a transcription of the interview. That was then passed to me, and I have edited it and added notes. Matt Forbes (and if you haven’t heard HIS albums, then you should check them out, too!) also helped with this process over the last few weeks.
In the interview, Bobby chats about his own recording career, what he thinks of the music scene at the time of the interview, and also tells us about the times when he was working as a demo singer – filling in a period of time in his early career that we knew nothing about. I have edited the interview, but made very few changes of note. I’ve removed repetitions etc, and also short sections that, for one reason or another, don’t make much sense (often because the audio was missing). In short, I’ve tried to make it work as piece of text rather than a piece of audio. Sections in bold are notes added by myself. Sections in blue are spoken by the interviewer, although I have tried my best to make this read more like an article than an interview, but that wasn’t always possible.
We hope you enjoy this rare and very revealing interview. The original audio is linked to at the bottom of the post.
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“It’s Got to Be Right:” Bobby Darin discusses his music career. (1967)
The Writing and Recording Process
In 1958, I sit down and write a song called Splish Splash, which is a novelty song with rhythm and blues chords and a simplistic approach piano wise – because I’m writing songs at the piano trying to use both hands. Now, it becomes a hit record and, the next thing I know, there’s a typification program happening. Then we come with Queen of the Hop, which is more or less in a similar bag. It’s got more of a New Orleans kind of flavor to it. And Early in the Morning is a real gospel, I Got a Woman kind of changes. And, of course, I Got a Woman is a derivation from church – the gospel rolling piano that Ray Charles was so famous for, along with slews of people who never made the pop scene.
Soon after, I get into what I liked to call at that time “a pretty chord sequence,” like, Dream Lover. Again, to me, it requires a different sound. First of all, I don’t have the same vocal placement. When I hear a certain kind of thing, when I go into a country bag, I’m into a country bag and it becomes a vocal placement. I couldn’t sing a country and western tune in the same approach that I would sing a pop standard ballad and/or a rhythm & blues tune. So, what I don’t realize at the time is all of it’s coming out at once and I’m trying to place it. I’m as guilty of the thing I resent most, which is categorization, but I can’t control it.
We dissolve and it’s 1964 or 1965, when I find myself in this position that I’m starting to force things. I’m trying to overlap, and place into specific bags, individual things that I’m doing. All of a sudden, it’s 1967, and I just have to do what I feel, as I feel it. So, I go in and I do a Dr. Doolittle, which I feel in a certain way.
Bobby singing Talk to the Animals on The Jerry Lewis Show, 1967
[Right] now, I’m in the process of putting together an album of what I call potpourri. There’s some rhythm and blues things in there, some country-oriented things, some bluegrass-oriented things, because I feel those things. And I’m doing them now for me. Again, I’m back into recording what I really dig and groove behind. Whether they are commercial successes, well, that’s a later factor. I would like them to be – no artist wants to go in and have a bomb – but that’s not a significant factor.
[Note by Shane Brown: The sessions that Bobby is talking about here were taking place in late 1967. The rhythm ‘n’ blues numbers he mentions are probably Easy Rider and Everywhere I Go, first issued on the Rhino boxed set in the 1990s. The country track is likely to refer to the likes of Tupelo, Mississippi Flash (unreleased), as well as I’m Going to Love You and Long Time Movin’, both of which straddle the country and folk genres, and both were, again, released on the 1995 Rhino box. The bluegrass song is Honey, Take a Whiff on Me. Many fans will be aware of Bobby’s performance of this on a 1969 TV special, but, until recently, there was no record of a studio version being made. However, we now know that the song was taped in the studio in 1967. It remains unreleased. It’s worth adding that Easy Rider, Everywhere I Go, I’m Going to Love You, and Long Time Movin’ were referred to as demo recordings when first released. This 1967 interview corrects that, with Bobby confirming these sessions were intended for an album project. Documentation seen recently also confirms that these were regular studio recordings.]
The 1995 Rhino Boxed Set
I used to try to plot what an audience wanted to hear. I don’t mean this to sound like a professional and a penance session, but, by the same token, these are facts that I’m expressing. You put me into a studio with five guys who are really nitty gritty funky blues players, and that’s where I go. That’s where I am. You put me into a Nashville studio with guys who have got that twang, [and] that’s where I go. You put me into a studio with 35 lush strings, and that’s where I go. So, the music really dictates to me rather than me dictating to the music. I can just say that it happens on an emotional level. It happens to me. I know I respond to it, and I know that people there respond to it. And I’m hoping now that what happens is I go in and I have that freedom, which is something that I’ve always had. Nobody’s ever squashed it, nobody’s ever tried to put it away, but, by the same token, I did it to myself. I started over-listening instead of doing.
We’re going in on Thursday to record a couple of tracks. We may not get them Thursday, [so] we’ll come back on Monday. That’s the thing I could never do before, and now I can. I couldn’t understand how it would take so long to do one or two tracks. Well look, the chemistry’s not working today. It’s Thursday [and] it’s rainy…the car broke down, the market’s off…I’ve got a headache. Instead of trying to account for all those factors, make them work for you. If they don’t work for you, just stop, go back, and do it again. Do it until it’s right. That’s really where it’s at. There’s nothing now that will ever come out that’s not right. Now I’ll stand behind it.
[Note by Shane Brown: What Bobby is saying here about not previously going into the studio to re-do songs he wasn’t happy with isn’t actually true. There are many occasions where Bobby was unhappy with his first attempt at a song, and so went back into the studio at a later date to try again. His willingness to do this goes back as far as the late 1950s and continued through the Capitol years and beyond.]
It started with the Carpenter album, there is nothing on that album that I won’t stand behind, nothing on the Inside Out album that I will not stand behind, nothing on the Dolittle album that I won’t stand behind. On the new project [there’s] a couple a things we don’t like. We hear them back and say the track is wrong, and the song is not for me. We just put a pass on those things that aren’t right, because my needs have changed. It’s got to be right. Now, if it sinks or if it swims, fine. But at least it’s right going out.
Bobby as Songwriter Demo Singer
I earned my living, for about a year and a half, recording songs for the artist to sing. I was a demo record singer in New York City, and you would get 10 or 15 bucks a side, depending on the publisher involved, or whether you knew the writer etc. And he would say “Now look. I got a song for Perry Como”. And he would give me the tune, and I’d learn it. We’d go in with a trio or quartet, and I’d sing “Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, never let it fade away.” Or “we got a song for Presley” (Bobby does Elvis Presley impression). Having that vocal flexibility, I was able to sometimes earn $100 dollars a week – just going in and singing songs that were going to be put onto acetates and mailed out to other artists. And nobody ever asked who it was singing
[Note by Shane Brown: This is new information. When looking through magazines and newspapers from 1956, Bobby seems to just disappear for about nine months or so from the late summer of 1956, reappearing again in the spring of 1957. He doesn’t appear to have been doing commercial recording sessions, TV work, or live appearances. Bearing in mind that he references Catch a Falling Star and Elvis here, it is almost certain that Bobby is talking about that “lost” period. It is known that some demo records by Bobby from the mid-1950s are still in existence, but the titles are unknown, and they haven’t been heard by the editors of this interview transcript.]
Bobby with Elvis Presley
As I say, the demo record business was quite a lucrative thing for me. And it was never for professional or commercial use, merely to present [the song] to the A&R man or the artist himself. It’s a great experience, certainly, because so many times I had I had a chance to get before a microphone in the studio before I was up to bat as Bobby Darin. So, it kinda worked.
[Note by Shane Brown: This would explain how and why Bobby’s recording and singing technique improved so much between the Decca recordings and the May 1957 sessions which ultimately led to his ATCO contract.]
Bobby on Influences and Writing
People that you really are strong for cannot help but influence you. I’m as influenced by Ray Charles and by a Frank Sinatra as I am by an Al Jolson, for that matter, or a Bing Crosby, because those people have made contributions. There’s no question about it that there’s some degree of innovation involved. Now, I think, that there is little left to innovate but the little that is left is what I’m after. I don’t know that anybody can consciously do it, I think you can sit with all the maps, all the records, all the charts in the world and try to…and it doesn’t happen.
You take Ray Charles, a classic case in point. Ray was an underground artist for a long time. I go back with Ray Charles in terms of being a fan to when he sounded like Nat Cole. Some people might stand up and say, “now, wait, he never sounded like Nat Cole”. I’m telling you he sounded like Nat Cole and worked with a trio and came out of Washington in the [early] days.
Ray was influenced by Nat. Now, all of a sudden, he got into a church kind of thing and now he was starting to do, you know, Ain’t that Enough or What’d I Say or I Got a Woman. Things that were new and fresh – not for the people who would listen to them and heard those things, but for a whole mass who had never heard them. Strangely enough, though, he was never as successful as he was at the moment he had the vision to see that a Hank Williams in his game was doing exactly what Ray was trying to do in his game, in the R‘n’B bag, and fuse the two. So, all of a sudden, he had I Can’t Stop Loving You and You Don’t Know Me. He took a basic Americana source, fused it with another basic Americana source and came up with something which everybody considers new, which, in reality, certainly is not new. There is nothing that is new. But the fusion tended to be, and was, innovative, at least to the degree that it was virtually unheard of in this country.
He was charted. For people to accept a rhythm and blues artist doing “their material” was a huge, huge step. Now, a Sinatra does it in a sophisticated, maybe not as stylized, approach, but [he] takes a song and makes it his own. I think that really determines what I mean by innovative – somebody that takes material and puts it into such a shape and remolds it to such a degree that you exclude it. [With] hundreds of other people, you’re precluded [from] recording that song in any similar fashion at all because the stamp is on it. And Ray does that. Jolson did it. Sinatra does it. Barbara Streisand does it. I think I had an opportunity, and a couple of times did it. I think a song like Mack the Knife and/or Bill Bailey.
Now, it’s more difficult to do it with songs that you do write. Again, you look to the track record [of] Ray Charles [and] the biggest songs he’s had are the songs that he did not write. He had a chance to place something of his own into someone else’s work, a combination factor.
Being a writer, I find that, when I write a tune, the person best suited to sing it is me, because I’ve written it, knowing all my foibles, all my shortcomings, as well as all of the flexibilities, you see? And strangely enough, I’ve had a lot of recordings on songs that I have written, but never a hit with someone else – which implies some sort of weakness in the material. There’s no question about it. Because I write a song like Things and I have a top ten record with it. Dean Martin records it, puts it on an album a couple of years later. It does not step out as a single. And Nancy Sinatra has it out now, but it’s not as a single record. Well, who can figure that? Or You’re the Reason I’m Living. I write it, I sing it, it’s a top three tune and and a lot of people record it, but it’s just placed into an album. So, there’s something generically wrong with my being able to write for other people.By the same token, I think I’m getting closer to being able to write for me as well as do other people’s songs with more of me in them, because the question in the final analysis is “who are you?” You say “I’m me,” but me happens to spread out in more than one or two directions and, therefore, is confusing. I think, for example, that I have let the record player down to some degree when he goes and buys an album in which out of 11 or 12 selections, he does not hear a similarity throughout the 11 or 12 cuts. And he scratches his head and wonders what is going on?
[Note by Shane Brown: His comments here are a bit perplexing, because most of his albums do, in fact, have a coherent style or sound to them. There are very few (outside of compilations of hits and leftovers like Things and Other Things or For Teenagers Only) where he includes country songs and jazz, for example. Sure, he combines country with big band on You’re the Reason I’m Living, but he does that throughout the album, not one style and then the other.]
When you buy Mathis, you buy one sound. When you buy Sinatra, virtually, you buy one sound. When you buy Ray Charles virtually you buy one sound. Well, when you buy BD, you buy a potpourri of things.
Bobby on Being Pigeonholed
I am never bored in a recording studio. I don’t think the people who buy my product are ever bored by the similarity or the sameness of the sound. I’m always experimenting, which is, at points, a hang up, at other points a great advantage. I did an album called Earthy on Capitol, several years ago, which was played for the true folknicks. They asked who it was. Because they dug it. I used natural skin players, the gut string players. The guys who had played those things all their life, the natural pickers. So that the only thing that wasn’t authentic was “Bobby Darin never got on a freight train and he wears a suit and tie.”
I felt bad about that until I realized that’s what they did to Bobby Dylan after he electrified his guitar. So to be good and poor is all right. To be good and successful somehow or other, you’re out, like it or lump it. And I think it’s a shame that that can happen to a Bob Dylan, etc., not that his popularity has waned. I think it’s reached the mass, which is where it belongs. When you’re saying something good. I’m now referring to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and Judy Collins. And, if being heard by the mass precludes it being an underground art object any longer, well, I’m sorry about that. I was never in any of those categories, so I don’t have to personally feel put down. But, to me, it’s sad that an individual has to be bagged and remain there by any number of his peers. That’s kind of a shame.
Now, what happens is that people come to see a show or performance that I give knowing that they’re going to see a good cross-section of all of the things that have been going on, that I’ve been doing for years. I mean, I used to go out and do Canaan’s Land, an old folk standard spiritual kind of thing, and get 650 out of 1000 rednecks up on their feet with a deafening applause. It got them all together. I do Work Song, which, certainly, it’s got to make you think, since it’s a song about a guy that commits a crime. And they would crack in a nightclub – in that place where you’re supposed to only do songs like My Funny Valentine and I Get Along Without You Very Well, and so forth. And I made them respond to that and I still make them respond to it. And I constantly change the songs involved. But the various approaches can’t change. Otherwise, I could not get up and do the hour and 10 minutes that I do of any one given kind of music. You know, I close with with a medley of Respect, What’d I Say, and Got My Mojo Working. So, I mean, it’s lunacy. And, before that, I’ve done Drown in My Own Tears and Talk to the Animals, Don’t Rain on my Parade and Carpenter.
Bobby singing Work Song on The Bobby Darin Amusement Company, 1972
So, the people who buy albums, I think more or less want to buy a given sound, a given set of similarities. In a club, they want to be entertained. To bridge that gap is a little more difficult than [that], it requires a Superman.
I started to say before that I at least find people now saying, “Gee, I’m glad that you do all of those things. I’d rather have you do all of those things than just be locked into a particular kind of thing.” Because to me, the song is the essence. Songs [that are] not good, I don’t care who does it. Doesn’t mean a thing. A song better be good. And that’s pretty much where it’s at. And those people who think that their particular styles and/or an arrangement are selling them are, I think, short lived. They better be able to go after and find the song constantly and/or perform the song. They must have the material.
Bobby on his first hits
(Interviewer) Back in 1958 when you did Splish Splash , where was your head then? What were you after? What were your goals at that point, when you started to really record professionally?
I wanted a hit record so bad I could taste it.
I don’t think I have told this to any anybody more than an intimate friend or two, but I don’t mind talking about it now. I had a rather severe case of psoriasis, which is a kind of a rash that breaks out on your hands. That’s usually triggered by some emotional disturbances. And I was being treated by a marvelous dermatologist in New York, and he would give me these ultraviolet treatments and cream. And after a long time, part of his treatment was to sit and discuss things. The treatment would only take 10 minutes. We’d shoot the breeze for 15 or 20. And one day he said to me, “when you have your first hit record, all this is going to go away.” Now, whether he planted that, or whether that was a fact that he had picked up on as a result of conversation, I don’t know. But I had recorded Splish Splash on a Monday, it released on a Thursday by the following Monday, we had sold 50,000 records, and it was just breaking all over the place. And by the following Thursday, my rash disappeared. You know, people out there could sit and laugh, and say “That’s funny.” That’s exactly what happened.
[Note by Shane Brown. This isn’t exactly how it happened. Splish Splash wasn’t released until five weeks after it had been recorded. It was recorded on April 10, 1958, and released on May 19th.]
So, I had such limited views, direction, such a narrow beam of light that I was looking through and traveling on, that the first hit record was an immediate. Then it was OK, now I’ve got to get the second one and the third one, the fourth one, and when I went in to do the That’s All album which had Mack the Knife in it, that was clearly and simply designed to show some people that I could do something else other than this rock and roll thing. Now, if somebody wants to get super analytical, they can say that’s because you were putting down the rock and roll thing. I don’t deny it. I was. But without knowing it. However, when they wanted to put Mack the Knife out as a single, I argued. I said, “don’t do that. You’ll hurt everything I’ve got going,” because, to me, I was like a man running on a treadmill and going nowhere. Inside I wasn’t going anyplace at all. I was starting to become the celebrity that I had wanted to become all my life.
Now, my attitude is very simple. I must do what artistically pleases me, and not worry about [what happens later].
And when you ask where was my head at in Splish Splash, that’s what sounded to me like it would be a hit record, and I went and did it. And Queen of the Hop sounded like it would be a hit record, and Dream Lover sounded like it would be a hit record…
(Interviewer) While we’re on Dream Lover, I want to point out that, to me, that stands out so far above [other pop hits]. I think it’s an excellent record from that period. Could you tell me a little something about the composition of that and the recording just for the heck of it? It was a very good record. I think it still is.
I had just discovered the C, A minor, F G seventh changes on the piano, and I stretched them out. And I liked that space that I left in there. And I don’t know why, because, as I say, I have no theory to base it on. And I did, “Every night, I hope and pray a dream lover…” And it just flowed because, usually, all of the songs that I’ve written that are hits have flowed out just like that. Whether I’m playing guitar and writing and/or piano and writing it, it just happens. That’s one of those cases in points. Splish Splash did as well. Then, to go in and record. I felt that should have some voices and some strings. So that was a little bigger date than I’d been used to doing. But, we did 32 takes on the song because we couldn’t get, in that particular afternoon we couldn’t get everybody to gel.
Bobby singing Dream Lover on The Ed Sullivan Show, May 31, 1959.
When I listen to the record today, I’m flattered that you say you think that out of that period, that was a good selection and I think it was a well-produced record…overproduced for today’s market. I think it’s a much more simple market today, put out a simple song with a simple idea that everybody could relate to. Again, though, I was going in to write for some people. I can’t say that I emotionally was divorced from looking for that love of my life, that would make me happy, and that’s what Dream Lover is all about. You’re the Reason I’m Living comes from it. But it comes from a definite need. An emotional need. And I think a thing like 18 Yellow Roses is a definite emotional need expressed in song.
Then I got a case of the cutes. And I started to write what I thought would sound like an emotional need, and things like Be Mad Little Girl – things that are so obscure and nobody even knows them, which is just as well. Now I’m back into writing things that I feel that I can relate to totally. And we’ll see what happens from there.
Bobby singing Be Mad Little Girl.
Bobby on the 1960s Music Scene
(Interviewer) I’d like to ask you, what do you think about the contemporary music scene now? What’s happening? Do you find it as exciting as I do and as everybody else seems to?
There is so much good music happening. So much. I mean, stimulating songs coming from stimulated songwriters being performed by stimulated artists that it really is a golden time. If you’ve got a capsule, a period of music, you may as well take the last couple or three years and really lock it up right there.
When you have a Lennon/McCartney combination, you have a John Sebastian, you have a John Phillips, Randy Newman, a Bob Dylan. You’re not talking about any lightweights, pal. And a Leslie Bricusse is the same, you know, coming into the same time era. You’re talking about giant strides forward musically, even though they are based on more simplistic ideas. They’re simplistic with involvement, simplistic with commitment.
True, there is nothing new, but the [key thing is the] way that today’s music is being presented. You take an Aretha Franklin. What a giant, what an absolute giant this girl is. Diana Ross and the Supremes, the entire Motown operation. Dylan, of course, has to be put very, very high on the list of major contributors. The Beatles. You know, somebody once said about Irving Berlin, they said, “well, outside of Irving Berlin, who’s the best songwriter?” Because it’s automatic, you know? Irving Berlin has contributed that much. Well, [now it’s] “outside of Lennon and McCartney,” because they have contributed [so much] in their short three or four years of success that they have to be separately categorized, separately positioned. They’re the triple A.
[Interviewer asks about how contemporary songwriters stand up to the likes of Rodgers and Hart.]
I think that if anybody wants to stack them up against Rodgers and Hart, that there’s a basic failing someplace. I think most people have a tendency to fondle yesterday and embrace it to the point of it being ludicrous. You know, I don’t want to make that comparison between Lennon and McCartney because I don’t think there is one to make. I think Rodgers and Hart served, and will continue to serve, a need on the part of the music appreciated by the music listener. Lennon and McCartney do just as much to serve a need on the part of the music listener and therefore the comparison ends where you say they write songs. There’s no need to compare them any more, so that there is a need to compare Woody Guthrie with Bobby Dylan. Now, the fact that there’s a bag to place Woody Guthrie and a bag to place Bobby Dylan in, that’s a shame that there has to be a bag to place them in. But if they’re right and they’re saying strong things, then that’s where it’s at for me, at least.
Welcome to the first in a series of posts that aim to be an updating of the various Bobby Darin sessionographies. There has been some great work done on this in the past by Dik de Heer and on the Praguefrank website, but neither have been updated for some time, and to my knowledge there has been no complete sessionography for Bobby yet compiled. This one of mine isn’t complete either, but it tries to pull together all the information that is “out there” as well as my own research.
So, I cannot stress enough: all credit to those who came before me in this endeavour, and everyone who has been kind enough to help with this project.
My own attempts at this is ongoing. This first part takes us from Bobby’s first session in March 1956 through to the Plain Jane session in December 1958 – his last before the That’s All LP, which was clearly the beginning of a new chapter.
The layout of the session is as follows: Each song occupies two lines. Matrix and/or master numbers are on the left of the first line, then the title of the song, and finally where the song was first released. The second line contains the composers of the song and then the record number and release date of the first issue of the song.
(updated January 16th, 2021)
The Decca Years
All of the following sessions were for the Decca label, and record numbers are for Decca releases, unless otherwise stated.
The ATCO Years,part 1: 1957-1958
All of the following sessions were for the ATCO label, and record numbers are for Decca releases, unless otherwise stated.
Quite a lot of time has been spent on this blog celebrating the best of Bobby Darin – his great achievements, his best performances, his most enduring recordings. But, today, I’m in a rather flippant (not to mention outspoken) mood, and so I thought it would be good to take a trip through the not-so-wonderful aspects of Bobby’s legacy. I shall brace myself for the furious comments as I am sure to upset someone! Who, me? Never!
In no particular order…
What’s New Pussycat (1966)
In 1966, Bobby thought it would be a great idea to record all the songs on the shortlist for the Best Original Song Oscar that year. In any other year, this might have been fun – but Bobby managed to do it when, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, it was not a very good year. This means that we were treated to the delights of The Ballad of Cat Ballou and What’s New Pussycat. If any song was not suitable for Bobby it was What’s New Pussycat. Woe, woe, woe, woe indeed!!!
Melodie (1970)
Here we have Melodie, ironically a song without a decent melody. This was the A-side of Bobby’s first single for Motown. It is an awful, awful record. To be fair, it wasn’t all Bobby’s fault. The song itself is pretty grim, and it’s in an arrangement that is in a too-high key. What perhaps is most jaw-dropping is that this fiasco took five visits to the studio to complete! The B-side, Someday We’ll Be Together is nearly as bad. The chorus wails “sing it, Bobby” in the background, and Bobby is heard to mutter “sorry” as the song fades out (no, I’m not joking!)
Be Mad, Little Girl (1963)
In the final episode of his 1973 TV series, Bobby jokes about how he had the chance to record Younger Girl some seven years earlier, but that they would have thrown his ass in jail had he sung about a younger girl (his words, not mine!). But that didn’t stop him recording Be Mad, Little Girl in 1963 – a song about an older man getting upset at the law because he couldn’t have an affair with someone underage. If you think that was a mistake, the record has a chorus singing “you chicken, you chicken” throughout.
There’s a Hole in My Bucket and other awful duets (1973)
Thankfully, There’s a Hole in My Bucket didn’t make it to record, but Bobby decided that it was a perfect duet for him and Carol Lawrence in The Bobby Darin Show in 1973. Bobby had child-star Charlene Wong as a semi-regular guest for a few weeks on the show, and it would have been fine as a cute song with her. But with Carol Lawrence, and going out at 10pm at night? Really?
Some of the other duets in the series aren’t much better – not least the nose-to-nose love duets with his female guests, in which they both sit on stools and move closer and closer as the song progresses until the lights fade when, presumably, we are meant to believe they are about to…get friendly. While Bobby clearly had a rapport with Nancy Sinatra, Bobbie Gentry, and Petula Clark, some of the others are utterly embarrassing. The worst, not to say the saddest of the “serious” duets on the show isn’t a nose-to-nose effort at all, but the medley of songs from Love Swings with Peggy Lee. It should have been magic, but both performers are less than inspired, and the wishy-washy, seemingly unrehearsed sound from the house band turns this into a nightmare before either Darin or Lee have opened their mouths.
Meanwhile, the Hole In My Bucket sequence starts at 6.53 in the following video…
The Milk Shows (1963/2014)
Am I really including an entire 2CD set, you ask? Damn right, I am. This was a radio series broadcast for five minutes a day in 1963 – which was plenty long enough considering that Bobby is hardly at his best. But that’s not the reason why it’s included here. The reason for the inclusion is the editing of the CD set itself. An attempt is made (I use the word “attempt” loosely) to link all of the songs together to make two eighty-minute discs. The problem is that it was seemingly done by a nine-year-old just learning to use Goldwave. It is done so badly that there are moments when Bobby is thanking the non-existing audience for applauding AND introducing the next song at the same time. Bobby had many talents, but nobody knew that speaking in tongues was one of them until this delight was released. A monumental cock-up.
The Bobby Darin Show DVD (1973/2014)
While we’re on the subject of monumental cock-ups, let’s discuss the DVD release of The Bobby Darin Show TV series from 1973. Now, the series wasn’t exactly the high point in Bobby’s career, but fans were still delighted when they were informed that the complete series was coming to DVD. Except it didn’t turn out to be the complete series, because the producers decided to cut multiple musical numbers due to copyright charges – and, of course, the numbers they cut were often the ones that we have no other performance of. In short, the DVD set is a complete travesty, with one episode running just 25 minutes (it should be nearer fifty) – but hey, why complain when they managed to leave in the sequences of Bobby playing chess?!
The Greatest Builder (1956)
When Bobby got his first recording contract at Decca in 1956, he spent his time trying to find out what kind of singer he was. He tried rock ‘n’ roll, faux folk, Guy Mitchell-style novelty records, and even this very hard to stomach, over-the-top semi-religious twaddle. The style of song was quite popular in the UK at this time, but it had nothing to do with the US charts of 1956. What’s more, it’s a song that requires a rather more beefy voice than Bobby had at this time, and he battles against the orchestra, trying to make us believe that he believes in the wonders of the “Greatest Builder.” Twelve years later, Bobby was back in the studio singing Sunday – not the jazz classic, but an attack on organised religion, accusing it of bloodshed. What a difference twelve years makes.
Release Me – and all the other Capitol songs with a choir (1962-1965)
There is nothing worse than having a great performance ruined by an element of the arrangement, and during Bobby’s Capitol years we come acvross this issue repeatedly due to the use of a chorus in many of the ballads on the albums. I highlight Release Me because the choir almost completely takes over here (and it’s not Bobby’s best moment, either), but the saccharine choir pops up all over the Oh Look at Me Now and You’re the Reason I’m Living LPs (and elsewhere). They are enough to drive anyone to distraction, and continually ruin some otherwise-wonderful performances.
It’s You Or No-one album (1960)
Oh yes, we’re getting towards controversy for this one. This was an album that Bobby planned, with a swinging side that virtually dispensed with the brass section – and a ballad side that dispensed with percussion. It was all very esoteric and left-field, and ATCO left it in the vault for three years, and who can blame them? The problem here is that when heard individually, the songs sound great, but in the order of the album they are very much sleep-inducing. This was one occasion when ambition got the better of Bobby and he tried something that really didn’t work.
And so we come to the final spot. But I think here that all Bobby fans will be united….
The state of Bobby’s legacy in 2020
If there is one thing worse than anything else Bobby-related, then it’s the state of his legacy as we enter a new decade.
I don’t know of a single major star who is represented worse on the internet. There is no Bobby Darin Vevo channel on YouTube, for example. Whereas we see the Sammy Davis estate (for example) posting videos of rare performances online very regularly, with Bobby we get nothing. Or, perhaps, worse than nothing – we get the occasional fuzzy-quality video in the aspect ratio of a mobile phone (I’m not joking). The official YouTube channel that does exist has ten videos and hasn’t been updated in three years. This is the age of the internet, folks! The official website hasn’t changed its design since I first looked at it in 1999, and is rarely updated – and I don’t blame the people that run the site for that – they should be given the resources to make it into what it should be. Meanwhile, the twitter account in Bobby’s name is hardly jaw-dropping.
Perhaps even worse is that there is so much unreleased material that is sitting there in the vaults or archives unheard, unseen, and, even worse, unloved. Five years ago, fans were promised a release of the studio recordings Manhattan in my Heart and Weeping Willow. We’re still waiting. There are demo discs known to exist. There are recordings made for radio that still exist. There is a live recording made at the Hollywood Bowl. There are studio and live recordings from the ATCO years that have never been released. And there is an entire concert from the Copa in 1966 that still exists in an archive. We also know that more recordings exist from The Troubadour in 1969, and also from the Desert Inn in 1971. The entire Bobby Darin Amusement Company TV series from 1972 has never been made available. The Burlesque is Alive and Living in Beautiful Downtown Burbank TV special, never shown anywhere except Australia, exists and has never been released – the rights owners are even offering to licence it on their YouTube channel. Will any of these ever be released? Never say never – we never thought we’d get an album of unreleased Motown songs, but along came one a couple of years ago. But the Darin legacy is currently in a mess and utterly uncared for. It drastically needs an overhaul, an injection of enthusiasm and, frankly, someone to come along who gives a damn. And that, dear friends, is something far worse than any of the performances I have gently poked fun at during the rest of this article…
One of the great things for a researcher/writer in the last decade or two is the appearance online of newspaper and magazine archives. These were examined at length for my book on Bobby, Directions, which was released earlier this year. However, there are always new things appearing, and new items being added to the archives. This modest post brings together a handful of items that have appeared in online archives since the publication of the book.
We start on April 16, 1956 with a piece from the Windsor Star newspaper, which documents one of Bobby’s early live performances of which there really is very little information, so any extra item such as this is a big help for filling in the gaps.
We are off to the Detroit Free Press on 20th April, 1956 for another article referencing a live appearance.
Next up are a handful of advertisement for performances during the spring and summer of 1957.
Now we have what might be a “new” picture of Bobby, featured with a real-life Queen of the Hop in 1958:
Our penultimate piece is from December 1958, where we find more info on a live performance, but this time Bobby is the supporting act…for a belly dancer!
We end this little excursion through the 1950s with an advertisement for a 1959 concert performance and a couple of newspaper articles from the same year.
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.
And here we are again for part 2! This time, we complete our Bobby Darin 50 with albums #32-50. Each of these are posthumous releases that most fans will want to try to find. The idea here is to provide 18 discs that get you all but a few officially-released songs and takes but with the least amount of duplication. So here you will find single sides not covered in the lifetime-released albums, as well as posthumously released studio masters, TV performances, demos, and live recordings.
The Original Bobby Darin (1976)
This 3LP set was a compilation of Bobby’s ATCO years, featuring mostly standards alongside a smattering of his rock ‘n’ roll hits. The reason why it is included here is that this release is the only place to find A Sunday Kind of Love, recorded for This is Darin but not used on the LP. A Sunday Kind of Love has never been reissued on another official release, or even on public domain CDs in recent years. 8/10
As Long As I’m Singin’: Rare ‘n’ Darin (RND label, 1986)
This unofficial CD was important at the time of release as it featured a significant number of songs not available elsewhere, mostly from television appearances, but also some studio recordings that had yet to make their official release. The studio recordings have been released officially in the decades since, but this is still a useful compilation, featuring the audio from a number of Bobby’s early TV appearances. A rather hard to find disc, though, and the sound varies from track to track. 6/10
Live at the Desert Inn (1987)
This wonderful disc contains Darin live in Las Vegas just prior to his 1971 heart operation. The CD is a tour de force, and a very different show to the other live discs that have appeared over the years. Here, Bobby concentrates on the songs of other singers, covering The Beatles (a stunning medley), James Taylor, Bob Dylan, and others. The version of Hi-De-Ho is one of this author’s favourite Darin performances, and it is such a shame this album wasn’t released in the early 1970s. The album was re-issued in 2005, with two extra songs included, but it was also remixed, and the overall sound of the reissue tends to have less punch than the 1987 version. Highly recommended. 10/10
Capitol Collectors Series (1989)
This is a really nice collection of the Capitol single sides, featuring a number of tracks that are more difficult to find, and a couple of alternate takes as well. Darin’s Capitol singles were a mixed bunch, but it’s great to have them all together, and the compilation flows really well, too. 1998 saw the release of The Capitol Years, a 3CD collection, with the last disc having roughly the same track listing as this 1989 compilation – but there you don’t get the alternate versions. If you can’t find songs such as Be Mad Little Girl, Things in This House, and That Funny Feeling, then this is the disc for you. 7/10.
Rare Performances (TYE label, 1990)
This is another unofficial release, this time presenting an almost-complete nightclub performance from around 1967 (probably Lake Tahoe). The sound quality is only fair, possibly from a soundboard recording, but it does provide us with a rare chance to hear Bobby sing I’ve Got You Under My Skin and Meditation, as well a different arrangement of The Shadow of Your Smile. The disc is rounded out with some songs from the 1963 Las Vegas engagement. 6/10 (due to sound issues).
From Sea to Sea (Live Gold Label, 1992)
Yet another unofficial disc, but an important one. This contains Bobby’s short set as part of a rock ‘n’ roll package tour of Australia in 1959 – the only recording of this kind that we have. The rest of the disc contains the complete Something Special album from 1967, which otherwise has not seen a CD release. Not brilliant sound, but generally very good for an issue of this type. 8/10.
Spotlight on Bobby Darin (1994)
This release from Capitol signalled the starting point of a golden era for Darin fans, as unreleased recordings started being released, and the original albums made their way slowly but surely on to CD. This disc mines Bobby’s Capitol swing albums for the most part, but also includes a handful of previously unreleased tracks. There are some nice liner notes, the sound is bright and clear, and the disc can be picked up very cheaply. My first Bobby Darin purchase back when I was young and skinny, and so I have rather a soft spot for this one. 8/10.
As Long As I’m Singing: The Bobby Darin Collection (1995)
This 4CD set from Rhino was released over twenty years ago, and yet still holds a special place in most fan’s hearts. Not only did it provide a chance to hear dozens of songs that had been out of print for years, but also gave fans some “new” music such as demo versions of Dream Lover and Simple Song of Freedom, some blues numbers from the mid-1960s, and a couple of songs from Vegas in 1963. This is a beautiful set, with a very nice booklet with notes on each song based on Jeff Bleiel’s groundbreaking research. You can’t be without this. 10/10.
This unofficial release is wonderful for any Darin fan that can find it, for it includes numerous outtakes from 1950s recordings sessions, such as Splish Splash and Queen of the Hop. This is also the only place to find the incomplete recording of Didn’t It Feel Good, which Darin gives up on with a resounding “oh, balls!” For more of the same, the Bear Family release Bobby Rocks from 2008 also includes a few alternate takes. 7/10.
A&E Biography: A [Musical] Biography (1998)
The clunky title is unfortunate, as this is an interesting compilation of previously-released and unreleased material. Some of the editing is a little odd, such as adding a 1963 introduction of Sammy Davis Jr on to the beginning of a 1973 performance of Higher and Higher. However, fans get some nice outtakes from the 1963 Vegas recordings, some highlights from the 1973 TV show, and the first release of the studio master of Love, Look Away. 7/10.
The Unreleased Capitol Sides (1999)
Bobby’s tenure at Capitol has provided fans with a great deal of new music in recent decades, and here we have a collection containing around twenty unreleased tracks. This isn’t all classic Darin, and there is a good reason why some of it remained in the vaults, but it helps us start to get a feel for some of the albums that never got finished and/or released. Some of the performances of standards here are outstanding. In 2016, Capitol renamed this as The Rare Capitol Masters, making it a download-only release, but adding an extra group of tracks to the original 25 songs, including German-language versions of two hits, and more unreleased tracks such as Get Me to the Church on Time, Jealous and Shenandoah. Sadly, they didn’t think to include I Left My Heart in San Francisco, first released on Wild, Cool & Swinging in 2000. 8/10.
Wild, Cool & Swinging (2000)
This CD, part of a multi-artist series with the same title, is a fun compilation of some of Bobby’s swing numbers from the Capitol years. Highly entertaining, this also includes previously unreleased versions of Gyp the Cat and I Left My Heart in San Francisco. 8/10
The Curtain Falls: Live at the Flamingo (2000)
Finally, the world got to hear this live album recorded in 1963 but, strangely, not released at the time. This is an improvement on Darin at the Copa, with Bobby keeping his banter quota down in comparison to that release. The hits medley is a pitiful effort that even Darin himself must have known was a travesty, but the real gems here are the folk songs towards the end of the disc. Here is an audience, used to glamour and spectacle in Vegas, willingly joining in with Bobby during Mary, Don’t You Weep, and suddenly the showroom becomes a campfire singalong. It’s an oddly moving moment, and a demonstration of just how Darin could hold the audience in the palm of his hand. 8/10.
Aces Back to Back (2004)
This is a thoroughly weird release, pulling together recordings from all kinds of sources, and giving virtually no information on them in the liner notes. From that respect, this is a shambles (and, sadly, not the last such shambles). Musically, however, there is some interesting material here, including a group of songs from the 1973 TV series, and a TV performance of Lazy River which is outstanding. Also featured are three songs from Bobby’s Milk Shows, a five-minute daily radio series from 1963. All the Way is worth the price of admission by itself. The disc comes with a bonus DVD, featuring eight songs from the 1973 TV series and some documentary footage. 7/10 for the music, but I’ll be kind and not give a rating for the way the set is put together.
Songs from Big Sur (2004)
Theoretically, this is a collection of songs recorded during Darin’s time living in a trailer in Big Sur, when was recording for his own record label. In reality, this also includes songs from the Atlantic years which have no place here. One of those songs, My Baby Needs Me, was only previously available on a CD reissue of If I Were a Carpenter/Inside Out. Key with this release, however, is that two “new” studio recordings are featured – City Life and Route 58, both of which are superb. And we also get four recordings from Bobby’s 1969 season at The Troubadour (but where is the rest of them??). It’s also worth noting that the studio version of Distractions on this disc is not the same take as on the Commitment LP. 8/10.
47. The Milk Shows (2014)
As mentioned earlier, The Milk Shows were a five-minute radio series that Bobby had during 1963 and 1964. Virtually every song recorded for it was done with a small combo as instrumentation, and each song lasted just a minute or so. This double album contains 96 tracks. Because of how it is compiled (basically as a one-hour long medley on each disc), this is an exhausting experience, although we do get to hear Bobby sing songs he hadn’t recorded elsewhere. Sadly, Bobby isn’t always in good voice, sounding very tired in places, and also the editing is appalling. There are moments when crossfades result in Bobby singing AND talking simultaneously. The package looks great, but from an audio point of view, it is a complete disaster, and a 12-year-old using Goldwave could probably have done a better job. In one sense, this is essential because they are “new” recordings of songs not cut elsewhere, but on the other hand, you’ll rarely listen to it. There was a much better way to present this material. 4/10.
Another Song On My Mind: The Motown Years (2016)
In 1974, Motown released a tribute album to Bobby Darin, featuring eight unreleased tracks, an extended version of a single side, and Sail Away from the 1972 Motown album. That album isn’t listed under the 1974 date because all tracks are included on this release. Another Song on My Mind pulls together all of the 1972 album, and all of the 1974 album. It also includes all remixes and alternate versions that have previously been released (when the 1974 album was first released on CD, it included overdubs etc not on the vinyl). Also, here are the Motown single sides that have previously been hard to find. Real Gone Music have done a superb job here – this music could not be presented any better. BUT, that doesn’t mean that the music itself is anything like Darin’s best. The arrangements are overblown, the song choices often bland, and the singing sometimes strained. And yet every fan will want and need this material in their collection. This is Bobby’s final chapter, after all, and there is no doubt, that this release is the way to own it. 6/10 for the music. 9/10 for the presentation.
Bobby Darin: The 1956-1962 Singles (Jackpot label, 2017)
Most music fans will tell you the public domain laws in Europe are a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it results in endless cheap copies of music available on Amazon. On the other, it means that “forgotten” music can be made available once again. Here Darin benefits from the latter. There are a number of collections of Darin’s singles on public domain discs, but I believe this is the best and most complete. It includes various hard to find gems such as all the Decca sides, the Tanfastic promo record, That’s How It Went All Right (from Pepe), Tall Story and oddities like Walk Bach to Me. Many fans will find these hard to find outside of PD releases, and so this effort is recommended. 64 tracks in total. 8/10.
Go Ahead and Back Up: The Lost Motown Masters (2018)
This release has just been announced and, even without hearing it, we know this is going to be one of the most exciting Bobby Darin releases in recent years. It includes 22 unreleased studio recordings, and two alternate versions of previously released material. Rating to follow in July!!!
The following is adapted from the book “Bobby Darin: Directions. A Listener’s Guide,” available from all Amazon sites in paperback and Kindle format.
Some singers find their voice the very first time they set foot inside a recording studio, and record some of their greatest work during their early years. Elvis Presley is probably the best example of this, recording the classic That’s All Right at his very first professional recording session. This was not the case for Bobby Darin, however. In fact, it was over two years after he entered a studio before he recorded his breakthrough single, Splish Splash. Prior to that, Bobby seemed to be constantly in search of his own sound, with many of his early records adopting the styles and mannerisms of other singers of the period. He needed something to make him stand out from the rest of the would-be pop stars trying to carve themselves a career in the mid-1950s, and that something was his own identity. Nowhere is this more noticeable than during the eight sides he recorded during his short tenure with Decca.
Probably March 6, 1956: Studio Session
Bobby Darin’s first session under his own name was in early March 1956, in New York. He was nineteen years old at the time. Bobby and his songwriting partner Don Kirshner, a fellow ex-student from Bobby’s high school, had already had some limited success by this point, having their songs recorded by the likes of LaVern Baker, Bobby Short, and, most notably, Connie Francis. The recording of that song by Francis, My First Real Love, in February 1956 had seen Bobby take part in the actual session, although there seems to be some confusion as to whether it was as drummer or as one of the backing vocalists. Two singles from the March 6 date were released: Rock Island Line/Timber and Silly Willy/Blue Eyed Mermaid. A month later, Cash Box featured a picture of Bobby from the recording date, together with A&R director Milt Gabler and musical director Jack Pleis.[1] Theoretically, Pleis should have been a good match for Bobby, but sadly he didn’t get the chance to draw on his jazz background due to the nature of the songs chosen.
Bobby’s arrangement of Rock Island Line seems somewhat inspired by the types of recordings that Johnny Cash was making at the time at Sun Records (Cash would record his own version of the song in 1957). The structure and instrumentation of Darin’s version is close to that used in Lonnie Donegan’s version, which hit the US charts just a couple of weeks after Bobby recorded his, but had been a hit in the UK earlier in the year. The recording is hardly essential Darin, and today is really just of historical importance. He sounds inexperienced and unconvincing and, perhaps more importantly, the performance sounds somehow inauthentic. It is as if he is trying to be something he isn’t, which is, in many ways, exactly what was happening. This wasn’t Darin’s natural milieu, and this is a fatal error within folk music, a genre that is built around authenticity. Despite this, there are no signs of nerves from the young teenager whose vocal is somewhat exposed, being backed by just an acoustic guitar and drums.
The B-side of this first single finds Darin turning from a cross between folk and country to a full-on Frankie Laine impression. Timberis a faux-work song written by Bobby with Don Kirshner and “George M. Shaw.” Shaw was actually the pseudonym of George Scheck, the manager of Connie Francis who had helped Bobby and Don get some of their songs recorded, and had got Bobby his recording contract at Decca and was now managing him. Timberwas firmly in the Laine mould and finds him accompanied by backing vocals and percussion-heavy instrumentation. It is a better performance than Rock Island Line, and the arrangement cleverly uses a series of fake-endings before the actual conclusion of the song. It sees Bobby for the first time approaching the type of material that would be the basis of his masterful Earthy! LP six years later, and the song wouldn’t have been out of place on that record had he chosen to re-record it.
Just over a week after the session, this first single was released and Billboard magazine included a short review of the two sides. Bobby would no doubt have been extremely happy when he read that the “new artist shows solid promise,” and that his performance of Timber had “spirit and song savvy in evidence.”[2] Interestingly, Billboard compared the song to Ghost Riders in the Sky, and the review in Variety also picked up on the fact that Darin had yet to find his own sound, writing that his version of Rock Island Line“is compelling, even if Darin sounds as if he’s been listening to Harry Belafonte a shade too much for his own good.”[3]Cash Box was probably the most enthusiastic, saying that Rock Island Line was “an exciting folk type song that looks like an all out hit, [and] is treated to a colourful reading by Bobby Darin.”[4]Timber was described as “another beaty song (sic) with an exciting folk flavor [that] is dramatically executed here by the talented youngster. Lad has a fascinating sound and comes over zestfully.”[5] Darin was also getting noticed outside of the usual trade magazines, with one writer in a local newspaper stating that “Decca is proud as punch of two new additions: vocalist Roberta Sherwood and teenager Bobby Darin. Both look like hot stuff.”[6]
Also recorded at the same session was a song that saw Bobby turning his attention to the novelty rock ‘n’ roll material with which he would eventually find stardom. Silly Willy was no Splish Splash, however. Much of the problem with the song is the awkward transitions between the two different tempos and rhythms that the song employs. It is a shame, for there is much to enjoy in Darin’s performance, but the various elements simply do not gel together in the way that they should.
Silly Willy is interesting, however, in that it provides us with our first audible clue that Bobby wanted to be more than just a pop singer. While the number is credited to the same writing team as Timber, it has its roots in a 1920s risqué jazz number about a drug-addicted chimney sweeper called Willie the Weeper which, in turn, provided the inspiration for Minnie the Moocher, which Darin would record a few years later. The lyrics of the first verse of Silly Willy and Willie the Weeper are so similar that it’s clear that Bobby knew the more obscure song and was drawing from that rather than the better known Minnie the Moocher. The first verse of Willie the Weeper reads:
Have you heard the story, folks, of Willie the Weeper? / Willie’s occupation was a chimney sweeper / He had a dreamin’ habit, he had it kind of bad /Listen, let me tell you ’bout the dream he had.
Silly Willybarely changes the lyrics at all:
Listen to the story about Willy the Weeper / Willy the Weeper was a long time sleeper / He went to sleep one night and dreamed so bad / Now let me tell you about the dream that little Willy had.
What is remarkable here is not the fact that Bobby Darin “borrowed” lyrics from an older song (this was not a rare occurrence in pop music at the time), but that he knew the lyrics to Willie the Weeper at all. Most of the well-known recordings, such as those by Louis Armstrong and George Lewis, were instrumentals – possibly with good reason due to the song’s repeated references to “dope” and taking “pills” – and so one has to wonder where Bobby heard the lyrics in the first place. If nothing else, it shows just how wide his knowledge of popular music was even at the tender age of nineteen.
The B-side of Silly Willy was Blue Eyed Mermaid. If Timber saw the singer performing in the Frankie Laine style, then this number sees a move towards Guy Mitchell in a song that has a kind of fake sea shanty feel. A line or two of the verses steal the melody of Ghost Riders in the Sky, although this time this was no fault of Bobby himself as he was not the writer of the song. As with its predecessor, the single failed to make the charts. Billboard wrote of Silly Willy that the “young singer comes up with a fast and furious bit of nonsense about Silly Willy and his dream…Excitement could kick off juke spins.”[7] It was not unnoticed that Blue Eyed Mermaid stole part of its melody from Ghost Riders in the Sky, but it was still said that “the side is right in the groove with current favour and will bear watching.”[8]
Another song, Rock Pile, written by Darin in collaboration with Kirshner and Shaw/Scheck, is also listed as having been recorded at these sessions. It has never been released, and it is unclear whether the song was merely attempted and then aborted or if a master take was completed.
*
On March 10, 1956, Bobby made his national TV debut on Stage Show, a programme hosted by bandleaders Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey which had helped to catapult Elvis Presley to fame during his four appearances on the show.[9] Darin sang Rock Island Line, and it didn’t go well. Bobby told the story in 1972 on an episode of The David Frost Show:
“What happened was that I had forgotten all the lyrics. I covered Lonnie Donegan’s record of Rock Island Line. I was with Decca at the time. They said, “We have a record here and it’s going to be a smash, we’ll get a cover record.” In those days, you did that. […] I learned it on a Monday, recorded it on a Tuesday evening, and then did The Jackie Gleason Show on a Saturday evening.[10] I really wasn’t sure of the lyrics, and they weren’t about to serve my myopic condition and so therefore they couldn’t give me cue cards. So I devised my own which was on the palm of my hand. […] At the end of the show everyone knew what I was doing, of course, except my sweet Mama who said, “You were wonderful, I never saw anyone use his hands like that.”
After the Stage Show appearance, Bobby didn’t appear on television again for over a year. He did, however start making live appearances to promote his recordings. While there is relatively little known about his concert work in 1956, he was involved in rock ‘n’ roll revues such as the one as the University of Detroit on April 15, where he appeared alongside The Four Aces and The Four Coins, among others. In May 1956, he appeared at The Purple Onion, Guilford, Indiana, as the headliner, giving three shows nightly for a week. On May 8, three days after finishing at the Purple Onion, he was performing at the annual concert of the Music Operators of America (MOA) convention – a four hour which also featured Nat ‘King’ Cole, Teresa Brewer, Mahalia Jackson and Pat Boone.
July 11, 1956: Studio Session
When Bobby Darin went back into the studio in July 1956, he didn’t try to improve on the styles of singing, or build upon what he had attempted, at his previous session but, instead, tried something completely different.
The first release from this session coupled The Greatest Builderwith Hear Them Bells. Both songs are semi-religious efforts, and neither are particularly good or particularly original compositions. The Greatest Builder is a ballad sung with such fake sincerity that it is almost nauseating. The arrangement is sedate and uses full orchestra and chorus, and has little in common with what most teenagers would have been buying or listening to at the time. Oddly, the arrangement and the material are more in line with what some of the British stars were scoring hits with in the UK charts at the time. For example, Malcolm Vaughan had a number 3 hit in the UK with St Theresa of the Roses a couple of months after the release of The Greatest Builder, and there is not a vast chasm between the styles of the two songs. The difference, though, is that Vaughan seemed comfortable singing these types of rather square ballads and managed to do so with integrity and sincerity, but Bobby manages neither.
Hear Them Bellsis better, and finds Bobby singing in a style and arrangement which, as with Blue Eyed Mermaid, is most associated with Guy Mitchell. This song is again accompanied by an orchestra and chorus, and has a sound that is close to that used in Mitchell’s hits My Truly Truly Fairand Cloud Lucky Seven, despite the semi-gospel nature of the lyrics. The lyrics are trite, but Bobby manages to give a better performance here, giving a bouncy, lively vocal over a fun, if dated, arrangement.
The main problem with these songs is that the listener doesn’t believe that Darin believes what he’s singing about, or that this is the style of music that he wants to be singing. Perhaps this is partly to do with the issue of hindsight – after all, in 1968 Bobby released a song, Sunday, which attacks organised religion and what he views as its hypocrisy, and here we have songs telling us about the wonders of The Greatest Builder and going to church on a Sunday. Billboardwere hardly ecstatic about the single either (and they were usually very easily pleased), stating that The Greatest Builder was “not great material of its type” and that Hear Them Bells wasn’t “hefty on message, but can help carry the better side.”[11]Variety were more impressed, saying that Bobby gave an “all-out reading” of the ballad and that Hear Them Bells is “an uptempo religioso in a get-happy tempo and Darin also belts this one neatly.”[12] Oddly, at the height of Bobby Darin’s fame at the end of 1959, Decca decided to re-release this single. As Billboard pointed out at the time, the single “bears little resemblance to the present Darin vocal sound. It’s a happy sound but fans will find little that’s familiar.”[13]Cash Box referred to Bobby as a “talented songster,” and said of The Greatest Builder that “Bobby Darin hands in a potent deck as he introduces a dramatic inspirational ballad…Could catch on.” It didn’t.[14]
Dealer In Dreams, the A-side of the fourth and final Decca single, is a Darin-Kirshner song which would have worked quite well for Elvis Presley, being quite similar in style and structure to Don’t Leave Me Now, which Presley would record twice during 1957 and include in Jailhouse Rock(Richard Thorpe, 1957). Bobby’s recording misses the mark, however, because it is over-arranged; Darin is singing a rock ‘n’ roll ballad with a full orchestral arrangement. With a less square arrangement and a more nuanced vocal, this could have worked well. Still, the song itself is solid and could have been a hit in the right hands.
Help Me was written by Cy Coben, co-writer of The Greatest Builder, and again finds Bobby in a strange, alien environment more in line with the British charts than the American ones. This type of big ballad never became Bobby’s forte, as he didn’t have the right voice for it, and here he is once again bogged down with a by-the-book orchestral arrangement.
In their review of the single, Billboard picked up again on the idea that Bobby Darin hadn’t yet worked out who he was within the recording studio. Whereas Variety had compared him to Harry Belafonte on his first single, Billboardsuggested that Dealer in Dreams was “reminiscent of Johnnie Ray” before stating that it “deserves exposure.” Of Help Me, they wrote that the recording was “a big, fancy piping of a pleading ballad of genuine appeal.”[15] The record-buying public didn’t agree, and neither did most of the critics, with this pairing get the least attention of the four Decca singles.
*
In the end, Darin’s short tenure at Decca must have been as frustrating for Darin as it was for listeners. He had recorded eight sides, none of which had attracted much attention from record buyers, and was seemingly no closer to finding his own voice than when he first stepped into the Decca recording studios a few months earlier. It would be nearly a year before he returned to the recording studio, although he continued performing live in supper clubs and as part of revues aimed at teenagers, such as Bill O’Brien’s Teen Time. When he did return to the studio, it would be with a much more confident sound and with Bobby positioning himself firmly as a rock ‘n’ roll singer. For now.
This is Bobby Darin 