Not For Me! The Worst of Bobby Darin??

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…

Bobby Darin: The Milk Shows

March 1963 saw the announcement that Bobby would “be featured in a Monday through Friday program series on Radio Station WIBA.  The program titled Bobby Darin will be heard at 3.33 p.m. and will feature a talk (sic) and music by this young star, designed to appeal to both adults and teenagers – not rock and roll music.  The Bobby Darin show will be sponsored by the American Dairy Association.”[1]

These five-minute radio programmes became known as The Milk Shows.  Darin would record the shows at Capitol studios, and they would then be overdubbed with fake (very fake) applause, thus giving the impression that the songs were being performed live – although how many listeners were fooled is debatable.   The tapes of these shows were found back in 2002, with a trio of songs being released on the Aces Back to Back release in 2004.  After this, there was an inexplicable delay of another ten years before the release of a double CD set containing more than ninety tracks.

If you’re wondering how ninety tracks fit on a mere double CD set, then it’s worth stating that no songs featured in the series was recorded in full (with one exception).  Each song was a bite-size version lasting, in most cases, sixty to ninety seconds.  This in itself makes the release a unique listening experience, but it is also worth remembering that Darin was accompanied by just a jazz quartet featuring Richard Behrke, Ronnie Zito, Milt Norman and Billy Krist – no matter what the song.

The material that Darin chose to record for The Milk Shows cover the whole gamut of his repertoire, from renditions of rock ‘n’ roll hits Splish Splash and Multiplication to a wide variety of standards and show tunes.  Some of the songs had been recorded by Bobby previously for record release, and those numbers often get given a different feel here thanks to the stripped back instrumentation.  Other tracks are ones that Bobby never did record in a studio, and so these versions are the only ones we have.

The recording dates for these shows are unclear.  The news article quoted earlier is from the beginning of March 1963, suggesting that the recordings probably began around the same time.  Whether all tracks were recorded at once or over a longer period is not known, although it’s worth noting that, when Darin draws upon songs he had already recorded, all of them date from studio sessions before March 1963, thus suggesting that The Milk Shows were recorded over a short space of time during that spring and/or summer.  For example, while You’re the Reason I’m Living (and songs from that album) are included here, Eighteen Yellow Roses and songs from that album are not.  There are a couple of exceptions.  Days of Wine and Roses would be recorded in 1964 for the Hello Dolly to Goodbye Charlie album (in a very different arrangement), and The Sheik of Araby was recorded in late 1965, but remains unissued.  However, Darin dates The Milk Show version of Days of Wine and Roses by referring to it as “this year’s” Academy Award-winning song, thus dating the performance to 1963, but sometime after the ceremony that took place on April 8.

While these recordings are to be welcomed, it should be mentioned that Darin is not always in the best of voice, and certainly doesn’t always give a song the care and attention he would for a commercial recording.  The very first song on the double CD is a case in point.  Too Close for Comfort, from the musical Mr Wonderful, hardly gets the album off to an auspicious start, with Bobby’s voice sounding croaky and he hits a number of bum notes along the way.  Things improve somewhat for Pennies from Heaven, which gets a nice run-through, but the big finish doesn’t quite come off in the way it normally would on a Darin recording.  Part of this is due to the low-key performances, but there is also a sense here that some of the songs simply weren’t rehearsed enough.  Around the World is an example of this.  It gets an upbeat, jazzy rendition but there are points when Bobby lags behind the beat and others where he seemingly makes the melody up as he goes along.

Elsewhere, it seems to be simply a worn-out voice that is the problem.  Climb Every Mountain starts off well, and has a better arrangement than the outing it would receive ten years later on The Bobby Darin Show TV series, but the climax of the song shows that Darin’s voice is shot to pieces.  Perhaps this was one number that should have remained in the vault.  Climb Every Mountain isn’t the only song here that wouldn’t be given a studio recording but would appear years later.  Sixteen Tons was given a brilliant (and lengthy) reworking during an appearance on The Jerry Lewis Show in 1968 and would emerge again on The Bobby Darin Show (although not included on the DVD of that series).

Unsurprisingly, some of the most interesting songs here are the ones that Bobby didn’t record or perform elsewhere.  The choice of material is also intriguing.  A number of tracks are songs associated with Bing Crosby, for example, including I’m an Old Cowhand (during which Bobby can’t resist throwing in some impressions), Sweet and Lovely and Too-Ra-Loo-Ra Loo-Ral which gets crooned nicely in Darin’s softest voice.  Less surprising perhaps are the series of tracks associated with Al Jolson, including April Showers, Rock-a-Bye Your Baby, and Let Me Sing and I’m Happy.  April Showers is particularly good, and reminds us just how good a ballad singer he was during this period, particularly when not bogged down by the choir that appears to pop up at every opportunity when the tempo falls below a certain number of beats per minute on the Oh! Look at Me Now and You’re the Reason I’m Living albums.

Some of Bobby’s biggest hits get quite a makeover in this new setting.  Lazy River, for example, is taken at an ultra-slow pace and is given a bluesy vocal that has little of the show-stopping nature of the studio recording. Splish Splash, on the other hand, seems a little bizarre when backed by a jazz quartet, although Dream Lover doesn’t suffer in the same way – in fact it works better here than with the big band on the Darin at the Copa album.  You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby is also heard in a very different arrangement to the hit twist version.  This swing version is just as credible, and makes one wish that Darin had recorded it again in this style at a later date.   Interestingly, Mack the Knife isn’t sung here, but is just used as an instrumental theme tune for the radio show.

It is often the ballads that get given most care and attention by Darin in this set of performances.  For example, Autumn Leaves is given a Latin rhythm and is beautifully sung, and a full studio recording of this lovely song would have been very nice indeed.  Also given a Latin feel and a similar vocal is the song which is, arguably, the greatest written by Irving Berlin, How Deep is the Ocean, as well as Fools Rush In.  The use of these Latin rhythms is interesting as Darin rarely employed them elsewhere, although, going by these brief outings, an album in the bossa nova style would not have been a bad move.  Elsewhere, I’ll Be Seeing You is given a gentle swing rhythm, but Darin sings it as a ballad, mostly singing it in his subdued voice which is most effective.    Also of note is a sincere rendition of La Vie en Rose.  Perhaps the most bizarre ballad performance finds Bobby reciting the lyrics of Days of Wine and Roses while the tune is played in the background.

A number of songs from the mammoth January 1963 sessions appear here.  Hello Young Lovers and This Nearly Was Mine are given renditions similar to their studio counterparts, whereas the arrangements of I Ain’t Got Nobody, Please Help Me I’m Falling and Be Honest With Me are simplified somewhat and benefit from the lack of backing vocals – although Be Honest With Me still sees Darin adding the same mannerisms to his voice as he does on the You’re the Reason I’m Living LP version.  What Kind of Fool am I is given a lightly swinging version here that arguably is more effective than the more traditional performance recorded a few months earlier.  What is particularly interesting is how Bobby approaches the end of the song in a completely different way.  There is no big finish here – instead, he sings the final lines is his softest voice, almost a falsetto, and it is just as effective as the traditional ending.  During the Broadway album sessions, Darin had recorded Tall Hope from the musical Wildcat.  Here he turns his attention to the most famous song from that show, Hey Look Me Over.  The normal march rhythm of the song is cast to one side in favour of a straight-ahead jazz approach, but it all seems a little half-hearted, and isn’t helped by a rather inept and unenthusiastic attempt at scat singing.

Alongside the well-established standards are some of the novelty songs that Darin appears to have had a genuine affection for given that the album of duets with Johnny Mercer is filled with such material.  Here we have Manana, co-written by, and a hit for, Peggy Lee, for whom Bobby often expressed his admiration.  Darin puts in a great performance here, with his voice sounding stronger that on many of the other tracks.  While Manana is fun, a number like Mairzy Dotes and Dozy Doats is an example of a novelty song that is simply tedious.  ‘A’ You’re Adorable gets a nice run-through, as does Row, Row, Row, which includes the verse which is not featured on the recording with Johnny Mercer on the Two of a Kind album.

Ironically, the best song from The Milk Show recordings is All the Way, released on Aces Back to Back but, oddly, not included on The Milk Shows set.  Quite why this lovely performance wasn’t included the second time around is a mystery, not least because it’s the only  full-length performance in the ninety or so songs.  Here, Darin takes a Sinatra signature song, gives it a gentle jazz combo backing and a subdued, beautiful performance that certainly deserved to be the climax of the double CD set.  Strangely, the other two songs from the shows released on the Aces Back to Back CD were reissued on The Milk Shows release.

The double CD release is, of course, wonderful to have, but it can also be rather frustrating.  Much of this is to do with technical issues such as the fake applause and, even worse, Bobby trying to interact with the fake applause.  It all becomes rather distracting, especially when each song only runs for a minute or so.  That said, presumably the applause was already on the tapes when they were found and so couldn’t be removed.  Less forgivable is where songs are joined together in such a way that Bobby is talking over his own singing,  perhaps saying “thank you” to the audience that isn’t there when he’s already started on the next number.  The same happens in reverse, where he’s introducing the next song while still finishing the previous one.  While one can understand why there was a desire to present each CD as one uninterrupted piece, there also seems little reason why songs couldn’t have been re-ordered so that these overlaps didn’t take place.  If that wasn’t possible, then a simple fade out and fade in would have worked better than the jarring mix of two songs together that occasionally happens.  Despite this, it should be reiterated that the sound quality of these tapes that were lost for more than thirty years is very good indeed.

Technical issues aside, the run of more than fifty songs in a space of just over an hour is almost exhausting, and with each song having the same instrumentation in its backing, they tend to run in together as if they were one long medley and thus suffer from becoming aural wallpaper.  Likewise, while Bobby is on very good form in places and gives some fine, nuanced performance, there are also moments where Darin the perfectionist is, seemingly, on holiday.  Back in 1960 in an article in Downbeat magazine, Gene Lees had commented on problems with Darin’s intonation in his early albums of standards.[2]  During The Milk Shows recordings this issue rises again, whether due to a tired voice or the sheer speed required to get everything down on tape.  However, we also need to remember that these were, in all likelihood, intended for a one-off broadcast not to be repeated – and certainly not to be listened to over and over again some forty years later.

What The Milk Shows undoubtedly show us is that Darin should have recorded with a jazz combo more than he did.  The one album that resulted from such a set-up, Winners, is Bobby at his very best, and one can imagine that, with a sensible amount of studio time, a number of the songs performed here could have been recorded in full performances for a follow-up album that would have been just as good.  That, sadly, didn’t happen, and so The Milk Shows CD release is the nearest we have, and for that we should be thankful.

[1] “Bobby Darin Show,” Capital Times, March 2, 1963, 3.

[2] Lees, “Bobby Darin and the Turn from Junk Music,” 16.