Bobby Darin: Live! At The Desert Inn

Although Bobby Darin's artistic reach may have occasionally exceeded his grasp, this live CD -- his last, and not remastered since way back in 1986 -- offers a good opportunity for fans to hear him try a broader range of styles than on any other.

Bobby Darin was a man who tried on more musical hats than arguably anyone in his generation, but for someone who was famed for being the epitome of the performing professional, there's been precious little live recordings of the singer. In fact, only one in-concert Bobby CD was ever released during his lifetime: 1960's famous Darin At The Copa. For any other artist, one live document may have been enough, but Bobby's tastes morphed so completely -- and during such a notorious time of upheaval -- that several aural snapshots were needed. The Copa album caught Darin moving into loungehood, while 2000's The Curtain Falls: Live at the Flamingo found him perfectly balancing his his rock years and Vegas schmaltz in a 1963 concert, but it's Live! At The Desert Inn alone that captures him in all his phases at once, straining for a very sincere relevancy to what was going on around him, attempting to balance that with all his old styles, and performing under the ever-looming cloud of his own early mortality. When Kevin Spacey, in Beyond The Sea, opens his climactic finale with "Simple Song of Freedom," this is the gig his trying to evoke.

That song is a finale of sorts here, too, but you can also find James Taylor's "Fire And Rain," a Beatles medley, an oldies medley of sorts, and covers by everyone from Dylan to Jackie Wilson. The Vegas musical backdrop lends an air of cheese to these renditions, but Darin's sincerity, as always, manages to survive. An essential document for fans.