Roman Candle: The Life Of Bobby Darin

The Big Time

It was probably the most surprising switch that any popular singer on the rise ever made -- a total departure from what was expected of him. Just as he was beginning to achieve great success in rock and roll, Bobby was ready to take his chances on eroding his image with his public to keep growing as an artist. At 22, he was already ready to move on. Watching his studio rehearsals, one could immediately catch the moment that Bobby was getting happy with the music, whether it was a new song he was writing or an arrangement he was trying out. The smile spread all over his face, his body bounced, and he could not keep still. Bobby was an artist who needed to be happy when he sang, to be inspired. Staying in one place stifled inspiration; changing genres, experimenting, jumping into the water, taking chances: this restless quest defined him as a singer.

"Bobby made a terrific transition from a kid rocker into a suave nightclub performer who could give Sammy Davis or Frank Sinatra a hard time," Jerry Wexler states. "He was just great on the floor, his composure, his moves. I thought his moving away from rock almost right away to the standards was very intelligent. The progression from rock and roll to either jazz or sophisticated nightclub ballads and crafted blues is to me a mark of maturation."

In reality, Bobby would become the last of an era of nightclub performers. He was entering a world in which nightclubs were the glittering center of show business with a circuit stretching across the country from the Copacabana and the Latin Quarter in New York to Bill Miller's Riviera in New Jersey, Skinny D'Amato's 500 Club in Atlantic City, Mister Kelly's and Chez Paree in Chicago, the Latin Casino in Philadelphia, the Town Casino in Buffalo, Blinstrub's and the Latin Quarter in Boston, the Three Rivers Inn in Syracuse, and Ben Maksik's Town and Country in Brooklyn. It was still the era of Walter Winchell, Damon Runyon, Leonard Lyons, Sidney Skolsky, Earl Wilson, Meyer Berger, Jack Lait, and Lee Mortimer. But the composers of many of the most popular standards were themselves beginning to pass away, and the New York they once celebrated was now heading into decline. Oscar Hammerstein II died in 1960, Cole Porter in 1964. The lights were going out on old Broadway.

The songs sung in the nightclubs were culled from the great American popular music catalog: Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Schwartz and Dietz, Sammy Cahn, and Jerome Kern. In truth, Bobby had always loved those songs, and in them he found his own voice. He would bring to them a richness, depth, and personal stamp that had eluded him in many of his rock records. Bobby always needed to move beyond and resist his chameleonlike ability to copy the sounds of other artists in his hurry to reach the top instantly. He sounds more like Presley than Presley on "Mighty Mighty Man"; and "Baby Face," despite its vigor, sounds like a reincarnation of Little Richard's arrangement. When he was emotionally moved, he forgot the treadmill and was swept up into the meaning and beauty of the music. "Bobby grew up listening to Charlie Maffia's record collection," Steve Blauner says, "Crosby, Jolson, Sinatra. So then he's doing 'Splish Splash.' Well, that's because it's the only way he can get his foot in the door. But the minute he had the strength to call his own shot, what did he do? The That's All album."

When Bobby did That's All, many assumed he would try a Sinatra album. There was no question that Bobby revered Sinatra; what singer did not? But for Bobby, Sinatra was the gold standard, and some observers thought Bobby was obsessed with him. Yet the album is largely devoid of a Sinatra feel or even of songs Sinatra had chosen to sing. (He would record "Mack the Knife" long after Bobby died, and in his record he would pay homage to Bobby's version.) "When Bobby made the switch-over from rock to standards," Hesh Wasser says, "it really set him apart. It separated him from all the Sinatra clones. Because they could do only one thing, and Bobby could do every genre. Even Sinatra himself could never have done what Bobby did."

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