Final Bar, written by Michael Cuscuna, appeared in Downbeat Magazine December
,1973.
At this writing on December 20, 1973, Bobby Darin has been dead for less than 12 hours. Ironically, the night before, I was in an upper East Side bar in New York with some music business friends. Inspired by Darin's version of "Mack the Knife" playing on the juke box, I began raving about the man's capabilities. Whenever I talked about Darin's singing, I ran into cynics of his talent. That's understandable; there are always those
who maintain that a pop artist with financial success can never hold any artistic merit.
The fact remains that Bobby Darin was an unusually talented singer and a consistent songwriter. In 1958, the 20-year-old Bronx singer had moderate success with the old folk tune "Rock Island Line" on Decca. The next year he joined Atlantic on its new subsidiary Atco. One year and three records later Darin became a teenage star with the novelty ditty "Splish Splash." Within that year, four more Darin records
hit the charts.
1959 saw the first of many changes in musical direction during Darin's career. He recorded an album of standards entitle That's All (with arrangements by Richard Wess) which gave birth to a single of Kurt Weill's "Mack the Knife" from The Threepenny Opera. It sold two million records, showed Darin to be a maturing and distinctive singer, and won him an adult audience without the loss of his teenage following. A string of successful records followed, until Bobby Darin left Atco Records in 1962. Each record was professionally and tastefully arranged, using top jazz studio musicians and continually illustrating Darin's talent as a sensitive and interpretive singer, who also wrote a healthy portion of his
hits.
The next five years found Darin playing night clubs, landing some fine dramatic roles in film and television and finding some success on Capitol Records, working mainly in a country idiom. In 1966, he rejoined Atlantic and found himself back on the charts with a version of "Mame."
Then another drastic change in direction to what might be called the folk rock idiom. The result was one of his biggest records, Tim Hardin's "If I Were a Carpenter." Darin later continued in this vein on his own label and finally joined Motown in 1971.
Whatever style Darin chose to pursue, he found success and added the distinctive, creative stamp of his own artistry. He phrased beautifully, singing lyrics with the freedom, understanding and sincerity of the best jazz singers.
Although his composing talents were never fully appreciated by the music community, Tim Hardin recorded Darin's "Sing a Simple Song of Freedom," and the late Otis Spann cut a beautiful version of "Brand New House."
Today Bobby Darin died in Los Angeles during open heart surgery at the age of 37, and his artistry runs through my brain louder than ever. I never knew the whole man, but I will miss that portion of him that I did know: his music.
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