Bobby Darin
Beyond the Sea...Beyond the Music

About Face

As far as most of the world knew, anyone who was interested anyway, Darin was a rocker and just getting started in conquering the rock 'n' roll universe.  But Darin, now age 22, had other things on his mind. It would seem that Blauner, as well as Wasser (both immersed in the world of pop crooners and variety shows) were indeed having an influence on the thinking and musical leaning of this newly-elevated rock 'n' roller. It was Wasser who reportedly introduced Darin to a young arranger named Richard Wess, whose forte was the big band sound of an earlier era. Darin was inclined to go that way with him.

Ertegun was nervous at first about Darin's impulse to turn away so quickly from the rock 'n' roll approach that had put him on the map. But he saw that he couldn't dissuade his young star, so then wisely threw his support behind whatever it was he intended to do. Darin referred to That's All, recorded with a full orchestra in December 1958 in New York, as "my first album," even though Atco had released the album Bobby Darin in the summer of 1958. But that record was really little more than a collection of a few of his earlier failed singles and obscure Kirshner collaborations used as filler, basically an excuse to rehash "Splish Splash" on an LP.

That's All, for all intents and purposes, was Darin's first album, and he had a big hand in creating it. It turned out to be probably the most important album Darin ever made, and in some ways a classic. And the sessions did include the tune he is most widely known for. Yes, a mere eight months later, in the same calendar year of 1958, the same artist who had cut "Splish Splash" and "Queen of the Hop" laid down the live-in-the studio performance of "Mack The Knife" that would immortalize him in pop music history. One of the other 11 tracks that wound up on the album was a lovely ballad called "Beyond the Sea (La Mer)," a French pop song to which Darin had located some English lyrics. Once again his instincts were impeccable. Ertegun, his brother Nesuhi, and Wexler got the whole shebang wrapped up and in the can before Christmas.

They must have been saying to one another, "Okay, Bobby. Now that you've gotten that out of your system, let's get busy recording some more hits for the teen market, where we know we can make some more money with you." Whether that was the scenario or not, Darin did start off 1959 by invading teenage territory yet again. The That's All album seems to clearly mark the unofficial end of Darin's collaboration with Kirshner. Their song "Lost Love," a pretty, subdued, uncharacteristic lullaby, was the B-side of "Queen of the Hop" (and is also on Disc 1 of the Rhino box). Recordings of their songs would emerge now and again, but from here on in new faces replaced Kirshner and others who had made the early rounds with Bobby Cassotto.

"Plain Jane" (written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, who had earlier given him "I'm Not Sharin' Sharon") was first single release of 1959 and the horn-driven number slipped into the Top 40. In February, Darin demoed a beautiful song he had written by himself, "Dream Lover," a tune he wasn't sure might be right to record and put out as his own. A few weeks later he had changed his mind and cut the track using Neil Sedaka on piano. (Sedaka also played on the eventual B-side, the Darin-penned rocker "Bullmoose.") Sedaka at this point was not yet a recording artist in his own right, but (with his songwriting partner Howard Greenfield) had come up with "Keep a Walkin'" in 1958, which Darin had made a good record out of. He liked Sedaka's musical style and allowed him the freedom to play what he felt was right on the "Dream Lover" session in March (the same month That's All was released.)

The Rhino box contains take five of the revealing "Dream Lover" demo session (never before released), a delightful "guitar version" run through of what is perhaps the best song that Darin ever wrote. Certainly it has endured through the years, and many fans identify Darin with the record's gorgeous, lilting flow. He performed it on The Ed Sullivan Show in May and when Atco released it as a single in July, it rocketed to #2 here, #1 in Britain. As a purely singular Darin creation, "Dream Lover" may also be the most successful thing he ever came up with , as its numerous cover versions following his included ones by Dion, Rick Nelson, the Paris Sisters, Don McLean, Johnny Nash and Tony Orlando.

It must be remembered that while "Dream Lover" was riding high, maintaining Darin's image as a teen idol, "Mack the Knife" and "Beyond the Sea" had already been sitting for more than half a year, waiting to be "discovered" by a whole new audience prepared to embrace the fast-maturing Darin, still only 23. Both songs, after all, were out there for the asking (and had been for months), for anyone who would simply walk into a record shop and spring for a copy of the That's All album.

Although he can't recall exactly when it was, or what record he heard. Pat Boone cited an instance where he caught something on the radio that he thought was his, but it turned out to Darin, "He was a tremendous imitator," Boone said, "and he was groping for his own niche. I was still living in New York and I was driving down the West Side Highway once from Teaneck [New Jersey], heading downtown. And I heard a record, and I thought it was me.

"It sounded exactly like "I Almost Lost My Mind,' that kind of dipping [vocal] thing I did, and it was a copy of that. And I thought, 'Now when did I do that?' Because I had done several versions of songs that were meant to be just like that. And then I heard the DJ say, 'That was Bobby Darin's new record.' And it fooled me. I thought it was me!"

Rewind back a few months, to the winter of 1959, in Los Angeles. Blauner, who had known Darin about a year but was still not serving his career in any formal capacity, was on his own initiative trying to get more doors to open for this kid he believed in so completely. They were out on the town together one night when Darin was informed that his mother was on her deathbed.

"Bobby's mother, or who he thought was his mother, and my mother died in the same month (February)," Blauner said. "We named our corporation after them. And he was with me the night she died. We had gone to see Jerry Lewis at the Moulin Rouge. Originally it was Earl Carroll's, Vanities, a very famous nightclub from the old days, but it was closed by the time I came out here. Then it became the Moulin Rouge [note: where Phil Specter's Big T.N.T. Show was staged], and then it became the Aquarius.

"We were at a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, and Darin called home and found out. He had done the 'Mack the Knife' album [That's All]. I don't think it was out yet, that's why we had the acetates. He gave one to me and took the other one with him when he left the next day. He went home to bury his mother, and he put the other acetate in her coffin, I still have mine."

GAC was pushing for Darin to go on a rock 'n' roll package tour to England that summer. Blauner had a different idea of where Darin should be. Legendary comedian George Burns, it had been announced, was going to play his very first Las Vegas engagement in June. Burns had done every other type of show business booking up to that point in his illustrious career (which perseveres today, as he's about to turn 100), but he had never played Vegas. Furthermore, this is the first lime he'd be working solo, as his wife Gracie Allen had just decided to retire. Burns headlining in Vegas was a big deal at the time, and Blauner smelled a golden opportunity for Darin.

"I took the acetate and went to see George Burns," Blauner recalled. "I go in and play him three songs. The first song I played was 'Some of These Days,' because he could relate to that. Then I played a ballad, and then I played "That's All,' and I was out of there. I didn't play 'Mack the Knife.'" In spite of all the intense competition among "boy singers" of the day, any one of whom Burns could have chosen as his opening act in Vegas, the comedian took Darin. Blauner's pitch had been on the mark. By April he was officially installed as Darin's manager.

"[By then] I was already clamoring for them [Atco] to release 'Mack the Knife' as a single," Blauner said. "I was told that I was out of my mind. Which I thought maybe I was, because that stuff wasn't selling." Blauner split from GAC and, over its protests, booked Darin to appear with Burns, first in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, and then for the four-week June engagement in Vegas immediately afterwards. He felt it was the best exposure to the entertainment industry powers-that-be Darin could possibly get. GAC disagreed, believing that the Burns gigs were not paying enough and that Darin should be headed to England to capitalize on his growing popularity there. Blauner won out, however, and Darin would not go to England for almost another year.

Cement Bags, Pearly Whites

Darin had been singing "Mack the Knife" in his nightclub act for a full year by the time he appeared with Burns. He had, in all probability, heard and been strongly influenced by the version of the tune recorded by Louis Armstrong a few years earlier. It was a 30-year-old German cabaret song composed by Kurt Weill and playwright Bertolt Brecht. Some time in 1958 Darin had attended a production of Brecht's Threepenny Opera in Greenwich Village, which featured the tune. and the singer suddenly heard his own version of "Moritat" playing in his head.

The Darin recording cut at the That's All sessions was, in the estimation of most industry people who'd heard it, a knock-out.

"It wasn't until July 31st that we got the call from Ahmet, that there was a groundswell for 'Mack the Knife' and that it had to come out [as a single]," Blauner recalled. "And by then I was scared to death that it was too late. He said they'd have it out in two weeks, but I didn't think they could get it out fast enough. They got it out pretty fast. [Note: It took about three and a half weeks.] We were rehearsing for Bobby's opening that night at the Cloister on Sunset, the old Mocambo. That's why I remember the date, July 31st."

From the time of its release in late August, it took "Mack the Knife" (#6147, b/w "Was There a Call For Me") less than two months to reach #1, where it remained for nine weeks. It also went to #1 in England, his second straight U.K. chart-topper, hot on the heels of "Dream Lover." There was no stopping Darin now.

His engagement at the Cloister a resounding success, Darin headed back east to appear for a busy week's worth of performances at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, then a return appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The singer collapsed from exhaustion and chest pains backstage at Sullivan's theater in midtown Manhattan, but the incident was kept quiet. From this point, until his last performance in Las Vegas 14 years later, an oxygen tank would always be standing by in the wings for Darin. He, Blauner and the rest of the inner circle knew that his fragile health could come tumbling down in the midst of any given performance.

Darin was back in L.A. in September, where he set an attendance record at the Moulin Rouge (6,400 people in four nights) as well as a one-week earnings record. All this due to Darin's charming, cocksure rendition of a song that was basically about somebody getting carved up, tossed in the drink with some ankle bracelets attached, and turned into shark bait. Who knew?

The second annual Grammy Awards ceremony was scheduled for November 30th. In those days the awards were given out in the same calendar year as the records appeared on the charts. In this case, Darin's recording of "Mack the Knife" was not only still on the charts (it also went to #6 R&B), by Grammy night it was still #1. The record had been released in time to qualify, and not surprisingly was up for Record of the Year. No surprise either, it won. The show was being televised for the first time, and Darin was there to sing his tune. Afterwards, Darin was also presented with a second Grammy as Best New Artist of the Year.

It had been an incredible 18 months, in which a pop artist who was basically unknown in the spring of 1958 had shot to the pinnacle of his profession before the end of 1959. Had he retired from the business the next day, November 30, 1959 would still have to qualify as one of the most exciting nights of Darin's entire career. Everywhere one looked, there was Darin peering out from the cover of a magazine or singing "Macky" on yet another TV variety show. From Labor Day to Christmas of 1959, Darin was as hot as any singer has ever been.

On September 25th. he had appeared on a TV special hosted by Jimmy Durante, singing a couple of songs ("Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home" and "Personality") with the famous entertainer. A couple of weeks before the Grammys, he appeared on a network show hosted by Burns and sang with him as well. Darin let it be known that he loved Burns, respected him tremendously, regarded him as a father figure, and was forever grateful that Burns took him to Vegas before he'd had a #1 record.

In early December, Darin was the surprised subject of an episode of the popular TV program This Is Your Life, where he was ambushed by host Ralph Edwards as family members and early colleagues like Behrke, Kirshner and Murray the K showed up to discuss how Bobby Cassotto had beat the odds and made the big time.

The only incident from this period that threw cold water on Darin's party was the controversy over the alleged "feud" between the Best New Artist and the "Best Old Artist." Sinatra. On Darin's memorable night at the Grammys, Sinatra had also come away with a pair of awards, but his own 1959 accomplishments were somewhat overshadowed by the hot young phenom that was Darin. According to Blauner and Dodd Darin, Vernon Scott of United Press International asked Darin a Sinatra-related question on Grammy night and then proceeded to drastically misquote the 23-year-old "upstart," his inaccurate words sent out across the news wires around the world.

"That is something the press largely created," Dodd Darin said. "Vernon Scott really was out of line with that, because there's no way that he could misconstrue my dad's answer. Blauner was right there, and this was [a case of somebody] lookin' for a hot story. This is fabrication. The fact is, [later] my dad was very tight with Nancy Sinatra Jr., and my dad had nothing but respect for Sinatra. Sinatra, for his part, may have at times taken small umbrage at my dad. A lot of the press were comparing them, and enjoying this "feud." But from my dad's point of view, it was ridiculous. When you consider Frank Sinatra, the master vocalist forever, he learned from Sinatra and totally respected his work.

"And I'll tell you a story," Dodd said, "which I can't verify, but I have no reason to deny it. An actor named Dick Bakalyan (he would appear with Darin in the movie Pressure Point, as well as on his 1973 TV show) was friends with Nancy Jr. also.  He was out on a boat with Sinatra, and they were talking. This was years after my dad died. They were talking about the [hoped-for] Darin movie. And [Frank] said, 'You know, the problem is you'll never get anyone to be able to recreate the nightclub magic. 'Cause he was the best.' And that was Sinatra talking about my dad.

"All this 'bad blood' stuff was the press, mainly. My dad had total respect for Sinatra. And why not? He was 21 years older, and had done it all. So, mainly, that was fabricated."

Even today, when Sinatra performs "Mack the Knife" in concert, he makes reference to Darin's version within his own.

Darin's dream of becoming "a legend by age 25" had, by a reasonable measurement, come true well ahead of schedule. One could argue that he was legendary, at least in show business terms, before the 1950s had even come to a close. There was no doubt that Darin had made it big. The only question now in his own mind was, "How long will I survive to enjoy my success?"

Hard-Earned Cash

On January 18, 1960 Atco released "Beyond the Sea" as a single. More than a year old at the time of its incarnation as a 45 (Darin having recorded it on Christmas Eve, 1958), the song went to #6 on the U.S. pop chart (#8 in England), serving as a worthy follow up to "Mack." According to Venet, "Beyond the Sea" had a special place in Darin's heart and remained the singer's own personal favorite of his recordings. Also that month, a Life magazine article appeared in which the "legend at 25" comment was part of the text,

His next single, "Clementine" (written by Woody Harris) came out in March to coincide with the release of the This Is Darin album. Recorded in September 1959, this single marks the beginning of a style of Darin music, one that would continue for the next several years, which might be termed "supercharged Tin Pan Alley." It wasn't quite rock and it wasn't '50s-style pop either.  It was some kind of Darin hybrid that he was quickly and uniquely coining as his own. It was sassy, irreverent, effervescent and full of life. It was Darin.

His new fans may not have known exactly what to make of it, but it still went to #21, #8 in the U. K.  The lyric (with its references to somebody getting dropped into "the foamy brine"), the swingy arrangement by Wess, not to mention Darin's tricky vocal, were an obvious stab at recreating the "Mack the Knife" feel. It was an inferior take on "Macky" but still a decent record. Darin's next two singles that year, ''Bill Bailey" (released in May) and "Artificial Flowers" (September), did a little better, coming in at #19 and #20, respectively.

By that time, Darin had made the long-postponed trip to England to face his U.K. fans for the first time. Although he made the journey with old friends Duane Eddy and Clyde McPhatter on the tour bill, Darin's British sojourn was an ordeal for him. He had already moved on from his earliest hits, but the Brits wanted to hear Darin rock, not do his lounge act.

"The English tour was, I think, three weeks," said Blauner, who accompanied Darin when he went over in March. "We were on a bus and we'd go to these various places. We hit Liverpool, and I think we played in a theatre in Glasgow for a week. Some of them were almost like sock hops, but some of them were in real good venues.

"Opening night in London, they had a great orchestra," Blauner recalled, "The orchestras that they had in London were always great. I don't know, really good. Better than you'd pick up in New York, for the Copa or something like that. They'd have sort of a comic who was the emcee. Then Clyde McPhatter would come out, and he'd do his stuff. Then Duane Eddy would come out.

Then there'd be intermission, and then here comes Bobby with the big band. He did two shows at this venue: six o'clock, for some reason, and at eight o'clock, or some time after that. I remember that, basically, he had a nightclub act that he was doing now. Within that, he would do 'Splish Splash' and 'Dream Lover,' I'm sure 'Mack', and whatever.

"Now, in those days, I think they were called 'teddy boys'—they were rockers and they were into Duane Eddy with that guitar. Even though I wasn't necessarily thrilled with the music, he was hot. And they [the teddy boys] wanted to see Bobby do rock 'n' roll. This is the six o'clock show. And there was a point where he took a chair, straddled it for stage effect, and sang 'My Funny Valentine.' And they started to make noise, and it was really embarrassing. There was a part of the crowd that tried to quiet 'em, and the other part [egged them on]. I mean, it was unbelievable.  I went backstage in between shows and [Darin] lashed out at me."

Darin blamed Blauner for putting him on this rowdy show, where he had to deal with the crass behavior of teddy boy roughnecks in the audience. The two men shouted at each other and Blauner ended up dumping Darin's clean tux shirts on the dressing room floor, then storming out to sit at the back of the house.

Coming back on stage for the second show, Darin seemed more determined to show the English kids that he could still rock if he wanted to. Blauner clearly recalled that Darin broke into a spontaneous take of "Kansas City." The manager commented that this must have been a "head arrangement" Darin had worked out on the spot, because he couldn't remember him singing the song before, and he never heard him do it again. Even the exhaustive Bleiel book, which has a special appendix in the back, listing songs that Darin performed live but never recorded, makes no mention of "Kansas City."

Nevertheless, Darin held fast and kept "My Funny Valentine" in the second set as well, to the satisfaction of the musicians as well as Blauner.  The burly manager rushed backstage after the set and embraced his artist, telling him they should forget about England and blow off the rest of the tour. Darin apologized for exploding earlier, but decided they would complete the remaining dates before heading back to the States.

There was plenty happening back home. Blauner had a booking planned for June 1960 that was going to outdo the one he had gotten Darin one year earlier with Burns in Vegas. It was for the famous Manhattan nightclub the Copacabana. When Darin opened there, it was quite an event. It seemed as if everyone in New York City wanted a table in the smallish 700-seat house to catch the singer at his most polished and formidable.

Darin's reviews were superlative, and the tape machines were running on the 15th and 16th, material captured and edited down for release as the Darin at the Copa LP. At one point on the album you can hear a young lady, probably there on her prom date, calling out for Darin to sing "Splish Splash." "You're goin' back farther than I care to remember," Darin drawled in a campy, W.C. Fields-type voice. Two years in the life of Bobby Darin were like 10 to anybody else. He didn't do the song. But at least there were no teddy boys to contend with at the Copa.

His first appearance on the silver screen was for a movie called Pepe, released at the end of the year. Darin portrayed himself, singing a song called "That's How It Went All Right" in a nightclub scene. The track was released as a single on the Colpix label, with another artist's recording on the flip. Crosby, Durante, Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Judy Garland and many other top stars also appeared in the film, which was not much of a success.

When Darin made his stand at the Copa, Jo-Ann Campbell was photographed by his side at the club, but their relationship was about to end. Darin wanted to get married but Campbell (for whatever reason) did not. Darin was reportedly downhearted when he went off to Italy late that summer to play his first movie role in a picture starring Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida.

His outlook changed drastically when he immediately fell in love with his acting partner in the project, the blonde and beautiful Sandra Dee. When they were finished shooting Come September, Darin and Dee returned to the U.S. together, marrying on December 1st in her home state of New Jersey.

Dee was already a movie star, and her 1959 pair of hits with Gidget and A Summer Place put her early success on a par with her husband's. Suddenly they were America's newest sweethearts, together as one, the couple the whole country looked upon with envy and delight. It looked perfect, and for a time perhaps it was. This is where Dodd Darin's book comes in.

Darin's marriage spelled the end of his career as a New York-based artist, except for certain periods when he'd have reason to be back there. From 1960 onward, Darin would be out west, much of the time in L.A. where he and his bride both had movie careers to pursue, but also in Vegas, where he would build his reputation as one of the greatest talents ever to perform in that town. Blauner negotiated a lucrative three-year deal for Darin to perform at the Flamingo Hotel. This contract was also significant in that once Darin had fulfilled it in 1963 (deciding he was going to give up nightclub work to try to dedicate himself more to his marriage and home life), he and Blauner would mutually agree to go their separate ways.

Darin's first single of 1961 was "Lazy River," which he'd cut at the "Artificial Flowers" session the preceding August.  It came out in February and became the singer's highest-charting 45 since "Beyond the Sea," going to #14 (#2 in England). In some ways, the story of Darin's career over the period of the early to mid-1960s calms down and levels off a bit. The highs and lows of his crazy climb up the ladder in New York a few years before were a part of history, and a part of his legend. Now he could pretty much settle into the life of being Bobby Darin the successful singer/song writer, who also had ambitions as an actor. He had money, fame, a beautiful girl by his side and a baby on the way. Life was good, even in spite of his health concerns.

Atco put out a duet album, Two of a Kind, recorded by Darin with lyricist Johnny Mercer. Blauner claimed that the project was his idea, and thought the album turned out well, but the problem was most people couldn't tell Darin's and Mercer's voices apart, making the album a tough sell. Around Labor Day, Atco released Darin's jazzed-up version of the standard "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" and it clicked big, going to #5 in the U.S., #10 in the U.K.

In November Darin recorded an album's worth of material by one of his idols. Ray Charles, which came out four months later. These sessions included a version of "The Right Time" that Darin sang with Darlene Love, which is on the Rhino collection. Also from the sessions, the Darin version of "What'd I Say?" was released as a single and went to #24 in early 1962, Darin's last year on Atco. Previously, Darin's live version of "1 Got a Woman" (with himself on piano) was included on the Live at the Copa album. (Both of these Charles songs are also in the Rhino box.) On the second day of recording for the Ray Charles tribute album, November 8,1961, Darin switched gears to record his own song "Multiplication" for inclusion in his and wife Sandy's movie Come September. Released as a single, it went to #30 (#5 in England).

This was getting toward the end of Darin's time with Atco. The company got him to jump onto the Twist craze momentarily with the surprisingly effective take of "Irresistible You" (with Darin urging "Let's Twist awhile'" on top of the horn break) that was included on the album Twist With Bobby Darin at the end of 1961. The single went to #15. The last album Darin did for Atco (with the exception of cooperating on The Bobby Darin Story LP of his hits) was Things And Other Things, which included his cool piano instrumental "Beachcomber" and another of his originals, "Things."

The latter turned out to be Darin's biggest hit for the label since "Mack the Knife," going to #3 here, #2 in England. Nevertheless, Atco still had quite a backlog of unreleased Darin material, and would be able to release several more albums on him even after he departed for Capitol.

By the time he left Atco, Darin had made the movie Too Late Blues with writer/director John Cassavetes, in which he portrayed a jazz musician,

An interesting side note about Darin's early '60s recording work (considering the fact that he was now spending a great deal of his time in L.A.) is that he did in fact do some sessions with Phil Spector. Bleiel acknowledges in his book that Darin and Specter met, through Ahmet Ertegun, but more or less debunks the notion that sessions actually occurred involving the two artists, calling this "rumors" and adding that anyone who claims that Darin and Spector recorded together ought to come up with the "specification or documentation." It is entirely possible that no tracks were ever finished, and therefore none released. But they did experiment together in the studio.

"I am telling you that it happened," Blauner said on this issue. "You are hearing it from me." Blauner should know. He would have had no occasion to meet Spector except through Darin, Blauner was much too busy keeping Darin working in nightclubs, movies and on television to have time to hang around recording studios (where Spector lived) unless he were there with Darin. He related, for the purpose of this article, several incidents involving Spector in the studio. Blauner recalled the sight of Spector behind the glass in the engineering booth eating Mallomars (marshmallow cookies) and washing them down with a carton of milk. Spector also was noted for doing an impression of Ertegun. "I must have met him several times," Blauner said, "because I can remember that the next couple of times I saw him I would go up to him and say, 'Gimme some Ahmet.'"

Venet also confirmed that Darin/Spector sessions took place, but preferred not to go into much detail on this topic. Venet could not, in any event, recall what songs the pair worked on, only that they did attempt to get some stuff down. His assessment of the situation was that Darin's way of working was just too polar opposite from Specter's. Spector, of course, was known for doing many, many takes and working a track over and over again until he fell he'd captured what he was searching for. Darin wanted to figure out quickly what he wanted to do with a song, feel out his approach over the first couple of takes, and then nail it down by the third one, Darin was married by then, and often had to be on a movie set early the next morning. He wanted to cut the track and go home.