This article, written by Alan Katz, appears in the March, 2006 issue of Las Vegas Magazine
He's a short, big-nosed Italian kid from the Bronx,
nobody's idea of handsome. Sickly and pale, with a weak ticker, he's doomed to die young
and knows it. Racing with the clock, he wants to pack a lifetime into a few years and
become a legend by 25.
That's the attitude Bobby Darin brought with him to Las Vegas in 1959. It was that ambition
and cocksureness people noticed first. The monstrous talent they discovered later.
Had you asked a thousand Las Vegas people in 1962 to name the world's greatest nightclub
entertainer, three names would have come up repeatedly. Sinatra, of course, but all Frank
did was sing. The multitalented Sammy Davis Jr. would command a share of the nods.
Many thought, and still do, that Darin was the most electrifying performer of the three. He
combined Davis' versatility with swinging Sinatra's charisma, talent and sex appeal.
Jazz pianist Roger Kellaway, Darin's musical director for two years, remembers Darin's
nightclub act well. "Bobby designed the show. He knew exactly how to build it. The material
was mostly show tunes and standards, and later, it had folk material in the middle—an
A-B-A concept. It would start with (the lights down) and a tympani tremolo, and the
announcement of his name, and he'd come out and do something upbeat and powerful
like 'Don't Rain on My Parade'—and you always got that energy right away."
When singing, Darin would often punctuate the lyrics with finger-popping, grunts and
cries, all designed to boost the energy. As a boy, he had studied many of the greats from Al
Jolson and Bing Crosby to Judy Garland and Peggy Lee. He taught himself to be a one-man
variety act, accompanying himself on piano, sometimes drums, harmonica or guitar.
And he danced gracefully, with all of the movement below his waist. Women found
this so irresistible they showered him with room keys wherever he worked. Aware of
his ordinary appearance in real life, Darin said once that when he walked onstage in a
tuxedo, "I'm Clark Gable."
Because he'd come to Las Vegas as a teenage
idol, it was surprising that the kid knew so much
about show business and had so many talents and
skills not associated with youth. He was, at 23, the
youngest headliner ever to perform on the Strip,
and the old-timers embraced him almost from the
first. George Burns made him a protege, Johnny
Mercer recorded an album with him, Billy May did
his arrangements.
His amazing showmanship was what sold the
older crowd, not least of all his entertaining impressions of movie legends. In his show, the pianist
would play a tune such as "One for My Baby"—that
late-night tale of a lonely drunk pouring out his
heart to a bartender—and Darin would sing it
as Gable, Jimmy Cagney, Bob Mitchum, Marion
Brando, Burt Lancaster, Gary Grant and Jimmy
Stewart. Audiences couldn't get enough of him.
Waiters and bartenders, doormen and cabbies and
maitre d's loved him, too, because he attracted the
"right crowd"—the high-rollers. When Darin was
working in Vegas, everyone in the hotel made money. By
the end of his career, he'd
played all the major rooms
in Las Vegas—the Sands, Sahara, Flamingo, Stardust,
Bonanza, Hilton, Frontier, Landmark and Desert
Inn—and made a lot of friends. A few enemies, too.
The oft-heard criticism was that Darin didn't
know himself. More than anyone before or since
he moved freely from one style to another: rock,
pop, gospel, R&B, country, swing, jazz, show music
and standards. If you listen to his recordings today,
you will find that he did justice to each genre and
approached each with sincerity and respect. But
he'll probably be best remembered as a swinger
because, as Kellaway says, "Bobby had a great time.
He swung his ass off."
Identity is a riddle for all humans, but for Darin
it was even more complicated. Late in life, he
learned that the "mother" and "sister" who raised
him were actually his grandmother and mother.
They had concocted the story to conceal
Bobby's illegitimate birth and withheld the
truth from him. Of this discovery, Darin never
got over the shock.
In 1968, clinically depressed over his friend
Robert Kennedy's assassination, he decided to
simplify his life and retired to a rented trailer
at Big Sur, Calif. A year later, he re-emerged at
the Troubador in Los Angeles as folksinger "Bob
Darin," wearing denims and boots and working
without his toupee.
"I saw him at the Troubador," Kellaway said
with a chuckle. "He had the denims, but he was
still wearing a monogrammed shirt. Bobby was
very calculating, and I think he was moving
into 'Bob Darin' piece by piece."
Bob Darin singing about racial and economic
justice didn't fly with Bobby's old high-roller
fans. He bombed in Las Vegas for the first time
ever. That's when he decided that audiences
"hear what they see," and if they wanted Bobby
Darin in a tuxedo with a toupee, he would
accommodate them but would sing what he
wanted. In his final Las Vegas engagements at
the Landmark and Desert Inn, he wore the tux
and played to sold-out rooms.
NBC hired him in 1972 as a summer replacement for Dean Martin. The Bobby Darin
Amusement Company did well enough that
it came back in January as The Bobby Darin
Show, but by then he was very sick and eight
months after the final show he died of heart
disease at 37.
He was pretty much forgotten after that, but
a 1990s revival of lounge singing inevitably
brought a re-evaluation of a talent that had
never gotten its due. In retrospect, he was seen
as one of the first singer-songwriters, and one
who generated more excitement in a nightclub
than anyone seen since. He was even a good
actor in movies, and had received one Oscar
nomination. He wrote Top 10 hits without
breaking a sweat. He wrote movie scores and
themes. Recordings such as "Mack the Knife,"
"Beyond the Sea," "More," "Splish Splash" and
"Dream Lover" started getting airplay again.
While unsuccessful at the box office, Kevin
Spacey's movie biography of Darin, Beyond the
Sea, further heightened interest in the singer
who had thrilled so many visitors in Las Vegas.
Today, Bobby Darin is remembered as the most
versatile pop singer America ever produced,
whose soaring talent and grand ambitions lost
a frenetic race with time.
Special thanks to Toni Mullinix who made this available for us to share
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