This article, written by Kieron Tyler, appeared in the March, 2005 issue of MoJo Magazine
From '50s teen idol to '60s folk singer, Bobby Darin never stopped packing a handful of
startling singing careers into 15 short, debauched years. Not bad for a balding, illegitimate
bongo player who wasn't meant to live beyond the age of 16.
Bobby Darin had presence with an assurance beyond his years, he took the stage with Rat Pack
cool, "like an old, old pro
pushed in a 24-year-old body," as '60s DJ Barry Grey put it. Smooth, shark-suited.
"I've been on stage like a guy who's been on 30 years," said Darin.
"Humility? Humbleness? The biggest thing between you and I is God. That's the only
source of my humility." With the music of Sinatra, the moves of Sammy Davis Jr. and the ego
of a man on a mission, Darin wasn't going to let anything stop him.
It's this Darin we see in Kevin Spacey's recent biopic Beyond the Sea: The
full-on razzmatazz tornado single-handedly taking on Vegas and redefining the
meaning of showbiz energy - moxie, verve, zip. Hits like "Mack the Knife" and
"Beyond the Sea" not only defined Darin's sophistication, but positioned him at
the cutting edge of the late '50s adult entertainment industry. Who else could
have taken the songs of Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill and Charles Trenet into the
US charts?
But Bobby Darin had many sides. At home in the nightclubs, he was equally
at ease with and fascinated by R&B, swing, folk, country - it all went in
the mix and emerged invigorated. All music was fair game. Championing and
nurturing talents that a Sinatra or Dean Martin wouldn't have had time for, in
the search for his own voice Darin explored folk, tutored Roger McGuinn in the
music business, introduced Tim Hardin to the world and metamorphosed into a
consummate singer-songwriter. Bobby Darin was always running, trying to escape
an early death.
Born illegitimate on May 14, 1936, Walden Robert Cassotto suffered his
first attack of rheumatic fever at the age of eight. When the doctor arrived to
examine him during his fourth bout, Bobby was aged 13 at the time, he overheard
the doc informing those at the bedside that the kid wouldn't live to see
16.
His mom Vanina - known to all as Nina - lived with her mother when she
became pregnant. Nina's father, Big Sam 'Curly' Cassotto, a small-time crook
with mob links, had died in Sing Sing in 1935. Protecting the family's
reputation became paramount. Young Bobby was told that Nina was his sister and
that grandma was his mom. The deception worked, even after Nina married
in 1942.
Ignoring the health warnings and oblivious to the lie, Bobby joined a high school
dance band, the Eddie O'Casio
Orchestra, and headed off to the Catskill Mountains resorts in 1951 to play
a summer season.
Trumpeter Dick Behrke commented that Bobby “wanted to get out of the slum
desperately.
The world we wanted to belong to was
fairly sordid. Cheap showbiz is not
really terrific.” Bobby gained a
reputation not as a drummer but for his boldness about sex. Girls hanging around the resorts’ bands said
he didn’t care if the whole town saw him being jerked
off.
Another summer season was followed
by spells as a drama student and bongo player for an exotic dancer. Haunting Broadway’s all-night drug stores,
Bobby struck up friendships with other hopefuls, like singer Connie
Francis." I have to make it very fast,
because I’m going to die,” he told his crowd.
Sliding into the role of Francis’ boyfriend, Bobby said sex with other
girls was essential to keeping his skin clear.
The relationship floundered when Bobby heard her dad was after him with a
gun.
The break came in 1956 when Bobby
recorded a cover of "Rock Island Line." Although a flop, its legacy was to recast
Bobby Cassotto as Bobby Darin
– the name from the faulty sign above a Chinese restaurant called the Mandarin.
After a few more stiffs, Atlantic
Records’ Ahmet Ertegun
heard Darin practicing blues piano outside his office
and arranged some studio time. An
hour-and-a-half session in April 1958 fashioned "Splish
Splash" and "Queen of the Hop," both hits, both self-penned. It had taken seven years for Bobby
Cassotto to become Bobby Darin, pop star. He’d never take as long to do anything
again.
By 1962 the teen-idol Bobby
Darin of 1958 had evolved into a sophisticated and arrogant
adult entertainer. "Dream Lover" had been
followed by "Mack the Knife," a sly, rolling and threatening interpretation of the
song from Brecht & Weill’s Threepenny Opera. Darin had, convinced
Atlantic that his
second album – That’s All – should be a set of
standards. “With rock ‘n’ roll I’m like
a thousand other guys, I’ve got to prove I can sing.” Funding the sessions with his own royalties,
he was proved right when album track "Mack the Knife" became a single after demand
from fans.
Anyway, life as pin-up wasn’t going
to offer Darin much in the way of longevity. He didn’t have the looks and it was an open
secret that he wore a toupee. He’d
declared to Life magazine that he “wanted to make it faster than anyone has made
it before. I’d like to the biggest thing
in show business by the time I’m 25.” To
Family Weekly magazine he’d boasted of the “the egomaniac you read about.” Once he’d hit with "Mack the Knife" the assault
on showbiz began, helped by his manager, confidante and life-long friend, Steve Blauner.
He conquered the nightclubs of
Lake
Tahoe and
Las
Vegas in 1959 and invaded
Hollywood. In August 1960 he began shooting his first
film in Italy. Come September was forgettable froth, but it
did introduce Darin to his co-star, the virginal,
sweet-16 Sandra Dee. By the end of the
year they were married.
As for music, everything went in the
pot. “He wanted to sing all kinds of
music,” says Blauner. “When he did the country and western album (1963 You’re the Reason I’m Living), he did it with a big bank and
Shorty Rogers, a jazz arranger. Capitol Records weren’t happy. I always had this fight with Bobby and I
always lost it. Now I’m glad I did. I said, “You can’t be all things to music,
they won’t allow it. When someone comes
into a store and wants to hear Sinatra, they know what they are going to
get. With you, you’re jumping all
over. He just looked at me and smiled.”
Folk music was another pet love and
Darin was on the lookout for a suitable guitarist to
feature in his live act. Catching a
Lenny Bruce show at LA’s Crescendo Club in July 1962, Darin took note of the support
act." I was playing back up – guitar and banjo –
The Chad Mitchell Trio,” recalls Roger McGuinn, then Jim McGuinn. “I was exploring other avenues and thinking
of going with The New Christy Minstrels. Bobby said, “You’d get buried in a big group, come and work for me.”
I was earning $150 he offered $300 a week, a
lot of money.
“He made an appointment with me for
eight the following morning, which was an ungodly hour,” continues McGuinn. “I think he
was testing me, to see if I could get up early. He wanted me to sing harmony and play
12-string guitar behind him.
He represented a pop idol a waning pop
star. I had respect for him, but he
wasn’t a hero of mine, like Elvis. He
really had a passion for folk music and his commitment to it was sincere. I'm not sure what his sources were, but he
probably heard a lot of Harry Belafonte. The songs that come to mind are "Makes a Long Time Man Feel Bad" and
"Alberta." Bobby’s attitude was socially
conscious.”
McGuinn played with
Darin for the next year, contributing to 1963’s Golden
Folk Hits." Bobby was a mentor. He was very encouraging, took me under his
wing and gave a lot advice. I would ask
him questions about how to make it in the business. He was also very tough.
We were playing at the Cocoanut Grove. After I finished my set I sat with my friends
in the audience drinking and laughing. Bobby sent his road manager, who dragged me backstage.
Bobby said, ‘Don’t you ever do that again
while I’m on-stage, it’s distracting and disrespectful.’ I’ve never done that again, it was a good
lesson for me.”
On the road, McGuinn also gained insight into Darin’s favored recreational
activities." His fun was sex. He would have girls on the road. He was definitely a
swinger.”
Darin’s non-stop drive took its toll
in July 1963 at New
York’s
Freedomland Amusement
Park. Despite a stage-side oxygen cylinder, Darin gave up half-way into the show, to boos from the
audience. Taking the hint, Darin focused on film, acting, recording and running his
publishing company from New
York's Brill Building. McGuinn tagged
along and spent the second half of 1963 as a desk-based songwriter, attempting
to magic up chart-friendly pop tunes. “I
was paid $35 a week, it wasn’t enough to live on,” he recalls." I'd go to the Village and play the coffee
houses to make up the difference. I told
Bobby there was this kid in the Village called Bob Dylan and he laughed. He thought someone was trying to rip off his
name. Bobby used to dress in different
characters. One day he’d have a blue
blazer, with white pants and a captain’s hat like Bing Crosby. The next day he’d have a blue serge suit and
tie. He was role playing, living out a
fantasy.”
Tiring of singing at night and
working all day, McGuinn drifted off to LA. It was no loss to Darin
, who hardly viewed music publishing as a full-time
activity. He had enough distractions
elsewhere. In 1963 he filmed his
histrionic Oscar-nominated cameo as a cracking-up GI in Captain Newman, M.D.
The breakdown of Darin’s relationship with Sandra Dee was also eating up
time. As catalogued in Dodd Darin’s
biography of his parents, Dream Lovers: The
Magnificent Shattered Loves of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, childhood sexual
abuse by her stepfather created problems for Dee which weren’t alleviated by
hard drinking. Darin had no idea how to
deal with it. One of
Dee’s favorite put-downs was to tell Darin that his toupee was on
crooked.
With his eye off the musical ball,
Darin was in danger of being left standing in the
atomic-age post-Beatles world. 1964
ended with no hit singles and a From Hello Dolly to Goodbye Charlie album which
peaked at 107 in the Billboard chart. While his mentor had returned
to Broadway show tunes and standards, McGuinn was off inventing the future with The Byrds.
America finally
came up with a compelling riposte to The Beatles in June 1065, when The Byrds’ "Mr. Tambourine Man" charted.
Darin took notice of the success of his
former protégé. Folk rock was something
graspable, so he quickly penned "When I Get Home" and "We Didn’t
Ask To Be Brought Here," a stunning pair of Byrds-styled singles.
The Searchers – a prime influence on The Byrds – recorded a Number 35 hit cover of
"When I Get Home" in
the UK.
The folk rock experiments were put
aside for Darin’s 10th Anniversary tour in
early 1966, all slick tuxedo and bow-tie showbiz, with sessions at LA’s Cocoanut
Grove and Las
Vegas’s Flamingo. Darin – whose spilt from Sandra Dee was
announced in May 1966 – still hadn’t found a contemporary way to express himself musically. Then he discovered the songs – and voice – of
Tim Hardin.
New
York producers, Charles Koppelman and Don Rubin had pitched a selection of the songs
they handled and Darin chose Tim Hardin’s "If I Were a
Carpenter," then unreleased. The choice
effectively unveiled Hardin to the world. Recording Carpenter in August 1966 was a meticulous process.
“We found out that Darin recorded it with Tim’s version going through his
earphones,” explains Hardin’s widow Susan." Tim didn’t know, he had no idea that
Darin was
doing it. We were driving along in the
country and "Carpenter" came on the radio. I said, “Woah, it’s
on the radio! Next thing I knew there
was screeching of brakes, Tim pulled over and was screaming and yelling at the
side of the road, and I had no idea what was going on. He came back and said, “That’s not me.”
When it quietened
down I realized it wasn’t Tim. He went
screaming back to the house and called New York.”
Darin’s Carpenter was virtually a
clone of Hardin’s as-yet unreleased track. “Tim couldn’t believe that
Koppelman and Rubin
did it, adds
Susan. “To be undermined like that. It’s one thing to have the album come and
then have someone do covers, but beforehand? After Tim found out the real situation
he was never angry at Bobby Darin – Darin had no idea, he was just pitched a song.
He was initially upset that Darin was mimicking him. Darin was the man
of a thousand voices.”
Carpenter returned Darin to the Top
40 and trailed two great, intimate albums, If I Were a Carpenter and Inside Out
which showcased seven Hardin songs – all of which appeared on Hardin’s first
couple of albums. Also covered were
songs by The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian, who
argues that Darin “was a guy who could access what was
going on to move music in another direction. Just as he had with Mack the Knife,
he was trying more with it. There were two worlds here, the street and
bit-time showbiz. Darin had certainly
graduated to big-time show biz. (Recording my songs) seemed like an awkward piece of slumming for him.
To me Bobby Darin was "Splish Splash," and I really liked
that.”
Never settling on a style, Darin followed the brace of Hardin-inspired albums with the
bizarre Bobby Darin Sings Doctor Dolittle in August
1967. He seemed to sense the tactical
error, and stepped into a new role, that of the political campaigner. Darin’s credentials were sound:
he’d given
Richard Pryor his first Vegas show and joined Martin Luther King Jr on the civil rights march
to Montgomery Alabama in 1965.
He hit the convention trail for Bobby
Kennedy. Darin’s mother Nina – still
playing big sister – realized she had to tell the truth before journalists went
digging. Discovering he wasn’t the son
of a minor Mafioso, but of an unidentified one-or two-night stand, stripped
Darin of his self-image. Learning that the woman he knew as his sister
was actually his mom led Darin to say, “My life has been a lie.” His family’s deception was, he said,
symptomatic of the corruption he saw in society. Nina “robbed me of my dream to show Mama,
wherever she was, what I could do,” he wrote.
The
Kennedy campaign gave Darin some sorely needed
validation, but it all ground to a halt in June 1968 when Kennedy was
assassinated. “They had dropped (Darin)
in San
Francisco where he had an engagement in a
club,” recalls Blauner. “Then they proceeded on to LA and Kennedy got
murdered a day later. Bobby went
straight to the grave and everybody left. Bobby noticed they didn’t
cover it, they were
going to come back the next morning and cover it in. Bobby wouldn’t leave until it was covered,
and slept there that night. He had a
vision where all of his anxieties were in a ball, a flaming ball that flew
away. I said, BS, you were just
freaked out by being in a cemetery at night!”
Kennedy’s death and the news from
his mom moved Darin to explore his identity. He founded Direction Records and sold his
publishing company. September’s Born
Walden Robert Cassotto album was a moody, self-penned
collection of sparsely arranged introspection ranging from reflections on image
to the troubling "In Memoriam," Darin’s eye-witness account of Kennedy’s casket
being lowered into the ground. Testing
out his new material at the Cocoanut Grove in October 1968, he’d appeared newly
mustached and sporting a tuxedo, then changed into
denims for the more serious material. Billed as Bob Darin at New
York’s Copacabana in January 1969, he
ditched the toupee and wore denim throughout. “He decided that the tuxedo and the
hairpiece was a sham because of what
was happening in the world. Bobby was in
his jeans with a four-piece group behind him and people were walking out,” says Blauner. The
club’s Italian management told him not to be disrespectful. Decamping to an
oceanside trailer in
Big Sur in ’69, Darin took stock. Getting sicker and running out of money,
“he left the trailer and said he
was going back to the tuxedo and hairpiece,” says Blauner. “He said,
‘I don’t want to stand in line for medical treatment.’ He had all these bills to pay.
He did the same show as when they were
walking out, and he got standing ovations because he was in a tuxedo.
He’d do "Mack the Knife" as song number three
to get it out of the way, and then do a Laura Nyro
song, James Taylor, and then Hank Williams. Bobby used to say to me, “People hear what they
see.”
Heart valve replacement surgery in
1971 seemed to work and Darin began trading on his past
with two variety TV seasons in 1972 and ’73. He even signed with Motown in 1971.
But he looked detached and mechanical on TV.
Bassist Billy McCubbin, who backed
Darin
in this period, says that “he always had an oxygen tank
in the wings. When he sat down at the
piano to play his hands would stiffen up. He’d yell at his hands, ‘Work dammit,’ He had to stop
playing the drums. We didn’t see him
much during the day, he ate carefully, and he wasn’t drinking and had to save
his energy for the show.”
For reasons known only to himself, Darin stopped taking his post-operative
anti-coagulant medicine. In winter 1972,
after routine dental work, Darin failed to take
antibiotics prescribed to prevent infection. With serious blood poisoning, he was admitted
to hospital for congestive heart failure in October. Checking into
Cedars Sinai Hospital in December
1973, he died on the operating table on the 19th, just after doctors
discovered that a replacement valve had stopped working and that his heart, was
riddled with infection. He was
37.
Darin had outlived his
expectations. His achievements
outstripped those of virtually any other ‘50s teen idol, taking on any music, acting,
the business side. Roger McGuinn says, “He could do just about
anything if he put his mind to it. He as
a great entertainer, a very talented guy. He was an overachiever.”
Whatever he did, his image will
always be frozen as the slick, finger-clicking stage lizard, out-Rat-Packing the
Rat Pack. But there was so much
more. Had he lived, it’s impossible to
guess what he might have done. Steve
Blauner says that he’d still be transforming himself. “I think about him every
day. He’d had loved rap. He would be rapping,
he’d have loved today’s technology. He
would never have stopped.”
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