More! Quotes about the Late Great Bobby Darin!
Quotes from: Gracie: A Love Story by George Burns Liner booklet from the
Rhino boxed set, My
Name Is Love: The Darlene Love Story Sweet Judy Blue Eyes:
My Life in Music by Judy Collins
Page 295-296 --
"... so I decided to go back onstage. I put together an act in which I did a monologue, told a few jokes,
and sang a few old songs, then I convinced Bobby Darin and the DeCastro Sisters and Brascia and Typee, a
great dancing act, to work with me, and signed to play Las Vegas... Afterward I asked her what she [Gracie]
thought of the show. She didn't hesitate. 'Wasn't Bobby Darin wonderful?' she said. Bobby Darin was wonderful,
I loved Bobby Darin."
Henry Mancini, Page
8 -- "He has
a way with a song that seems to be able to hit, because he's got
an inherent sense of dramatics. It's in his singing, it's in his
writing, and it's in his acting. Being around Bobby when he's
performing or when he's getting ready to perform is like being
in a buzz saw factory, because he just has so much energy, energy
and excitement, that he has to let it out -- it's just that infectious."
Sandra Dee,
Page 19 "Genius
is close to madness and sometimes, yeah, it got in the way. He was
simply one of a kind."
Jerry Leiber & Mike
Stoller, Page 18
"People who knew him used to say about Bobby Darin that
success never went to his head, that he was just as arrogant a little
SOB before he cut his first record as he was after becoming a headliner.
He seemed no less confident before 'Splish Splash' than he was after
'Mack the Knife.' Whatever doubts (if any) Bobby may have ever had
about his talents, they were not to be shared. Ahmet Ertegun brought
'the new kid' around to a session we were producing and introduced
him to us. What we remember most about our first meeting was Bobby
saying, 'Hey man, I'm gonna make it.'"
Dion, Page 20
"I first met Bobby Darin in '58, the day we started our
first tour together. 'Splish Splash' was riding high on the charts.
He had just come from his Army physical and told me about having a
rheumatic heart since childhood. Bobby knew he would probably never
be drafted and would probably never even live to see his 27th birthday.
Bobby said he had a lot to accomplish and was in a hurry. His desire
to achieve took him ten years beyond his own expectations. He was
a music lover -- Ray Charles, Johnny Mercer, Tim Hardin. He took from
the best, but when it came out, it was always pure Darin. He was an
original. He was great to be around. I miss him."
Nik Venet, Producer, Page
21 If
you're ever up in Big Sur and you visit Pfeiffer Beach under a full
moon, and you pause for a couple of minutes, I promise you, you'll
hear Bobby Darin singing 'Beyond the Sea.'" Ben Gazzara, Page 22
His talent as an actor is very much evident on a nightclub
floor. That's what makes his work so wonderful. Gregory Peck, Page 23
Bobby was already one of the great showmen, and it was
certainly no surprise to me that Bobby could act and bring the same
exciting qualities to his acting that he had been bringing to his
singing and to his performances in clubs. He goes all out. That's
pretty much a requirement of any real performer. He has lots of courage,
takes chances, gives all of himself. Of course, Bobby comes over sometimes
a little brash, a little tough, but I ghink that's a quality that
Americans like, especially because Bobby conveys pathos. Bobby, in
his work, is touching, he's moving, he's a human being, and that's
a pretty good combination I think.
Steve Lawrence, Page 24
Bobby was one of the best entertainers in the business;
he was also a very talented composer. I'd record a Bobby Darin song
tomorrow. Steve Blauner, Bobby Darin's
manager, Page 26
"I remember the many arguments I had with Bobby about
the public and the critics not allowing him to 'musically be all things
to all people.' Having a super-talented artist who was as comfortable
with rock 'n' roll, country, blues, and jazz as he was with a standard,
and who had the guts to try it all, raised career concerns in my head;
the manager simply trying to do the right thing. Thank goodness he
didn't listen. You're holding the proof of just how right he was.
It feels great to have been wrong!" Bobby Darin (on delivering
what his fans want), Page 31
The public tells you what they want you to do and what
they want to see you do and if they would pay to see you. 'Mack' and
'Beyond the Sea' and 'Some of These Days,' were done with my treatment
of those standards, and that was the bag the country had clearly and
simply defined for me, either to listen to you do or pay to see you
do. And as long as I wear the mantle 'performer' -- and I don't take
any back seats in that area -- I must do that; I must just do that.
If I decide one day to private-island it, so to speak, you know, and
I want to entertain me and a handful of people that I know, well,
then I'll make that decision and not answer to public taste or public
demand. Brian Setzer, Page 32
You see, the reason Bobby Darin excelled in all of these
areas was because he had 'moxie.' (Does anybody still say that?) At
the heart of Bobby's being was a belief in himself and a belief in,
well, how about just plain music? Now that's novel! Whether he was
rockin' and rollin' or wrapping a big band around himself (and who
wouldn't want to wrap themselves in a big band?), it was always Bobby
singing, Bobby writing, Bobby in charge of his own publishing company,
and Bobby slaying his audiences. Bobby, to me, rocked twice as hard
as that other bobby-soxer, and he never let up. Darin, like Eddie
Cochran, didn't emerge from a cookie cutter mold like so many other
'50s idols. He reached down inside, grabbed it, and laid it on the
table. Yeah, Bobby was way real. I think he kinda slipped through
the cracks though, like an autumn New York City thunderstorm that
rocks the town, then slowly passes and leaves everything clean and
new. Sammy Davis Jr. (upon
meeting Bobby and hearing "Splish Splash"), Page 42
"I'm black, and he's got the rhythm. Bobby Darin (on recording),
Page 43 It's
not a very mechanical kind of industry. Maybe I'm not jaded enough
for it to be mechanical. If I've heard a song for the first time on
Tuesday and thought it should be recorded by me, then I liked to get
in Tuesday night or Wednesday morning at the latest, and do it, and
then have it out Thursday. Billy Vera, Singer/Bandleader,
Page 50 "Bobby
Darin was a great entertainer, a great singer, an actor with no mean
skills, and a terrific songwriter. He was, as the wise guys like to
say, 'voisatile.' As a tunesmith, he could rock out, as in 'Splish
Splash' or 'Queen of the Hop." Or he could be tender, as in 'Dream
Lover' or 'I'll Be There.' And he could write and sing country &
western tunes like 'You're the Reason I'm Living' with complete authenticity. Joel Dorn, Producer, Page
53 If
he were alive, Doc Pomus, not I, would be writing these notes. I was,
and remain, a big Bobby Darin fan, but I only knew him casually. He
and Doc were real friends and held each other in the highest esteem,
both personally and professionally. Doc had a way of comparing good
singers to great singers. He used to say, 'The good singers, no matter
how good they are at it, can only sing one kind of song. But the great
ones can sing anything.' Doc considered Darin one of the great ones.
It'll be a long time before we see one like him again. Page 49 --
" Early in 1962, we (The Blossoms (Darlene, Gloria Jones, Fanita James) )
had one of the two best sessions of
my career, with Bobby Darin, who was recording an album of
Ray Charles songs for Atlantic. Of the literally thousands of songs
I have sung on, I have rarely felt as strong a connection to the
material as I did during those sessions. The songs - "(The Night
Time Is) The Right Time", "I Got a Woman", and "Drown in My
Own Tears" - moved something inside me the way spirituals did,
maybe because they were like secular spiritual songs, and because
Bobby did justice to them. He didn't sound black, but he was true
to the spirit of the songs. Ray himself was experimenting in those
days with his country-and-western album, and I think Bobby was
doing the same by recording R&B songs. He wasn't trying to mimic
Ray. He was just showing his love for the man and his music, and it
came through.
We worked on this album in Los Angeles every day for two weeks,
three or four hours a day. Bobby was a true gentleman, very quiet,
very professional, always telling us how glad he was that we were
making this record with him, as if he needed us to give the sessions
credibility. He was married to Sandra Dee at the time, and one day
she came bubbling into the studio. "Bobby was just raving about you
girls, so I just had to meet you for myself", she said. The album, "Bobby
Darin Sings Ray Charles", didn't sell very well, but it was a high-water
mark in all our careers. No matter how many show tunes or folk tunes
he was famous for, he really was one of rock 'n' roll greatest singers.
We would find out years later that Bobby had a weak heart - it gave
out on him in 1973, when he was thirty-seven - but that's probably
because he poured so much of it into his records." |