Bobby Darin
We've Lost an American Original

" . . . I still can hear the jukebox softly playin', and the face I see each day belongs to you. Though there's not a single sound, and there's nobody else around, well it's just me thinkin' of the things we used to do ..."

It's Thursday, December 20, 1973, Christmas is almost here, and it's 7:30 in the morning. I'm half awake with a dull headache, and outside the combination of driving rain and sleet is pounding down on the packed ice and slush. The clock radio has come on, and the news is churning away. I'm trying to get more sleep, which I can't do, but I'm pretending that if I try hard, it'll really be the middle of the night. The newsman is "background," but suddenly he leaps from my radio and belts me really hard. It sounded like this "... And in California, singer Bobby Darin has died following a six hour open heart operation. Darin was best known for his recording of 'Mack the Knife' ..." I couldn't have heard that. I just lay there waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. I was awake, and it was true. Oh Jesus Christ, what the hell is this? I couldn't do anything but shake my head and punch my leg. It's the un-rightable wrong. Oh man, what a bad feeling, what an empty way to feel. WMCA is all "talk" radio now, and they follow each newscast, often, on their morning show 5-9 A.M., (Ken Fairchild), with music stories. (Music relating to the news or current events, or the new fizzling comet, etc.) Following the 8 A.M. news they played the latest Dawn single. I mean, first you write a man's whole life off with one hit song, and then you can't even play it, but choose instead a song based very heavily on Darin's reading of productions such as "Clementine" and "Bill Bailey." I remember when WMCA played his records every hour. I remember the morning that Jack Spector (now on WHN, sort-of-country in N.Y.), made a big thing out of Bobby Darin's 25th birthday on WMCA in the same morning drive time slot. Their music director is still there too. I almost kicked in the damn radio.

" ... I'll be there when all your dreams are broken, to answer your unspoken prayer; when the little things you do don't turn out right, don't you worry darlin', I'll be there ..."

I've thought about it over and over, and I can't explain it correctly, but I felt a cloud hanging over me for that whole day, and then some. Maybe it's like being stunned. I don't know. This is really a bummer, and man, it's bad for you too, and don't you be stupid enough to think it isn't. This is the heaviest loss to popular music, with the possible exception of Buddy Holly, altho' Buddy Holly was perhaps more of a loss for what he might have become. The loss of Bobby Darin is a slash, a brutal slash into the fabric of all we know as good music, and good rock n' roll music. There is a gaping hole that cannot be filled again. It's a shock, in a time when nostaligia is running all over us, and the teenagers of the 50's are feeling a little livelier again and vital, the brash singer of "Splish Splash" is dead. Bobby Darin was the biggest solo artist in the country, except for Elvis, during the era that American Graffiti now depicts (1962). He, as one of the very few true "superstars," was an outstanding missing portion of Let the Good Times Roll. Bobby Darin and Ricky Nelson, alone, are the only two perfomers (solo artists) in history to rival in any serious way at all the position held by Elvis Presley. It is not the loss of a "singer" or "performer," it is rather the loss of someone who was always present, even at times when on the surface it may have appeared that he was not. He was part of this country, the music, the times, a strange type of human barometer that always had a good reading, even if he dared you to make that reading. He was a folk hero, and he became an anti-hero, and he was almost crucified for sticking to honest approaches instead of opting out for the very lavish, easy way to go it.

" ... Sitting in the trailer in between shows, I like to know what the late news knows, but they're running the same war they had on the last evening ... Then I hear a giggle that becomes a laugh, and a woman over forty wants my autograph, so I sign an old napkin and she says 'I used to hate you' ... Too many distractions, false retractions, guilty minds, turnin' kind ... Too many distractions ... "

I met Bobby Darin, and spoke to him at great length about his music, really about his music. He was kind, and friendly, very nice to me. I'm not saying the "Darin Reputation" is a myth, but he had no reason to treat me so much better than he has treated so many famous and powerful people in the past. Many fine artists can be intolerant of people who fail to be as professional as they are, and fail to see what really is involved, and where the real importance lies. He expected what he was willing to give. (100%). That was my opinion before I met the man, and meeting him confirmed this to my own satisfaction. (I have not yet written that interview).

Bobby Darin didn't just have a "few" hits. He hit the national charts 40 times. He wasn't just a "singer." He was a total musical performer, guitarist, drummer, dancer, and more. He was a fine comedian. He was an important music publisher, and he was, as is often over-looked, one of our finest song writers. He was just about the best damn interpretor of anybody's songs as well. No other artist, bar none, and I mean bar NONE, could perform Dylan's music better than Darin did. His "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," performed with just his guitar, or with a combo, or with an entire orchestra was overwhelming. He was one hell of an actor also. (Other solo artist from the 50's who had a song in a "Splish Splash" vein, were lucky to even have a second hit, let alone a career hitting all bases possible for one person). His own television series, a variety/musical show, was the only real hit show of the summer of '72, and was brought back in the winter, running right through the early months of 1973 on WNBC. His special characters, the ones he himself portrayed, were highlights of television. (In a recreation of his old neighborhood in the Bronx, he traded a very emotional conversation on the stoop with his "buddy" Carmine. He did an outrageously funny routine playing "The Godmother," and his "Dusty John Dustin" the "poet of the open road" was usually up to the quality of lighter Cheech and Chong material).

" ... I lost the love I needed, the love to make me strong ... If I only were granted the right to start anew ... Lost love behind me, true love won't find me, because I'm so lost ..."

We'll do a whole number about his recording career some other time, but I do want to make a few points, and hopefully they'll be clear. Bobby Darin had five rock n' roll hits, (tho' somebody may tell you it's four, they're wrong), prior to "Mack the Knife." "Mack" was in mid-'59, and by 1961 he went back to solid rock n' roll, altho' at that point he had it made the "straight" club way. In '62 he added a country flavor to his rock music, and sometimes added touches of folk and R&B. He wrote a good majority of his own hits, and worked closely with his old school chum Don Kirschner. In 1966 he made Tim Hardin's "If I Were a Carpenter" into a standard, and then he wrote a song which became Tim's only hit record, a song to rival any of Hardin's own material, in Darin's self-penned "Simple Song of Freedom." He went through a lot of changes, starting mainly with the shocking and numbing death of Robert Kennedy. These changes were not taken or accepted fairly by new fans or old ones. What Rick Nelson went through for one night at Madison Square Garden, Bobby Darin lived each day for almost two years, and he caught it from fans as well as other so-called "pros" in the entertainment industry.

We have lost an American original, a part of our most highly revered musical ages, a personality who made his way into our lives. We have lost a part of ourselves, and we have been reminded in a most piercing way of our own mortality. Looking back to that last innocent era becomes more painful now, in the place of the escape and fun it generally provides, or sometimes does. I'm not sure if I can take anything like this again, it really feels bad. Really bad. The first thing I'll do is smash my typewriter, rather than write another epitaph the likes of this. Bobby Darin was good to our music, and good for it, and that means he was good to you. Let that be what you remember.

"Things"; "I'll Be There"; "Distractions (Part One)"; "Lost Love" were all written and originally performed by Bobby Darin.