Jack Wagner: The Taste of Honey coming up now by the head honey taster in these here parts, Bobby Darin. Hi, Bob.
Bobby Darin: How are you, Jack? Nice to talk to you.
JW: Hey this particular track I have set up is from your Venice Blue album and I see that you've also included quite a variety of things in this set, standards, new songs, a couple of your own things. Who worked with you on this album?
BD: Well, a fellow by the name of Richard Wess.
JW: Again!
BD: Did a few of the charts. And a marvelous arranger named Ernie Freeman whose been responsible for some of the great Dean Martin hits and some of Frank Sinatra's current singles as well. Marvelous arrangers, both, and it's of course, it's a little bit of a different kind of bag for me than the Hello Dolly/Goodbye Charlie album, insomuch as it's kind of a ballad heavy album. As usually with a swingin' and cookin' album.
JW: "Who Can I Turn To" is one of them.
BD: "Who Can I Turn To" and "Softly" and "Somewhere".
JW: Nice things.
BD: Yes, nice things. A quiet kind of easy sound. Not to polite you know a little bit of a thing behind it.
JW: You have a couple of (Jack snaps his fingers) trademark bits in there.
BD: No.No. Just a couple of easy. Like "I want be around to pick up the check dear, when somebody loses the tab". Things like that. It's a fun album although it's not, as I say, the usual kind of uproarious thing.
JW: You know the story behind that song "I Wanna Be Around"?
BD: I do. I do.
JW: Sadie Vimmerstedt?
BD: Sadie Vimmerstedt.
JW: Vimmerstedt, submitted the title to Johnny Mercer.
BD: Well he's one of the great people of all times anyway, you know.
JW: And so he puts her down as a co-writer.
BD: She's made probably more money from that than she ever made in her whole life. She doesn't have much of a catalog, Vimmerstedt.
JW: No.
BD: I think that's about the first thing I ever heard of her.
JW: But, that's a good title "I Wanna Be Around To Pick Up The Pieces".
BD: Oh, I thought you were going to say "I Wanna Be A Vimmerstedt.
JW: (Laughs) Well Bob, I have "A Taste Of Honey" coming right up.
BD: Hey, that's written by a friend of mine incidentally, Bobby Scott.
JW: Oh yes?
BD: You know an interesting thing, Bobby Scott noodled that.
JW: Noodled it, on the piano?
BD: Noodled it. That's how it was composed, he noodled it underneath the original Broadway show "A Taste Of Honey" and it was put down, along with a slew of other themes he was also just noodling cause he was ab-libbing the entire underscoring, you know of the play, sitting with a little trio, I believe, in the pit and they were just kind of noodling to give it some, you know extra dimension, the show itself. And sure enough it comes time for the picture and nobody even called him. This is not from the picture "A Taste Of Honey" this is from the show "A Taste Of Honey".
JW: It's the same tune?
BD: And the song from the picture never did a thing, but Bobby's theme, you know (Bobby hums) that was just like, almost that's a throw away. And he's
a brillant talent anyway.
JW: Well Bob so are you and it's a pleasure having you on the show.
BD: Gee you read that just the way I wrote it, I love you for it. I thought I was losing my humility.
( Bobby's record "A Taste Of Honey" starts to play...)