November 10 2006
Album Review: Bobby Darin Live at the Desert Inn
posted by Steven Shaw at 2:23 pm
Bobby Darin Live at the Desert Inn
With Kevin Spacey’s musical biopic on Bobby Darin Beyond The Sea set for release soon in New Zealand, we were reminded to listen to this album, which was bought online via emusic.
It’s Darin late in his career (1971), which you might think means it’s no good. After all, his early pop hits were teen songs like the corny “Splish Splash” (1958) and the puberty blues of 1959’s “Dream Lover”.
Not content with teen idol status, Darin was already busy reinventing himself as a jazz standards singer and film star. He had hits with “Mack the Knife” (1958) and recorded songs like “Beyond The Sea”, “More” and “Sunday in New York “. But these also attracted criticism, with many labelling him a second-rate Sinatra.
Darin probably complicated matters when in 1960 he married the 16 year-old star of Gidget, Sandra Dee, after meeting her on the film set of Come September.
But like Sinatra, he did become a movie star, acting in 15 films and winning a Golden Globe Award (“Most Promising Male Newcomer”) for his performance in 1962’s Pressure Point . He also scored a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his role in 1963’s Captain Newman M.D.
Darin became a folk singer, writing “Song A Simple Song Of Freedom” in 1967, which was a hit for Tim Hardin. Conversely, he had a hit with Hardin’s song “If I Were A Carpenter”. A staunch supporter of Bobby Kennedy during his 1968 Presidential election campaign, Darin was thrown by his assassination and went bush for a year or so.
Live at the Desert Inn captures him trying to rekindle the flame of his career. He’s not at the perceived peak of popularity, but he is where he wanted to be, in Vegas, presenting a blend of styles that represent snapshots of the different stages of his career and are all unmistakably Bobby Darin.
Accompanied by a crack Vegas band Darin starts with a show version of Laura Nyro’s gospel-tinged plea to “Save the Country” and then busts out with “Mack The Knife”. He sings Tim Hardin’s “If I Were A Carpenter” and pulls off a restrained, saddened version of James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain”.
His voice on most tracks is silky smooth, although there are weak spots in the sets: His four-song Beatles medley isn’t too thrilling — when he gets to “Blackbird” it’s a bit cringey. But we must remember that it was pretty much compulsory to do a Beatles number or two back then. He also delivers an able but unspirited version of Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher”.
But overall, Darin’s lounge lizard sense of humour comes through in some off the cuff lyrical delivery and general in-between-song banter. And when his voice shines through — as in “Fire and Rain” and “If I Were A Carpenter” — it’s rich, rounded and perfectly formed.