Bobby Darin (May 14, 1936 – December 20, 1973) was an American singer, songwriter, and actor of film and television. He performed in a range of music genres, including pop, rock ’n’ roll, folk, and country. He recorded his first million-seller “Splish Splash” in 1958. This was followed by “Dream Lover”, “Mack the Knife”, and “Beyond the Sea”, which brought him world fame. In 1962, he won a Golden Globe for his first film Come September. Throughout the 1960s, he became more politically active and worked on Robert Kennedy’s Democratic presidential campaign. Following bouts of rheumatic fever in childhood, his health began to fail as he knew it would. This knowledge of his vulnerability had always spurred him on to exploit his musical talent while still young. He died at age 37, following a heart operation in Los Angeles. (More from Wikipedia)
On the following album, The Times They Are A-Changin’, the targets are even more diffuse. The structure of “When the Ship Comes In” was inspired – by way of the cultural tastes of Dylan’s former girlfriend Suze Rotolo – by a Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill song “Pirate Jenny”; the song comes from their play, The Threepenny Opera. The song is closely associated with Weill’s wife, the Austrian singer Lotte Lenya, and her breakout role was in a 1928 production of The Threepenny Opera. The most famous song from that play is “Mack the Knife”, which was an unexpectedly huge hit for Bobby Darin in 1959. The lyrics in his version of the song even reference “Miss Lotte Lenya”. Lenya is best known to Americans for her role as the villainous Rosa Klebb in the 1963 James Bond movie, From Russia with Love.
(May 2013)
Glen Campbell quickly became highly sought after as a guitarist and played for a wide variety of artists in the 1960’s; Wikipedia lists recordings by Bobby Darin, Rick Nelson, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, the Monkees, Nancy Sinatra, Merle Haggard, Jan & Dean, Elvis Presley, and Frank Sinatra.
(February 2015)
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Particularly in the 1970’s, Motown Records began signing a more wide-ranging group of musical acts. Many were established artists from years past, such as Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Bobby Darin, “twang” guitarist Duane Eddy, and the Easybeats (an Australian band who had had a worldwide hit in 1966 with “Friday on My Mind”).
(April 2015/1)
