Chart entered : 13 October 1966
Chart peak : 9
At the back end of 1966 we have some more departures. This was an impressive comeback hit for Bobby, his first for over three years and the first to make the Top 20 since "Things" in the summer of 1962.
Bobby was a smart operator who knew he had to adapt to the times and this single heralded a move towards folk rock. "If I Were A Carpenter" was a yet-to-be-released song by up and coming songwriter Tim Hardin. It's a wonderfully ambiguous song, a man testing the love of his woman by posing the question what if he were a mere artisan rather than her social equal ? There's no resolution in the song and Bobby's version teases out all the doubt and unease with his dry enervated vocal. Don Peake's arrangement with its sombre drones and restless percussion underlines the darkness of this reading.
It became the title track of a new album of folk rock covers, an abrupt change from his previous LP, a dismal collection of Broadway tunes. Although it only got to 142 in the US album charts it did spawn two more hits in the US. "The Girl Who Stood Beside Me " is a Jeffrey Stevens song with a very strange arrangement, the droning bagpipe throughout the song suggesting someone had been listening to Tomorrow Never Knows. "Lovin You" is a Loving Spoonful song with Bobby's slurred vocal matching the good time vibe of the song. It was Bobby's last Top 40 hit in the States.
Bobby then released another Hardin cover "The Lady Came From Baltimore" his charming tale of a thief who falls in love with his mark. Bobby's vocal is strangely muffled which doesn't seem like an artistic choice. It reached number 62. His next one "Darlin' Be Home Soon" was another John Sebastian song ,Homeward Bound from the woman's point of view. Bobby's version with its breezy strings sounds like Roger Whittaker an octave higher. It scraped to number 93. It doesn't appear to have been released as a single in the UK. Both songs came from his "Inside Out" album which failed to chart.
Bobby then baffled everyone by recording the LP "Bobby Darin Sings Dr Dolittle", as the title suggests a selection of songs from the musical written by Anthony Newley's old mucker Lesley Bricusse. Recorded in just three weeks with arranger Roger Kellaway it's difficult to avoid the suspicion that it was a "contractual obligation" album to cut his ties with Atlantic. Certainly they
were not too happy to be confronted with an album of songs from a film that had just died a horrible death at the box office. In the US, "Talk To The Animals" was the single, done dead straight although he messed up the lyrics when performing it on The Jerry Lewis Show . In the UK it was the ballad "At The Crossroads" which is classic late sixties orchestrated MOR. Bobby was too much of a professional to make a deliberately sloppy record.
Bobby then threw himself into politics supporting Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign and was present at his assassination in June 1968. Stunned by this and a family revelation about his parentage he withdrew from the public eye until the end of the ear when he released "Long Line Rider" on his own new label Direction records. He was now a protest singer doing a rock song about the discovery of skeletons at a prison farm in Arkansas earlier in the year.It sounds a bit like Eric Burdon and the Animals and is pretty good. Despite the bewildering change in the direction it got to number 79, the last hit in his lifetime. Unfortunately the album "Born Walden Robert Cassotto " didn't sell.
In 1969 he came out with "Me And Mr Hohner" ( not released in the UK ) a proto-slacker shuffle ( not a million miles away from Beck ! ) about getting harrassed by the cops with sardonic harmonica blasts which sadly failed to make it. "Distractions ( Part 1 ) " is a semi-comic song about failing to write, in a Country Joe And The Fish vein with some nifty acoustic guitar work. It's B side "Jive" which is much in the same mode was his next UK single on Bell in December 1969. These songs were on "Commitment" the last LP released in his lifetime. He did however have the satisfaction of seeing his "Simple Song Of Freedom" make the US Top 50 for Tim Hardin.
"Baby May" ( not in the UK ) , his last sixties single, was another protest song about a girl's suicide which her father attributed to LSD despite clean toxicology reports. It's a cracking song with punchy drums, great sax work and an urgent vocal from Bobby. "Maybe We Can Get It Together" his first single of the seventies and last on Direction, is a slow Blue Mink-ish call for unity with a drowsy organ and gospel backing vocals. It was his last UK release.
Mounting health bills led to Bobby taking out his toupee and tuxedo once more and performing as a crooner in Vegas and similar venues although he needed an oxygen tank backstage to sustain him. Unable to cope with running his own label as his health declined, Bobby became an incongruous signing for Motown in 1970.
His first single for them was "Melodie" in April 1971. Bobby wanted a crack at R & B so current supremo Deke Richards put him together with Jerry Marcelino and Mel Larson and the result is the best record The Four Tops never made. Bobby doesn't really sound like Levi Stubbs but for a white guy it's a damned good attempt. Unfortunately Bobby was laid up after heart surgery to fit two artificial valves and unable to promote it. While waiting for him to recover they put out a live version of "Simple Song Of Freedom" from a gig at the Desert Inn they had recorded.
Bobby went on to make two LPs for Motown, one of them released posthumously. At the same time he was doing concerts and TV appearances. "Bobby Darin" was released in August 1972 and was an eclectic bunch of songs from Randy Newman's anti-slavery diatribe "Sail Away" to George Clinton's ennui-laden "Average People". Neither made the grade as singles despite Bobby's heavy exposure and the album slipped away.
Bobby was then put to work with Bob Crewe and from those sessions came what proved to be his final single , "Happy" in November 1972. It was a co-write between Smokey Robinson and Michael Legrand for the film Lady Sings The Blues. An MOR chest beater in the Andy Williams vein, Bobby does it full justice. Repeat exposure on Bobby's new TV show The Bobby Darin Amusement Co finally gave him another hit as it reached number 67 in the early part of 1973.
In June he remarried. On August 26 1973 he gave what turned out to be his last performance at the Las Vegas Hilton. Shortly afterwards he neglected to take the precautionary antibiotics before a dental visit and an infection set in that his weakened heart couldn't fight off without sustaining further heavy damage. Bobby was reluctant to undergo further surgery but by December he could hardly walk and had to go into hospital . After six hours of fairly hopeless surgery he died. The whole story of Bobby's last days is told in harrowing and frankly unnecessary detail in Al DiOrio's biography. His will left his body to science so in some California laboratory there may still be a bit of Bobby lurking in a jar .
Motown put together a final LP from what it had and released it in 1974 . It gained little attention. In 1979 oldies label Lightning scored an opportunistic minor hit in the UK by pairing "Dream Lover" and "Mac The Knife". In 2004 a biopic, Beyond The Sea, starring Kevin Spacey who had bought the film rights some years earlier possibly because of his strong physical resemblance to Bobby, came out to generally unfavourable reviews and poor box office returns. It is widely regarded as a self-indulgent mis-step in the actor's illustrious career.
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