Bobby Darin - A&E

A good compilation of his work from start to finish. The first cut is from his last recorded performance, and has a lot of humor injected in the center. You would never know that he was very ill when you listen to "Higher and Higher", and would die several months later. Bobby gave 150% to his audiences, and despite comparisons to Sinatra and the rest, he was true to himself and his talent is unmistakable. Why else would we be listening 27 years after his death? This is a great CD for a beginning Bobby Darin fan.

Every Song is a WINNER!

This is one of my favorite CDs! From the live performances of "Beyond the Sea" and "The Curtain Falls" to such classics as "The Good Life" and "Don't Rain On My Parade," you'll love every single song. "Love Look Away," a previously unreleased song, is on this CD too. The live version of "Mack the Knife" is as good as the original, although Bobby forgets some of the lyrics at the beginning. His fun humor about it is hilarious! Discover the wonderful, awesome talent of Bobby Darin with this great CD.

This album is outrageous

This album is outrageous. It's all live,but not from the same concert. Some of them were done in 1963 at the Flamingo, others in 1973 (the year he died) in Los Angeles. Only after I saw Spacey's film "Beyond the Sea" and read Darin's biography, did I realize that the 1973 concert was his last major one, and he already knew his time was running out. That makes the performances even more powerful to listen to. It is awe-inspiring that this guy was running backstage for oxygen between songs. "Beyond the Sea" is great fun here; the song doesn't have the studio version's romance and power, but his joshing with the audience and the interminable vamp are tons of fun. (Also pick up the sly ad lib reference to his by-then-ex-wife Sandra Dee: "My lover stands on Tommy Sands ..." - he was one of those Mouseketeer types from her Beach Blanket Bingo days.) "As Long As I'm Singing" was sort of a signature song for him, so true about the buzz he got from performing. It's great to hear "Mack the Knife" live. "18 Yellow Roses" is a great period song and Darin wrote it. It gives me a really strong sense of the late 1950s and early 1960s for reasons I can't explain. (In the Darin book it notes that when he was courting Sandra Dee on a Rome movie set - she was all of 16 and fiercely guarded by her mother - he sent her 18 yellow roses every day.) "Call Me Irresponsible" is one of the Darin songs used in the film "American Beauty" and is iconic in its own way. "If I Were A Carpenter" represents another phase of the old pop's decay, this one "struggling to stay relevant" as rock and political folk displaced it. It still has a great sense of period. This entire album is made worthy by this version of "Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher". You want to turn your stereo up REAL loud for this one. And it just keeps building and building. Both he and the backup singers are just out of this world; it is so powerful. When you think he would die that same year from a weak heart - imagine a weak heart singing this. It's barely imaginable. "Don't Rain On My Parade" is schlock but I enjoy wallowing in it.