Earlier this afternoon The Villan mentioned Bobby Darin, truly an underappreciated Great One. I had the opportunity to see the new biographical file "Beyond the Sea" last night, which brought back memories of this really hot singer.

The movie is pretty good, and Kevin Spacey's performance is *really* good. But I digress, I want to discuss Darin, not the movie.

How terrific a singer do you have to be to redo a LOUIS "SATCHMO" ARMSTRONG hit ("Mack the Knife") and make it into your own signature number! What incredible balls, AND talent!

At the very time that Bobby Darin was having his greatest success, moving "up" from American Bandstand to the big time nightclub circuit, I was more than ever turned off by mainstream American adult commercial music, because I was in the first flush of infatuation/discovery of unpolished traditional blues and folk music. Bobby Darin seemed to represent all that I liked *least* in popular music, and I decided not to like him, tried not to like him, but (of course) couldn't help but enjoy is renditions of, well, just about everything he tried.

Well, I still probably prefer Tim Hardin's rendition of his own "Carpenter" to Darin's, and always have, but Bobby's is not bad at all, and *all* his songs were terrific: "Splish Splash" (which he wrote on the spot in the recording studio) -- nothing serious, but good enough to be an unknown's breakout hit; "Dream Lover," the quintessential romantic doo-wop cha-cha-cha; the aforementioned "Mack the Knife," which managed to duplicate most of the power and soulfulness of Louis' definitive reading while lending the purer, sweeter tone of a great singing voice; the defining composition of his late hippie period, "Abraham, Martin and John," inexplicably omitted from the new movie in favor of two renditions of "Simple Song of Freedom" -- the guy was too much.