Track Listing

1. Splish Splash
2. Early In The Morning
3. Queen Of The Hop
4. Plain Jane
5. Dream Lover
6. Mack The Knife
7. Beyond The Sea
8. Clementine
9. Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey
10. Artificial Flowers
11. Lazy River
12. You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby
13. Irresistible You
14. Multiplication
15. What'd I Say
16. Things
17. You're The Reason I'm Living
18. 18 Yellow Roses
19. If I Were A Carpenter
20. Lovin' You

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7142 in Music
• Released on: 2002-04-16
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .26 pounds

Album Description
Rhino release featuring 20 swingin' tracks released from 1958-1966 on the Atco, Capitol and Atlantic labels. 2002.

Amazon.com
Bobby Darin was one of the most personally complex and unpredictable artists of the rock era. Indeed, it's hard to find another major artist who reinvented himself with the deceptive ease and overwhelming success chronicled on this 20-track highlight disc. After scoring three lively and considerable Top 10 successes in the space of a year in the late 1950s ("Splish Splash," "Queen of the Hop," "Dream Lover"), Darin traded in his teen idol sweater 'n' slacks for a tux and tie (evidence suggests he considered rock a passing fad!) and went gunning for Sinatra and the Rat Pack. The immediate results were the Grammy-winning No. 1 legend "Mack the Knife" (adapted from Kurt Weill's "Moritat" in The Threepenny Opera) and the enduring, French-inspired Top 10 hit "Beyond the Sea." If Darin spent the early '60s alternately goosing standards from the American songbook ("Clementine," "Bill Bailey," "Lazy River," "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby," etc.) and mending a few rock-pop fences ("Multiplication," "Things"), he still had another surprise in store. His Top 10 take on Tim Hardin's dolorous "If I Were a Carpenter" cast him all too convincingly as conscientious '60s folkie. Other highlights here include his irresistible, swinging take on the lyrically bleak "Artificial Flowers" and his successful, self-penned nods to the '60s Nashville sound, "You're the Reason I'm Living" and "18 Yellow Roses." Darin was considerably more than the first postmodern lounge Revivalist, and herein lies the evidence. --Jerry McCulley

Customer Reviews

Almost all of Bobby Darin's Top 40 hits on one CD
"The Hit Singles Collection" comes to us courtesy of Rhino, which means you know you are going to get not only 20 choice tracks which include (almost) all of Bobby Darin's Top 40 hits but also solid liner notes from Bill Dahl. The chief attractions are the Top 10 hits, which would be "Splish Splash" (#3), "Queen Of The Hop" (#9), "Dream Lover" (#2), "Mack the Knife" (#1), "Beyond the Sea" (#6), "You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby" (#5), "Things" (#3), "You're The Reason I'm Living" (#3), "18 Yellow Roses" (#10), and "If I Were a Carpenter" (#8). As you can see, that is half the album right there. Overall the songs reflect the wide range of Darin's career, where he did everything from popular standards to rock 'n' roll with a bit of folk-rocker and Vegas hip cat in between. Darin is often dismissed as a junior grade Frank Sinatra, but you have to give him credit for refusing to be limited to a particular type of music. This was a man who sang songs written by both Kurt Weill and John Sebastian, and who covered Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones in his nightclub act.

Is this a complete hits collection? Well, there are a pair of Top 40 hits missing ("If a Man Answers" and "Nature Boy") and Darin easily had another dozen songs that made the Billboard charts that could have been picked over. But these would be minor quibbles over all and you will be hard pressed to find a better single CD collection of Darin songs than "The Hit Singles Collection." Darin died relatively young (in 1973 during open-heart surgery) and his election to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 recognized that whatever his limitations his body of work is rather significant in terms of both the overall quality and the diversity. For those looking for something more ambitions Rhino also has a four-CD box set, "As Long As I'm Singing: The Bobby Darin Collection," which is more comprehensive in terms of not only hits but also B-sides and other obscure recordings. But I am happy with this one for now.

I Remember; I Was There
Bobby Darin started out as a songwriter with mixed results. He played several instruments in fact. Somebody heard his singing as he pitched his songs and suggested he record the songs himself. Good idea. He did get a contract to record. At the time, songs devoted to dancing were popular and the resulting "Splish Splash" and "Queen of the Hop" sold a million records each. The much better "Dream Lover" in early 1959 was also a big hit, but Bobby aspired to appeal to a greater audience and released "Mack the Knife", a more Sinatra-esque song which became the Record of the Year and sold TWO million records. During this period, he also succeeded with Hoagy Carmichael's "Up a Lazy River" from another era, his own jazzy take on the traditional (My Darlin') "Clementine" and "Beyond the Sea". Darin, born Robert Cossotto, seemed to be a lounge singer's lounge singer. Then he did "Multiplication". a bouncy song more attuned to the teen market. His "Things" ruled the summer of 1962. Not only did he have hits in 1963 with the country-flavored "You're the Reason I'm Living" and the Latin-beat of "18 Yellow Roses"; he also was nominated for an Oscar for his role in "Captain Newman, M.D." (He had more than one role in his career where he played a "disturbed" person). Darin later become more socially active during the protest years reflected, I believe, in his gentle 1966 hit, "If I Were A Carpenter", yet another departure from his known works. He later claimed to have been deeply affected by the death of Robert Kennedy in 1968 and went into seclusion for a long time, emerging without his hairpiece and wearing hippie-like glasses to perform. Before he returned to his old swaggering persona, he recorded a really good tune which is not in this selection called "Me and Mister Hohner" (his harmonica) and is worth a mention. After calling in his congratulations to Dick Clark on the 20th anniversary of "American Bandstand", Bobby Darin died during open heart surgery. He was only 37. In 1990 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 1999 into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, in both cases appropriately so. I recommend this good compilation of singles which is how most young people bought their music at about a buck a piece during those years.

ought to Buy it !
Good selection of his classic songs.Any age group can appreciate Bobby Darin's contribution of music