COOL PEOPLE-BOBBY DARIN

The LegendaryBobby Darin

Bobby Darin Biography
Film Actor, Singer (1936–1973
QUICK FACTS

NAME
Bobby Darin
OCCUPATION
Film Actor, Singer
BIRTH DATE
May 14, 1936
DEATH DATE
December 20, 1973
PLACE OF BIRTH
The Bronx, New York
PLACE OF DEATH
Los Angeles, California
ORIGINALLY
Walden Robert Cassotto

The Legendary
Bobby Darin

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“My goal is to be remembered
as a human being and as a great
performer.”
– Bobby Darin –

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 ABOUT

Bobby Darin was an American singer, songwriter and actor who became a ubiquitous presence in pop entertainment in the late 1950s and 1960s.

QUOTES
“My goal is to be remembered as a human being and as a great performer.”
—Bobby Darin

Bobby Darin – Splish Splash Singer (TV-14; 1:12) Watch a short video about Bobby Darin and find out what tragic historical event sent this singer into seclusion.
Synopsis

Born in 1936, Bobby Darin moved from performing in New York City coffeehouses into recording in the late 1950s. In 1958, “Splish Splash,” a novelty song he wrote relatively quickly, became an international hit. He then recorded adult-oriented tracks, hitting it big with “Mack the Knife” and earning two Grammys. He died on December 20, 1973 in Los Angeles, and posthumously entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame decades later.

Challenging Childhood

Born on May 14, 1936, in the Bronx, New York, entertainer Bobby Darin reached the heights of fame in his all-too-brief life. He grew up poor in New York City. Throughout his childhood, Darin was told that his parents were Sam and Polly Cassotto. Sam Cassotto had been an associate of crime boss Frank Costello and had died in Sing Sing Prison. Polly, a former vaudeville performer, encouraged young Bobby to become a star like Frank Sinatra.

In fact, Darin was actually the Cassottos’ grandson. His real mother was Nina Cassotto, the woman he grew up believing was his sister. Nina had gotten pregnant as an unwed teenager, and she and Polly decided that it would be better if Polly assumed the role of mother. While he later learned the truth about his mother, Darin never discovered who his father really was.

Darin was a thin, sickly child. Several bouts of rheumatic fever had permanently damaged his heart, and he was plagued by other health problems as well. Around the age of 6 or 7, Darin overheard a doctor’s grim prognosis for him. The doctor said he didn’t expect Darin to live past the age of 16. Rather than depress him, these words seemed to serve as an inspiration for Darin.

Early Ambitions

Well versed in several instruments, Darin started out as playing in a band in high school. One of his first gigs was a school dance. At 16, he and his band mates landed a job at a Catskills resort for the summer. Darin showed a knack not just for music but comedy as well. After high school, he briefly attended Hunter College. Darin launched his professional music career writing songs for the Aldon Music label and eventually landed his own record contract with Atco.

In 1958, Darin made it big with the lighthearted catchy rock tune “Splish Splash”—a song he wrote that reached the Top 5 of the pop charts. He quickly became one of the teen idols of the era with such songs as “Queen of the Hop.” Darin, however, proved himself to be more than another Dion or Frankie Avalon. In 1959, he scored big with two songs, “Dream Lover” and “Mack the Knife,” the latter of which was his first No. 1 hit on the Billboard charts and won him a Grammy Award for record of the year. Darin also won a Grammy for best new artist.

Top Entertainer

Darin continued to enjoy great popularity in the early 1960s. Moving from the concert stage to the big screen, he starred in the romantic comedy Come September (1961) with Rock Hudson, Gina Lollobrigida and Sandra Dee. Darin and Dee were a celebrity couple off-screen as well, having eloped together the previous year.

Trying his hand at a musical, he starred with Pat Boone and Ann-Margret in State Fair (1962). Darin went on to earn an Academy Award nomination for his work in 1963’s Captain Newman, M.D.. This World War II film stars Gregory Peck, Tony Curtis and Angie Dickinson.

Around this time, Darin also established himself as one of the top acts in Las Vegas. He became a popular crooner, not unlike his hero Frank Sinatra. Yet Darin drew inspiration from a broader musical background and was a more restless and ambitious performer. Darin became such a force in Las Vegas that he reportedly even helped Wayne Newton get his career off the ground there.

On the music charts, Darin enjoyed such hits as “Beyond the Sea” and “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby.” He even had success with his take on country music with “Things” and “You’re the Reason I’m Living.” A song he wrote for his wife Sandra Dee, “18 Yellow Roses,” also proved to be a hit with fans.

Final Years

Darin had his last major hit in 1966 with his take on the folk song “If I Were a Carpenter.” Around this time, his marriage to actress Sandra Dee came to end. The couple had one son named Dodd together before splitting up.

As music tastes were changing, Darin himself seemed to be evolving. He became more politically and campaigned on behalf of Robert F. Kennedy during his 1968 presidential bid. Kennedy’s assassination that June was a devastating blow to Darin. Around this time, he opened his own label Direction Records and continued to explore his interest in folk music and protest songs. Darin wrote “Simple Song of Freedom,” which became a hit for Tim Hardin.

In the early 1970s, Darin signed with Motown Records. His later efforts failed to attract much of an audience, but he still remained popular with his live act in Las Vegas. Darin’s heart problems finally caught up with him. On December 20, 1973, he died of heart failure in Hollywood, California. Darin was only 37 years old at the time. He was survived by his second wife Andrea Joy Yeager, whom he had married the previous year, and his son Dodd.

While he may be gone, Darin’s music still lives on. His songs have appeared on numerous film and television soundtracks, including Goodfellas, American Beauty and The Sopranos. Actor Kevin Spacey helped bring Darin’s life story to the big screen in Beyond the Sea in 2004. Spacey starred and directed the project and served as its co-writer as well.

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Citation Information

Article Title

Bobby Darin Biography
Author

Biography.com Editors
Website Name

The Biography.com website
URL

http://www.biography.com/people/bobby-darin-9266149

Visit the Site Index

Check Here For What’s New

“My goal is to be remembered
as a human being and as a great
performer.”
– Bobby Darin –

BOBBY’S ON FACEBOOK

BOBBY DARIN HONORED WITH GRAMMY LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

A SPECIAL LETTER OF GRATITUDE FROM DODD

NOMINATE BOBBY FOR A US POSTAGE STAMP

PLEASE SIGN THE GUEST BOOK

“The Bobby Darin Show” DVD

“Seeing Is Believing”  DVD

“Aces Back to Back” DVD/CD

“Songs from Big Sur” CD

Jimmy Scalia, Official Darin Archivist

#bobby_darin#singer#pop#bio#music#1960#1970#beatnikhiway.com#ana_christy#heartthrob

 

 

Amazing Photographs of Life at a #Hippie Tree House Village in Hawaii in the 1970s

Taylor Camp was born in the spring of 1969 when Howard Taylor (brother of actress Elizabeth) bailed out thirteen hippies seeking refuge from the ongoing campus riots in America and police brutality. The camp formed on the idea offree living, settled in this tree house village on the beautiful shore of Kauai. Clothing-optional, pot-friendly, rent free, and no politics made this village utopia in paradise.These nostalgic photos were taken by John Wehrheim who was a Taylor Camp resident. Such magical images he captured of this village which many look back as the “happiest days of their lives”. Sadly the community was torched and put to an end in 1977 to make room for a state park.

The Taylor Camp book is also available to buy here.

In January 1949, Jack Kerouac failed to appear for an afternoon date with a woman called Pauline

Road Ready

‘The Voice Is All,’ by Joyce Johnson

By  JAMES CAMPBELL

Published: January 18, 2013    

In January 1949, Jack Kerouac failed to appear for an afternoon date with a woman called Pauline. He had told Allen Ginsberg he planned to marry her — “the finest woman I’ll ever know” — once she had unshackled herself from her truck-driver husband, who, according to Joyce Johnson, was accustomed to “slapping her around to keep her in line.” In the meantime, Kerouac began an affair with Adele Morales (later to become the second Mrs. Norman Mailer). His failure to keep the rendezvous with Pauline, however, had nothing to do with affection for Adele; rather, he had overslept after a night of sex games with Luanne Henderson, whom Jack’s muse Neal Cassady had married when she was 15, and who, according to their friend Hal Chase, was “quite easy to get . . . into bed.” The tryst had been engineered by Cassady, who was hoping to watch, Johnson says, to show Luanne, by then 18, “how little she meant to him.” Two days later, Kerouac called on Ginsberg and found Luanne “covered with bruises from a beating Neal had given her.” Johnson describes Kerouac as “shocked” by the sight; nevertheless, “they all went out to hear bebop,” partly financed by money stolen by Cassady. In response to being jilted, Pauline confessed her affair to her husband, who tried to burn her on the stove. Kerouac described her in his journal as a “whore.” All the while, Ginsberg can be heard in the background: “How did we get here, angels?”

Enlarge This Image

Collection of Allen Ginsberg, via Sotheby’s

Jack Kerouac in his Columbia University football uniform, 1940s.

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THE VOICE IS ALL

The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac

By Joyce Johnson

489 pp. Viking. $32.95.

Related

• Times Topic: Jack Kerouac

This is an everyday story of the Beat Generation in late-1940s New York, a tale of crazy mixed-up kids who took a lot of drugs, dabbled in criminality — with two homicides among the statistics — lapsed into madness, were fond of identifying one another as “saints, saints,” but often had the barest notion of what it means to respect the individuality of other human beings. Yet three members of the inner circle, Kerouac, Ginsberg and William Burroughs, created experimental literary works of remarkable originality — in particular, “On the Road,” “Kaddish” and “Naked Lunch” — which read as freshly today as they did 50 years ago; perhaps, in an instance of that trick that the best art sometimes plays on us, more so.

Kerouac certainly makes a good subject, but there already exist about a dozen biographies (by Ann Charters, Barry Miles, Gerald Nicosia, among others), not to mention memoirs, an oral history — the excellent “Jack’s Book” (1978) — and wider surveys of the Beat Generation. In “Minor Characters” (1983), Johnson wrote about her affair with Kerouac at the time of publication of “On the Road.” She now steps back to a period of Kerouac’s life with which she has no direct acquaintance, tracing the story from his origins in a French Canadian family in Lowell, Mass., to New York in 1951, where the book ends with a rare citation from ­Kerouac’s journals: “I’m lost, but my work is found.”

Johnson justifies the retelling of what is in outline a familiar tale by the fact of having gained access to the vast Kerouac archive, “deposited in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library in 2002.” So far, so good. No large-scale Kerouac biography, so far as I am aware (“The Voice Is All” lacks a bibliography), has appeared since that date. Unfortunately, Johnson was apparently refused permission to quote at length from the journals and working drafts among Kerouac’s papers. The result is a life in paraphrase.

The method gives rise to frustration. In 1945, for example, Kerouac began writing a novel called “I Wish I Were You,” a reworking of the story of the killing of David Kammerer by Lucien Carr in 1944. Together, Kerouac and Burroughs had previously written “And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks,” a collaboration on the same subject that eventually saw the light of day in 2008. According to Johnson, “I Wish I Were You” is a different beast: “In two successive drafts of the first 100 pages, Jack put in all the textural detail that had been left out of ‘Hippos’ and even returned with renewed confidence to the lyricism he had abandoned just the year before. It was really quite brilliant, the best prose he had written so far

US musician Phil Everly dies aged 74

4 January 2014 Last updated at 02:34 ET

“ALL I NEED TO DO IS DREAM”

http://youtu.be/lTYe9eDqxe8

“LET IT BE ME”

.http://youtu.be/4d1ig-dYuLk

US musician Phil Everly dies aged 74

Phil (left) and Don’s hits included Bye Bye Love, Wake Up Little Suzie and All I Have To Do Is Dream

US musician Phil Everly, one half of the Everly Brothers, has died, aged 74, in California, his family says.

Everly died in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank of complications from lung disease, his wife, Patti, told the Los Angeles Times.

“We are absolutely heartbroken,” she said, adding that the disease was the result of a lifetime of smoking.

Phil Everly and his brother Don made up the Everly Brothers, one of the biggest pop acts of the 1950s and early 1960s.

They had a string of close-harmony hits including Wake Up Little Suzie, Cathy’s Clown, Bye Bye Love, and All I Have To Do Is Dream.

“It’s a terrible, terrible loss – for me, for everybody,” US rock pioneer Duane Eddy, a friend of Everly, told BBC Radio 5live.

Infamous

Guitarist and friend Duane Eddy: Death of Phil Everly is “a huge blow”

Everly died on Friday of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his son Jason Everly told AP.

The Washington Post quoted a woman at Don Everly’s home as saying he was too upset to talk about the death of his brother. “He expected to go first,” she told the newspaper.

Rolling Stone magazine calls the Everly Brothers “the most important vocal duo in rock”.

In its biography of the pair, the magazine says Phil and his older brother Don were the children of Midwestern country music singers Ike and Margaret Everly and performed on the family radio show while growing up.

In their heyday between 1957 and 1962, the Everly Brothers had 19 Top 40 hits, according to the Associated Press. They influenced acts such as the Beatles and the Beach Boys.

The pair had an onstage breakup in 1973 that led to a decade-long estrangement, but Phil later told Time magazine the brothers’ relationship had survived this.

“Don and I are infamous for our split,” Phil said, “but we’re closer than most brothers.”

The Everly Brothers were elected to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in its first year, 1986, and they were given a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys in 1997.

Among the musicians paying tribute to the singer and guitarist, was singer-songwriter Charlie Daniels, who tweeted: “Rest in peace Phil Everly. You guys brought us a lot of pleasure back in the day.”

JACK KEROUAC INTERVIEW ON WILLIAM BUCKLEY

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/video/1CrXJJ

BEATNIK ORIGINS

 

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Beatnik Movement

The Beatniks, coming from the Beat Movement, started in the 1950’s. Starting in New York City by a group of writers, the name soon became known to the entire country. Their first work noticed worldwide was Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, which was based on graphic sexual language. They were known as a counterculture and antimaterialistic because they were an extreme of modern day culture. The Hippie movement is thought to have been influenced by the Beatniks. This strange and new subculture had unusual thoughts and views compared to mainstream society.^[1]

Central Issue

This new culture was different than the country had seen thus far. Men with goatees, berets, and playing bongos were assumed to be a Beatnik. There were very few women in this group, but they were seen to wear black leotards and longer than normal hair lengths. The term “Beatnik” was first coined by a San Francisco writer suggested that this subculture was far out from the mainstream society and was possibly pro-Communist; the “nik” comes from the prefix from the Russian “USSR” space shuttle Sputnik.^[2] Their central elements were the rejection of mainstream American Values, use of drugs and alternative forms of sexuality, and interest in Eastern Spirituality. Some of the drugs they used were marijuana, benedrine, and morphine.

Conclusion / Historical Significance

The Beatniks were the first subculture of America that dealt with people’s lifestyles and political views and not because of race or ethnicity. Their specific views laid the path for future groups and movements to take place. The Beatniks are what are thought to have started the Hippie Movement of the 60’s. One of the Beatnik writers, Kerouac, once said, “The Beat Generation was on bottom, but they were looking up.” 

BEAT SLANG 1950’S

 

 

Beat Slang 1950s

The thing that’s really interesting about the Beat slang 1950s era is that of all the various times when slang was popular, then died out, it’s in this particular epoch that so much of the jargon is still in current use.

You sure can’t say that about the lingo of any other decade, all the way from the 1920s (“23 skidoo”) to the1960s (“groovy!”)

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Origin of Beat

The Beat generation harkens back to the late 1940s. The generation was sick of World War 2 and stunned by the sudden entry into the atomic age by the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. They had no place to go, and nothing from which to draw hope. They were the predecessors of the “turn on and tune out” hippies of the 1960s (although, it can be argued, the Beatniks – the followers of the Beat lifestyle – did it with more aplomb than the hippies.)

 

 

The term “beatnik” is derived from the slang term “beat,” which was popularized by famous writer Jack Kerouac after the war. “Beat” came to mean “beaten down,” but Kerouac said that wasn’t his intent.   

The Beat Generation, as Kerouac saw it, were people who were “down and out, but who had intense conviction.”

Hipsters Loved Jazz

In some ways, the Beatniks’ music was way “cooler” (a very Beat word.)

 

 

“Hipster,” as Kerouac used it, is one of the lead slang terms of the generation. Hipsters were aficionados of jazz music, and the entire jazz lifestyle. That included a particular lingo, dress, and attitude, and probably the first systematic use of marijuana in an American subculture.

The word “hipster” ultimately replaced the slang “hepcat,” which was pretty much a jazz subculture follower of decades earlier.

 

Anyone who was a hipster was in constant pursuit of whatever was “cool,” a slang term that survives to this day. In the late 40s, that included a combination of jazz and bebop, or bop, music, a takeoff on jazz, but with a quicker beat and lots of improvisation.

Dating for the Beat Generation

 

 

Hipsters were also relaxed about other conventional social mores, including sex. Jazz musicians attracted their own followings; the hipsters were, in their day, a bit like groupies (band followers).

Let’s say you’re interested in a girl. The first looks translate into “eyeballing a doll” (that is, giving the potential date a good lookover.)

You envision what’d it be like to take her out. You anticipate it being an incredible amount of fun; or in Beat-speak, “a gas.”

But if the chick nixes the “back seat bingo” (a phrase devoted to the fine art of kissing, or making out, with a girl in a car), she’d be “bad news.”  It’s important to note that it’s not the act of rejection, but the person themselves, who is the “bad news.”

About Beat Slang in the 1950s

State of Coolness

But how serious is this chick? Does she really have to be home early to “Big Daddy,” or is she just “copping a bit”?

In this usage, Big Daddy may indeed be the potential date’s father. But more likely, it’s an older person who isn’t hep to the Beat scene (and wants to put a damper on Beatnik fun.)

The date herself may very well be a closet square; that’s why she’s “copping a bit” (making up an act to delude the Beatnik.)

Squares are an abundant source for Beatniks of “the big tickle” (a laugh at the expense of the victim.) But hey, it’s not like they were cool to begin with! No big loss in Beat society.

Such a person is known as a “square” or “cube” in Beat slang in the 1950s.

 

The only major differences were the degree of “squareness.” A waitress, for example, might be square, but she probably wasn’t nearly as square as, say, a banker, an accountant, or – the worst yet! – a cop.

 

 

Anti-police Slang

Because of their “on the brink” lifestyle, and their engagement in activities that were either straight out or borderline illegal, the worst enemy a beatnik had was an officer of the law.

This may be the first time the use of the word “pig” as a slang slur against policemen had been used.

If a beatnik saw a bunch of cops heading toward a hipster hangout, he’d “haul ass” or “beat the gravel” (run like crazy to get away from them, since cops were never up to any good in Beatnik circles.)

More Cool Words

Beat culture had many ways of describing the ultimate amazing experience. Did you cats have a blast? That’s like saying the Daddy-o Beatniks were cookin’!

Both phrases have similar meanings. “Cats” and “Daddy-o” are variation on the Beatnik self-descriptive “hipster” word to describe, well, themselves! Beatniks are nothing if not self-referential.

A blast and cooking? No, it’s not the prelude to a Beatnik barbecue. A blast to the Beats is pretty much the same as it is to modern day partiers: a fun time. If you were cookin’, it’s a high compliment, indeed. It merely meant you were doing something well (as in a jazz musician, favorites of the Beats, playing a hot horn so much so that the patrons said he was “cooking

More Beat Slang

If you dig it, man, that’s crazy! (This is all a good thing among Beats.)

“Digging” is getting, or understanding, something, just like being “in orbit”; and “crazy,” like “boss!”, are both  euphemisms for something that’s just plain old good.

Just don’t “go ape,” especially at “the flicks,” or your fellow movie patrons are apt to get “wigged out.” (That means don’t yell at the movies, or it’s apt to annoy the rest of the audience.)

Are you out to get your “kicks” by “making the scene”? The kicks is the thrill you get by doing something fun or incredible; and if you’re “making the scene,” you’re in the right place at the right time.

As you can see, there’s an art to Beat slang from the 1950s. It’s worth the effort to make the language scene, especially if your goal is to be a real hipster!