Bobby Darin

A classic entertainer in the mould of Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin always had an edgier, more diverse side than your average pop crooner. Raised in a tough area of The Bronx by his mother (his gangster father died before his birth), he was born Walden Robert Cassotto, but chose the stage name Darin by flicking through a telephone directory. Starting out as a songwriter for Decca and Atlantic Records, he had his first big hit with the million-selling Splish Splash in 1958 before scoring a US and UK Number 1 with a classic, Grammy-winning version of Mack The Knife. Darin headlined the big casinos in Las Vegas and starred in the Hollywood movies Come September, Pressure Point and Captain Newman, M.D, but also started to dabble with folk and country music, having hits with the self-penned Things and You're The Reason I'm Living and reaching Number 9 in the UK with Tim Hardin's If I Were A Carpenter. He worked closely with Robert Kennedy on the 1968 presidential campaign and was devastated by his assassination, becoming reclusive and living in a trailer in Big Sur, California. Darin later returned to the industry, putting out folk and protest songs through his label Direction Records and starred in his NBC television show The Bobby Darin Amusement Company before his death in 1971 aged only 37 from a long-held heart condition.