R LINKS UPDATED and MARTY ROBBINS

OK - so we pick a video, and then it gets taken down over at YouTube... So we're replacing the one we posted a month ago with this one!

GRAMMY AWARDS 2014

GRAMMY AWARDS 2014 WINNERS

Here's the link to the winners of the 2014 Grammy Awards!

(483) BOBBY DARIN : FROM MOTOWN TO FOLK SONGS

Back in July of this year, we posted on Bobby Darin on Motown Records, where he tried on the popular Motown Sound.  Well, Bobby was challenged to find his niche in music by the mid sixties. He was challenged by changing times and the influence of Bob Dylan to cover songs that were more folk or political.  It was particularly difficult to pick and choose because he was so diverse in his talent.

I first met an ambitious Bobby in New York City in the Brill Building, introduced by Neil Sendaka, where he was making his rent by singing on demo records for song writers.  He was also writing songs of his own.  He was in the perfect spot to discover or write a hit song, and he did soon after we me with his recording of  Splish Splash.

Bobby was able to change his singing style enough to be hired to make a good many of those demos and I suspect that somewhere there is a treasure trove of them that he made - and some of them maybe you wouldn't know right away you were listening to Bobby. 

This challenge of being true to yourself, or what you're really good at, and being out of sync with the changing times, it's happened to the best of us. It happens in the music business every few, maybe every several years that music changes enough that you might get left behind, and 1966 is right about when you found the British Invasion with the Rolling Stones making the Beatles look tame - and in San Francisco, a new sound, the beginning of a Psychedelic drug fueled sound, typified by the Grateful Dead - and Peter Paul and Mary who are sticking to their folk music - while Bob Dylan is identified as a protest singer but doesn't want to be identified that way - and Bobby Darin - out of a whole group of young men who had vibrant carriers beginning in the 1950's, trying to figure out which way to go. 

Give it enough time though, and you become known as a CLASSIC.
Linking to his official site:  BOBBY DARIN NET - OFFICIAL - INCLUDING LIFE TIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Bobby gets the most airplay over time for Mac The Knife, with Splish Splash clearly thought of as the 1950's.

LA TIMES BOOK FAIR : TO MY SURPRISE A FRANK SINATRA COLLECTION : NORRIS HALL

Christine here : I'm the one who goes to the LA Times Book Fair every other year, and delights in the panel discussions and evidence all around that people love books and love to read. This year, while waiting to hear a panel discussion by memoirists at Norris Hall, on the University of Southern California campus, I was surprised to see a FRANK SINATRA memorabilia collection in the entrance foyer.

On one wall 13 Platinum and 20 Gold records! Also on site, statue, movie posters, artist representations (but is the artist of all those wonderful portraits of Frank in various roles really unknown?). I saw his Gold records while on REPRISE - his own label, and one that Wes' old friend Jimmy Bowen produced music for Frank on!

Also were his many Grammy (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences) awards, his Congressional God Medal from 1997, and his awards for 1956 and 1958 Favorite Male Artist (Disc Jockey Poll) and 1959 Most Played Vocalist.

So, while the early rock and rollers strove for innovation Frank was still a huge favorite. And he was the cover tune artist, the singer, who so many of those we write about were up against.

You don't have to go to a book fair, or any other special event to see this collection. Just head over to USC during school hours.

BOBBY DARIN LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD 52nd GRAMMYS

My dad "didn't have an ounce of quit in him." Dodd Darin



Last night Bobby Darin won a LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD from the GRAMMY people. I am so proud of Bobby!

Bobby and me and the guys used to hang out at diners and restaurants in New York. Once he moved to Los Angeles I saw him on a movie set or in his office. Dodd mentions his dad was thought of as cocky but around us guys he was just one of us.

Wes