© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all
rights reserved.
Ahmet Ertegun, one
of the co-founders of Atlantic Records, was a big supporter of Rhythm and Blues
music as well as a devotee of Rock ‘n Roll in its fledgling years.
His brother,
Nesuhi, produced Jazz recordings for the Atlantic label including the Modern
Jazz Quartet’s No Sun in Venice and Pyramid, John Coltrane’s Giant
Steps and Coltrane Plays the Blues, and a host of other Jazz albums by
Milt Jackson, Mose Allison, Jimmy Giuffre and Shorty Roger s, among others.
Ahmet always
maintained that his involvement with the commercially lucrative Rock and R
& B music enabled him to subsidize his brother Nesuhi’s
less-than-profitable ventures into Jazz.
One of his most
successful forays into Rock was Ahmet’s decision to record Bobby Darin’s Splish, Splash. It was a record that
would sell a million copies for the then, virtually unknown Darin.
Ironically, almost
10-years later, Darin, now and internationally recognized celebrity, would
leave Atlantic and establish his own label [Direction Records] over a dispute
with Ahmet and Arif Mardin [who had become Bobby’s producer at the label in
1963] involving Bobby’s fervent wish to record the music from Leslie Bricusse
and Anthony Newley’s Doctor Dolittle.
As recounted by
Fred Dellar in his notes to Bobby Darin Sings Doctor Dolittle:
“Bobby Darin
constantly re-invented himself. Initially, he'd been a teen idol, littering the
charts with the likes of Splish, Splash
and Queen Of The Hop. Then he opted
to become the new Sinatra, fashioning songs such as Beyond The Sea and Lazy River
for a whole new set of swingin' lovers. Once, Bobby even moved into R&B to
cut an album of Ray Charles songs, using Ray's own back-up singers, while in
1966 he moved on yet again, linking with the contemporary folk field, and
emulating the likes of Tim Hardin. After two critically hailed albums (If I
Were A Carpenter and Inside Out) filled with material
mainly penned by Hardin and John Sebastian, Darin decided that it was time for
a change yet again. No-one was going to classify him, place him in some 'file
under' category. It was time for a return to show-biz, a time to dust down the
tux, head in a Hollywood direction. But, being Darin, it would not
be a mere return to former glories. Nothing as easy as that. Instead, Bobby
decided to create a whole album based around his interpretations of a film
score. His choice for the project was Doctor
Dolittle, a musical penned by Leslie Bricusse, who'd previously
collaborated with Anthony Newley on The
Roar Of The Greasepaint - The Smell
Of The Crowd and Stop The World -I
Want To Get Off, the latter a Broadway hit that ran for 555 performances.
Doctor Dolittle, a movie that co-starred Rex Harrison,
Anthony Newley, Samantha Eggar and Richard Attenborough, featured a score that
had taken Leslie Bricusse 18 months to write. During that period he'd discarded
10 songs and constantly reshaped others. Darin, who'd earlier recorded Bricusse
and Newley's Once In A Lifetime,
heard the score and loved it. His decision to record it as a complete album
pleased Arthur C. Jacobs, the film's producer who claimed: "When Bobby
came to us and said he wanted to do his musical impression of Doctor
Dolittle, we were flattered but felt that the musical content of our
production was out of Bobby's usual style. I mean, in one scene Rex sings a
tender ballad When I Look In Your Eyes to a seal! How would that sit with a
chap who whirred and whirled with Mack
The Knife? Bobby's reply: 'Lead me to it'."
Others were even
more incredulous that Darin should want to record the score, his album
producer, Arif Mardin, advising him not to go ahead with the project. But,
after working on a fine set of arrangements with Roger Kellaway, Bobby made that trip to Western
Recorders and shaped an album that has stood the test of time. …”
Pianist-composer-arranger
Roger Kellaway summed it up best when he
observed: “Bobby was a sensation to work with. He had the knack of knowing
exactly what was right for him.”
See what you think
as Bobby sings Roger ’s arrangement of Talk to the Animals in the following video made with the assistance
of the ace graphics team at CerraJazz LTD and the production facility at
StudioCerra.
Our latest montage
is set in HD images, a format we’ve returned after a long absence.
