In 1956, The Threepenny Opera debuted as a revival in NYC. Dick Hyman, the great piano stylist, had a hit instrumental version of The Theme From The Threepenny Opera. Louis Armstrong had had a vocal hit of it.

Enter Bobby Darin who in 1959 had his huge and definitive hit version of it. Bobby had had a sputtering career until the summer of 1958 when he had a Rock & Roll novelty hit in Splish Splash, which he co-wrote with DJ Murray Kaufman, who bet that Darin could not write a song that began with the words, "Splish splash, I was takin' a bath." It was a big hit. He later had another novelty Rock & Roll hit that he wrote, Queen of The Hop.

His first eponymously named album, Bobby Darin, had Splish, Splash, plus its B-side, a ditty called Judy, Judy, Don’t Be Moody, a bunch of songs written by Darin & Don Kirshner, the great Rock & Roll composer & impresario, and one standard, (I Found) A Million Dollar Baby In A Five Dime Store with some Frank Sinatra inflections. You could tell that although he was singing Rock & Roll, he wanted to move into the lounge type music of Sinatra, Dean Martin & Tony Bennett.


Even later in 1959, he had a hit of another song he wrote, Dream Lover, that was a big hit that never went to #1 but seemed to be in the top 5 for months and was one of the biggest hits of that year. It was very nice.

For his second album, entitled Bobby Darin: That’s All. He decided to turn to standards, against a manager’s recommendation. It had, among others, the title song, Sigmund Romberg’s Softly As In A Morning Sunrise, the Gershwin’s It Ain’t Necessarily So from Porgy Bess, Charles Trenet’s Beyond The Sea, Sophie Tucker’s theme, Some Of These Days, his own That’s The Way Love Is, a very standard like song and Mack The Knife. Later Mack The Knife was released as a single. It was a huge hit.

Darin’s career in lounge type music soared but he still ventured occasionally into rock & roll. He did a country album with a song, You’re The Reason I’m Living with a chorus straight out Ray Charles’ I Can’t Stop Loving You. Later still he had a hit with If I Were A Carpenter. He never stayed in one category.

He died on December 20, 1973 after surgery for complications from a damaged heart due to multiple episodes of rheumatic fever in his childhood. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Captain Newman, M.D.
for your ibute to Bobby Darin . I didn't know much about him . Thanks for the musical history lesson tr
He wrote or co-wrote more than 200 songs.