Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A finger snappin' toe tappin' experience!, November 1, 1999
By A Customer
The very best in lounge music. Bobby makes every cut his own. His interpretation and style are truly original. Lots of brass and a great beat. Listening to this CD made me want to smoke a cigarette and drink something on the rocks (neither of which I do but it made me WANT to!)
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best Darin album available, February 16, 2000
This is the swingin'est Bobby Darin album on the market today. I usually try to avoid compilations, because I like to hear whole albums in their original forms, but this is a terrific collection of some of Darin's best from the Capitol years (1962-65). This CD keeps the momentum from beginning to end, and is reminiscent of Sinatra's exuberant swing albums, with Darin clearly enjoying himself on every single track. The Billy May arrangement for Once in a Lifetime is one of the most astonishing I have ever heard, and Darin is at his enthusiastic best. The previously unreleased tracks are all excellent as well. Since this collection contains most of the Hello Dolly to Goodbye Charlie album, one has to wonder why Capitol is so reluctant to release Darin's albums in their entirety. As it is, two other great tracks, Goodbye Charlie and Lonely Road, are buried in the Capitol Collector's Series CD, and BELONG with these great swing tracks (there's room!) Also, 10 out of 12 tracks from Oh! Look at Me Now are found on the Spotlight on Bobby Darin CD. Why not just release the entire album on one CD with "bonus tracks"?
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great album, I've been listening to it constantly, February 18, 2005
Even disregarding the rock he began with and the folk he did later in his career, Darin sang a broad range of music. This album features show tunes, standards, at least one of his own songs ("Gyp the Cat", too much a "Mack the Knife" knockoff to be taken too seriously), and current pop. I find his treatment of the last most compelling. The Sixties were a period when the old songwriting lions were beginning to pass from the scene, and when too many pop ballads, their writers striving too hard for relevance or romance, delivered overripe songs not up to the standards of the previous few decades. (All that "I Gotta Be Me" stuff. Yecch. Or songs full of strings no longer leavened by Cole Porter-style wit.) Darin here performs, with few or no strings, songs like "A Taste of Honey" and "More" - saccharine in most singers' hands - with enough punch to make them not only worth listening to but genuinely good. This album features cleaner arrangements than some of his others like "Swingin' the Standards", and these songs are genuine as a result. Every song here, depending on the listener's taste, is good. My favorite cuts include "As Long As I'm Singin' "; "Sunday in New York"; "The Good Life"; "Call Me Irresponsible"; "I Got Rhythm"; and "More." On "Hello, Dolly" - not generally one of my favorite songs - check out his final high note. But really, I like them all. Bobby loves to find new ways to do songs; his swinging version of "This Nearly Was Mine" from "South Pacific" is meritorious. Damn, he's good.
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~ Keely Smith
~ Mrs. Miller
~ Wayne Newton
~ Ultra Lounge (series)
~ Ultra Lounge (series)
by Bobby Darin 
