Within the Sixties, hearthrobs named Bobby had been all over the place. Clockwise from prime left: Bobby Darin, Bobby Vee, Bobby Rydell, Bobby Goldsboro, Bobby Womack, and Bobby Sherman.
Keystone/Getty Photos; Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Photos; Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Photos; Hulton Archive/Getty Photos; Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Photos; Alan Kent/Getty Photos
conceal caption
toggle caption
Keystone/Getty Photos; Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Photos; Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Photos; Hulton Archive/Getty Photos; Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Photos; Alan Kent/Getty Photos
For fairly some time now, I have been often known as Bob. However again within the Nineteen Fifties and early ’60s, I used to be Bobby.
And you know the way little children undergo a interval the place they suppose the entire world revolves round them?
Properly, again then, I kinda had proof.
It appeared like each time I turned on the radio, Marcie Blane was singing that she wished to be “Bobby’s Lady.” And she or he wasn’t alone. Darlene Love was utilizing Phil Spector’s well-known “wall of sound” to let everybody know she was going to “Wait ’til My Bobby Will get Residence.” Lesley Gore was warning me about another lady who was out to lure me in “Run Bobby Run.”
And so they had been apparently all going to need to struggle it out with the extra formidable Etta James, who was soulfully wailing about her one real love in “Bobby Is His Title.”
A child may get a fancy, proper?
Fortunately for my psyche, I used to be already too previous to suppose any of this was really directed at me. However there was one other Bobby phenomenon again then: earlier than some British guys named John, Paul, George and Ringo arrived on our shores, a cadre of American Bobbys had been topping the charts: Bobby Day did it with “Rockin’ Robin” and its B-side “Over and Over” in 1958, and Bobby Darin with “Splish Splash” that very same 12 months.
And earlier than lengthy, Bobbys had been all over the place.
Bobby Vee had six prime ten Billboard hits within the Sixties, together with “The Night time Has a Thousand Eyes,” “Take Good Care of My Child” and that one the place he hiccupped that like a “Rubber Ball, I am going to come bouncin’ again to you-ooh-ooh-hoo-ooh.”
Bobby Vee was shortly one-upped (or perhaps two-upped) by Bobby Vinton, who had eight prime ten hits within the ’60s together with so many blue-themed songs – “Blue Velvet,” “Blue on Blue” — that should you’d requested me who sang “the blues” again then, I would nicely have mentioned him.
There was additionally Bobby Rydell, who parlayed a bunch of prime ten hits (“Volare,” “Neglect Him,” “Wild One”) into an appearing gig as Ann-Margret’s boyfriend Hugo within the film musical Bye Bye Birdie (although he barely received to sing in it). And on the soul charts, Bobby Womack (“I am Lookin’ for a Love”), Bobby Lewis (“Tossin’ and Turnin'”) Bobby Freeman (“Do You Wish to Dance”), and Bobby Smith of the Spinners. Nation Bobbys included Bobby Goldsboro (“Tears of a Clown”), Bobby Naked (“Detroit Metropolis”), and Bobby Sherman (“Little Lady).
All these Bobbys had been teen idols, although most weren’t really of their teenagers. They only appealed to bobby-soxers, who mounted their hair with bobby-pins. A few of the singer Bobbys had such skinny, adenoidal voices that you just needed to suppose they could not have had careers earlier than microphones. They had been a breed aside. A preferred breed.
It is sensible that there would have been loads of singers named Bobby as I used to be rising up, since there have been loads Bobbys again then. Within the Nineteen ThirtiesRobert was the most well-liked boys identify within the U.S. And within the Nineteen Fortiesit was the second hottest. (Only for reference, nowadays it is barely within the prime hundred.) So there was nothing distinctive about Best Technology dad and mom just like the Darins, Rydells, Vintons, Vees, Goldsboros, Womacks and Shermans calling their little soon-to-be-crooners that. It will nearly be unusual if there hadn’t been loads of teenybopper Bobbys within the Sixties.
However their time was principally over by 1970. That was advantageous by me. By then I might personally graduated to Bob, and was extra more likely to be listening to Bob Dylan or Bob Seger. Or perhaps to that “Splish Splash” Bobby — Bobby Darin — who’d graduated to a extra refined sound, discovering jazz and leaving teenybopper-dom behind with songs like “Mack the Knife.”
I used to be sufficient of a theater nut to know that that specific music was from an off-Broadway present referred to as The Threepenny Opera. I might been going to touring exhibits in Washington, D.C. since I used to be a child — they had been my music now — and in 1970 I lastly traveled to New York to catch my first musical on Broadway with out my of us.
Sitting down in my seat on the Alvin Theater, I felt very grown up.
Then Stephen Sondheim’s Firm began, and what had been the primary lyrics?
“Bobby. Bobby. Bobby child, Bobby bubbi, Robby, Robert darling….”
This piece was edited by Clare Lombardo. The published model was combined by Chloee Weiner with engineering assist from Robert Rodriguez.
