Bobby Darin

Bobby Darin, born Walden Robert Cassotto in the Bronx in 1936, could play teen rocker, finger-snapping swinger, folkie or country boy with equal nerve. He got his start writing songs for Connie Francis, then broke through in 1958 with "Splish Splash", a rock and roll goof he co-wrote and recorded that sold a million, and followed it with his own "Dream Lover".

Then he did something bold for a rock and roll kid: he went swing. His versions of "Mack the Knife" and "Beyond the Sea", all cocky phrasing and big-band punch, made him a star around the world. He was the first ever Grammy winner for Best New Artist and took Record of the Year for "Mack the Knife". Hollywood came calling, and his first film, Come September, alongside his first wife Sandra Dee, won him a Golden Globe.

The '60s turned him serious. He worked on Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign and was at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when Kennedy was assassinated in 1968. That same year he learned that the woman who raised him was his grandmother and the woman he thought was his sister was his mother, and he withdrew into a long seclusion. A television comeback followed in the early '70s, but his weak heart gave out: he died in 1973, aged 37, after open heart surgery.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.