by John Bush
Darin at the Copa is the live from Bobby Darin's standing-room-only engagement at Jules Podell's Copacabana club in New York City, an appearance that confirmed for the adult pop crowd that the former singer of ephemera like &Splish Splash& had made the complete transition from rock & roll to more &serious& music. Serious this record certainly isn't, though. A complete entertainer, Darin only occasionally concentrates on the business of singing, making Darin at the Copa the type of concert work that rarely succeeds as a purely aural recording. Bobby Darin is obviously performing, not just singing, and listeners are often left out during his countless jokes and vocal asides -- each of which get enormous responses from the original audience. The music is solid and Darin does his finger-popping best, but he walks a thin line between swinging and an outrageous parody of same. At the time, his big hits -- &Mack the Knife& and &Dream Lover& -- were such common currency that he thought it only natural to play around with them; listening decades later, it's difficult to avoid the wish he'd played this date just a bit more straight.