The File on Bobby Darin, Chapter 17

Chapter 17
Closing Night at the Copa, Part 3

The evening was drawing to a close.  Bobby came out to the piano without his tie, shirt collar open, like the host of a party in his own home at the end of the evening.  The guests had not yet taken their leave, so he stepped back into the living room to help them wind down for the evening.  No one wanted the night to end.  They would like to stay forever in the Copa with Bobby Darin on the stage.  Bobby took off his coat and hung it on a music stand near the piano bench.  His white shirt was gleaming under the spotlight.  His face was bright with perspiration from performing under the lights.  Bobby took Dick Behrke’s place at the piano.  Dick moved back to his conducting territory.  He noticed Nina down front, out of the corner of his eye.  Nina and Winchell, another odd couple!  He did not have time to think about this until after the show was over.

The spotlight dimmed and house lights came up a bit so that Darin could look out over the audience without squinting.  Suddenly Darin seemed almost shy as he addressed the audience.  “We had a request to do a song here at the piano, ” he said, glancing ever so briefly at Nina, (here Bobby hunched his shoulders and struck a bluesy chord on the piano keys).  “Any of you have the feeling or the urge to snap your fingers, clap your hands or kick the waiters, it’s all right.  As long as you do it in tempo” (another chord).  Bobby paused, looking up to the back of the room and addressed a table. “No, no, not yet sir, ma’am, back there, can’t kick until there is a tempo to kick to, see?” (laughter from the audience).  Then he began to play to accompany himself and sing in a low, sweet drawling baritone, the Ray Charles number, I've Got a Woman.  The song started slowly, Bobby playing the piano solo for a verse before the band joined in, tempo picking up pace, and the song proceeded to roar out of the firehouse.

Near the end of the song that announced it had no ending (it was composed by Ray Charles to move patrons out of a room at the end of a set), Bobby invited the audience to join in with a chorus of “yeah yeah” to echo the pulsing rhythm of the tune.  “Yeah, yeah,” Bobby schooled them, “come on, louder,” and they joined in, chanting their part and clapping in time.  A crashing final piano chord to match the clanging of cymbals and blare of the trumpets brought the song to a close. “Say a one, two, three, huh!  Thank you, thank you very much, thank you very kindly.”

Darin’s thanks were drowned with an avalanche of applause, foot stomping, yelling and screaming from the audience.  The song had started slow, a mesmerizing incantation, and had built into a pulsating wave of rhythm and blues that swept up everyone in the room.  They were carried along by the song as a tide pulling them out to sea.  It was not a fearful thing, because no one thought to fight against it.  “Yeah, yeah,” they chanted along with Bobby.  Several people jotted some of the lyrics down on their napkins so that they could go looking for a record of the song tomorrow.  In his early days of live performing, when Darin was still learning the ropes, he used to lead the audience in sing-alongs when he felt he was losing their attention, as a way to engage them, make them part of the act.  Sometimes this would warm them up, sometimes not.  In the sing-along this evening, he demonstrated his complete mastery of that audience.  He had invited them to sing, and of course, they would sing.  They would sing with Bobby, they would now do anything for him.

So excited was Walter Winchell at this finish, he actually jumped up from his table and stepped up onto the stage next to Bobby.  Nina did not hear what Winchell was saying to the audience as she took this opportunity to make her escape.  Her eyes filling with tears, she ran up a narrow, precarious aisle between tables, toward the entrance of the Copa, down a hallway to the Ladies Room where she almost fell into the arms of Dorothy Kilgallen.  Until that very moment, the unlucky Nina had not known that she had not one but two powerful gossip columnists on her trail. 

Continued in the next chapter

ID: 1471883   (Rated: ASR) The File on Bobby Darin, Chapter 18  Nina takes tea with Dorothy Kilgallen by Gisele