Live! At the Desert Inn

On a cool February night in 1971, entertainer Bobby Darin gathered the friends, associates, and VIPs he\'d flown in for the occasion to a sort of summit meeting in the Crystal Room of Las Vegas\' Desert Inn. There and then, Darin again staked his claim as one of the most accomplished, versatile, and creatively unpredictable pop singers ever. Despite having traded his early teen idol incarnation for that of mature and ambitious saloon singer a decade earlier, Darin displays his uncanny knack for recasting contemporary rock and pop in his own image repeatedly here. The show may feature a loose, swinging rendition of \"Mack the Knife\" near the top of the set, and close with the spare, jazzy bonus version of \"Beyond the Sea,\" but they bookend masterful takes on everything from James Taylor (a blues-charged \"Fire and Rain\") and BS&T\'s \"Hi De Ho\" to the Beatles (a medley of \"Hey Jude\"/\"Eleanor Rigby\"/\"Blackbird\"/\"A Day in the Life\" whose drama shames most contemporary pop covers) and a warm, elegant version of Dylan\'s \"I\'ll Be Your Baby Tonight.\" His hit version of Tim Hardin\'s \"If I Were A Carpenter\" is shrewdly paired here with the poignant, Darin-penned anti-war anthem \"Sing a Simple Song of Freedom\" (which Hardin covered successfully), underscoring the willful genre-bending that made Darin so intriguing. -- Jerry McCulley (Amazon)