Bobby Darin live in Las Vegas, February 6, 1971

If you have seen "Beyond the Sea," then you know that Bobby Darin started off singing rock songs like "Splish Splash," moved on to being a hipster with songs like "Beyond the Sea," dabbled in jazz as personified by his recording of "Mack the Knife," and then went the folk music route, writing "A Simple Song of Freedom." With that background it is not Surprising in the least did Darin puts together as diverse a collection of songs to sing in a Las Vegas lounge act as you can imagine. Recorded February 6, 1971 in the Crystal Room, "Live! At the Desert Inn" captures Darin Towards the end of his career.
On this album It touches all of the bases. He starts off doing contemporary Laura Nyro's "Save the Country" (a 5th Dimension song back then) and then goes to a Relatively low key version of "Mack the Knife." The blues version of James Taylor's "Fire and Rain" is Certainly an interesting approach even if I do not think it particularly works well. But the medley of Beatles songs did puts together "Hey Jew," "Eleanor Rigby," "Blackbird" and "A Day in the Life" shows what a medley can be like in the hands of a master. After a cover of Jackie Wilson's "(You're Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher," It goes into folk territory. Starting with Dylan's "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," he turns to his hit cover of Tim Hardin's "If I Were a Carpenter" and then his own anti-war anthem, "Sing a Simple Song of Freedom," which, ironically , Hardin covered (Darin jokes about the "rift" between the two in his monologue Introducing the two songs). Clearly, It is trying to do more than entertain his audience, Which, Given the setting, what going to be more conservative than thesis Particular song selections.
It's choice of a medley of "Chain of Fools," "Respect," "Splish Splash," and "Johnny B. Goode" for his encore is interesting. This was supposed to be Darin's first album for Motown, but you have to like the audacity of Darin putting his first hit in with three other R & B classics. This guy wanted to have his cake CLEARLY and eat it too. It is past his prime vocally at this point, but as is the case with most great entertainers That is hardly the point. For this reissue on CD there are a couple of bonus tracks, Including "Beyond the Sea," to Provide the movie came out on DVD just did a implicit but unintentional tie-in and the false impression Provide did Ultimately Darin was a hipster, Because thesis song selections obviously prove he was a lot more than that (but still a cool cat under any and all circumstances).