See the guy in this picture?
That’s Moondoggie from the Gidget movies, and it’s Gidget he’s standing next to.
Moondoggie was played by a teen idol of the day known as Jimmy Darren (who was popular enough that he later appeared in animated form on The Flintsones as Jimmy Darrenrock.)
As part of his teen heartthrob career, Jimmy recorded a number of albums.
But he moved out of this phase of his career (as teen idols tend to do). He tried to move on to more "serious" roles, like this one . . .
Here he is as Dr. Tony Newman, one of two time-travelling scientists on the Irwin Allen thriller TV show, The Time Tunnel.
I recently blogged about the release of the DVDs of that series, which I was a fan of as a boy.
This was the role in which I first became aware of Jimmy Darren, though I had no clue who he was in real life any more than I did any actors I saw on TV at the time.
During this period of is career he also went for "serious-er" roles than that of a time-travelling scientist, such as Pvt. Spyros Pappadimos in The Guns of Navarrone.
I like The Guns of Navarrone, but I was oblivious to Darren’s role in it, too. It wouldn’t be until he started performing another role that I really became aware of who he was.
That role–which is the one for which I’ll always best remember him–is this one:
Here he’s appearing as the holographic 1962 lounge singer Vic Fontaine on Star Trek: Deep Space 9.
This was a great role for him! It drew on his musical and sci-fi background and he did an absolutely outstanding job as a suave, wise, strong, and (once in a while) vulnerable lounge singer who could really sing.
There was also some irony to the role since in the imaginary 1962 world that Vic inhabited, he sang at a Vegas nightclub and hung with members of the Rat Pack like Frank and Dino and Sammy–and in real life the actor Jimmy Darren was a close friend of Frank Sinatra.
The Vic Fontaine role came along at an important point for Darren and allowed him to re-enter the kind of musical world that he had worked in at the beginning of career. His role on DS9 proved so popular that not only did he become a virtual regular on the show (in more than one sense of the term), it also re-launched his career as a singer.
After the show he started recording albums again, and a number of his older ones have been re-released.
In fact, there’s ten of ’em on iTunes for download right now (search on the term "James Darren").
I haven’t heard all ten, but if you enjoyed his singing on DS9–or if you just like really well-sung American standards in the Frank Sinatra/Mel Torme tradition–then I’d like to recommend one album in particular: This One’s From The Heart.
This is the first album he did after DS9, and as a thank you to the fans of the show who would form a key part of its purchasers, it includes virtually all the songs he sang as Vic Fontaine–only this time without them being interrupted for story or covered over by dialogue or cut short for time.
Here’s the playlist of standards it includes:
"The Best Is Yet To Come," "Come Fly With Me," "That Old Black Magic," "All the Way," "It’s Only A Paper Moon," "I’ve Got the World on a String," "You’d Better Love Me," "Sophisticated Lady," "Just In Time," "I’ve Got You Under My Skin," "The Way You Look Tonight," "Here’s to the Losers," "You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You," "Dancing in the Dark," "Night and Day," "I’ll Be Seeing You," and "Satin Doll."
That’s quite a lineup! And Darren’s rendition of these songs is excellent.
I have a bunch of the same songs done by Frank Sinatra, but despite Sinatra’s undeniable mastery of this form of singing, I find that I enjoy Darren’s versions better. Darren’s voice has a more velvety quality, like Mel Torme’s, compared to Sinatra, and this makes it warmer. This kind of Rat Pack singing requires the singer to project a kind of strengh through his voice, but there are different kinds of strengths, and if you listen to Sinatra’s voice he at times projects a cruel streak.
Darren, by contrast, projects a friendliness and warmth, even when the song would lend itself to a cruel treatment. For example, a personal favorite are the songs "You’d Better Love Me" and "Here’s to the Losers," both of which have to be handled just right or the singer comes off sounding aloof and arrogant. That’s how Sinatra might do them. But in Darren’s hands, "You’d Better Love Me" sounds friendly and playful and "Here’s to the Losers" sounds compassionate and optimistic.
Not every song on the album is a winner to my mind. I don’t really like "Sophisticated Lady," for example. (It’s a slow song, and I have a constitutional aversion to slow songs.)
Growing up when I did, I didn’t discover this type of music until I was an adult. Back in high school, singers like Frank Sinatra were considered square, but when I grew up enough to appreciate types of music that weren’t popular with my high school buddies, I came to appreciate this genre.
Unfortunately, it’s a little hard to refer to because there isn’t a standard name for it. Some are calling it "classic pop" (i.e., the type of music that was popular before rock & roll). Others are calling it "pop standards." Or "lounge music." Whatever you want to call it, there’s just something comforting and classy about this type of music.
Overall, Darren’s This One’s From The Heart is an outstanding introduction to and example of the genre, and I’d heartily recommend it if you were a DS9 fan, if you’re a lover of this style of music, or even if you’ve never really gotten into this style of singing and would like to see what the fuss was about.
Enjoy!
