Give a pair of medals and hefty raises to the two fellows at Atlantic who thought of pairing
Bobby Darin -- then 24 -- and
Johnny Mercer -- then 51 -- and backing them with the charts of
Billy May. These two singer/songwriters, occupying opposite poles of a yawning generation gap, take some often hoary old Tin Pan Alley tunes and kid and swing the hell out of them, with
May providing the same kind of hard-swinging, sly-witted big-band backings that he gave to
Sinatra. Listen to the way they play with the syncopation on "Bob White," dancing all over the
May beat and ad-libbing wisecracks all the while -- and no one can resist the charm of the two composing a song together (the title track) and then interrupting it with some horseplay and switching to "Indiana."
Mercer has never sounded looser or more swinging on records -- he thrives on the
Billy May beat -- and
Darin just about keeps up with him, throwing in several brash impersonations of
Dean Martin,
Elvis,
Crosby,
Louis Armstrong, and other icons. Interestingly,
Mercer's "Lonesome Polecat" comes closest to the rock & roll rhythms that propelled
Darin to fame and sent
Mercer into seeming eclipse. The music world hadn't heard this brand of impeccably timed, back-and-forth joshing since the heyday of
Hope and
Crosby (or perhaps
Mercer and
Crosby) -- or the inspired Nashville rivalry of
Red Foley and
Ernest Tubb. Don't miss it.