Viewers can enjoy the masterful vocal delivery and showmanship of the one and only Bobby Darin in a new clip from the archives of The Ed Sullivan Show. He’s seen performing “That’s The Way Love Is” on the famous series’ first edition of a new decade, broadcast on January 3, 1960.
The self-composed song was on Darin’s That’s All album, released in March 1959, an LP that contained such signatures as “Beyond The Sea” and “Mack The Knife.” The latter number spent a remarkable total of nine non-consecutive weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, and at the time of the Sullivan broadcast, “Beyond The Sea” was about to enter that chart on its way to a No.6 peak. The long player reached No.7 on the Billboard album chart, and No.9 on Cashbox’s Mono LPs listings.
On the same edition of the show, Darin teamed up with Connie Francis to sing “You’re The Top.” Other guests that week were vaudevillian Edgar Bergen, actor-singer Sal Mineo, and drumming great Gene Krupa. As a measure of Darin’s stature at this peak of his career, he had been the subject of TV’s This Is Your Life in December 1959.
Darin hit the LP chart again with This Is Darin in March 1960, and made his staging post debut at the Copacabana club in New York in June, amplifying his status as one of the hottest nightclub entertainers in America. Such was his popularity at the club that the Copa had to add extra seating on its dancefloor.
As he made his latest Sullivan appearance, Darin, then aged 23, told LIFE magazine: “I want to make it faster than anyone has ever made it before. I’d like to be the biggest thing in show business by the time I’m 25 years old.”
Soon afterwards, talking to TV Film Stars, he said: “Forget my past? Never! I couldn’t if I wanted to. There are some things that are good for a guy to remember. Like poverty. And love. Especially love. Without love I don’t think I could have overcome the obstacles of struggling for daily bread.”
Watch all the latest archival videos from The Ed Sullivan Show on the program’s official YouTube channel.