Bobby Darin: “Gyp the Cat” (1965)
Excerpted from Shane Brown’s blog/tribute page This is Bobby Darin:
In 1964, Bobby couldn’t get a hit record for love nor money. In September 1964, he made his first attempt at recording his own composition Gyp the Cat, a clever pastiche of Mack the Knife, this time about a thief, and using a similar melody to the Kurt Weill song. As with Mack the Knife, the song tells a story, and the arrangement works in the same way, with it gaining in intensity with each successive verse. It’s a lighter affair lyrically, with a nice twist in the final verse, and would have been a better choice of single than Hello Dolly which was released instead. Despite the British Invasion, there was clearly still a place in the singles charts for this type of material, as Armstrong’s Hello Dolly and the Darin-produced Wayne Newton hit Danke Schoen had shown. The 1964 version of Gyp the Cat remained unissued until thirty-odd years later, with a 1965 recording of the same song issued as a B-side. It was something of a waste of a fun Darin original, in his signature style, and showing that he could poke fun at himself through a pastiche of his earlier hit.
Every Moment Has A Song 