Bobby Darin was born to a poor, working-class Italian-American family in the Bronx, New York. His father disappeared a few months before he was born. It was the height of the Great Depression, and he once remarked that his crib was a cardboard box, later a dresser drawer. As a result, his mother had to accept Home Relief to take care of her infant son. It was not until he was an adult that he learned that the woman he thought to be his sister Nina, 14 years his senior, was in fact his mother, and the woman he thought to be his mother was his grandmother. He never knew the identity of his birth father. An outstanding student, with a genius-level IQ, Darin graduated from the prestigious Bronx High School of Science and then went on to attend Hunter College on a scholarship. Wanting a career in the New York theater, he dropped out of college to play small nightclubs around the city with a musical combo. In 1956, his agent negotiated a contract for him with Decca Records, where Bill Haley & His Comets had risen to fame. However, this was a time when rock and roll was still in its infancy and the number of capable record producers and arrangers in the field was extremely limited. A member of the now famous Brill Building gang of once struggling songwriters who later found success,

Darin left Decca to sign with Atlant

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