Early Years
Darin was born in The Bronx. His maternal grandfather, Saverio Antonio Cassotto, was of Italian descent. His maternal grandmother, Vivian Fern (Walden), was of English ("Old Yankee") and Danish ancestry. He was raised by his maternal grandmother, a vaudeville singer. It was not until he was 32 that he learned that Giovannina Cassotto, the woman he believed to be his elder sister, was his birth mother.
By the time he was a teenager he could play several instruments, including piano, drums and guitar. He later added harmonica and xylophone.
Graduating from the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, Darin chose not to attend Hunter College. Instead, he dropped out in order to play small nightclubs around the city with a musical combo.
Read more about this topic: Bobby Darin
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early and/or years:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“I’d give all wealth that years have piled,
The slow result of Life’s decay,
To be once more a little child
For one bright summer-day.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)