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 and/or years:
“Very early in our children’s lives we will be forced to realize that the “perfect” untroubled life we’d like for them is just a fantasy. In daily living, tears and fights and doing things we don’t want to do are all part of our human ways of developing into adults.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“You can hardly convince a man of an error in a life-time, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be. The geologists tell us that it took one hundred years to prove that fossils are organic, and one hundred and fifty more to prove that they are not to be referred to the Noachian deluge.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)