The critics have always found it difficult to put a tab on Bobby Bare. Sometimes he
would sing reacly love songs and folk-type ballads, and other times nonsense songs,
songs with a critical social connotation, or even Rolling Stones' hits.
"I'm probably schizophrenic", he once joked, but followed this up immediately with
a more serious statement: "No, it's just that I like good songs. If I find I like a song,
I record it. I record what I like. That's sometimes a good thing, and sometimes a bad
thing. I'm unpredictable. No-one knows what I'm going to do next, because I don't
even know myself."
That's a risk very few stars take. The majority obey their producers and keep to one
particular style. But Bobby Bare is his own producer, and is always ready to support
new songwriters and composers. Hits like 'Detroit City', '500 Miles away
from home' or 'Shame on Me', for example tore down the barriers between
pop and country and western. He became what purists turn their noses up at - a 'crossover
singer'. Bobby Bare, though, has no objections to the fact that most of his songs
appear in the pop and folk charts to start with and don't make the country and western
charts till later. "When people hear my dialect", he corrects, "then they know I'm a
country singer. If I've been classed as a pop and folk singer in the past, it's because
of the material I select. Put it this way: I'm a country and western artist, but the songs
I do appeal to a larger audience and get played by pop radio stations, too. But I never
record a song just to get into the pop charts. And the fact that I've had more crossover
hits than any other country and western singer wasn't intentional, it was purely chance",
he concludes with a wink.
His biography reads like lots of other stars competing for favour in the music-loving States.
He is a contemporary of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, was born on April 7, 1935
at Ironton, Ohio, the son of a family which wasn't exactly rolling in money. His mother
died when he was five; at the age of sixteen he left home, did all kinds of jobs and played
in pubs and small clubs with a band. Shortly before he was called up the recorded
'All American Boy', a song he had written himself, in California, which was a parody
on Elvis Presley's breathtaking career, and sold it, together with all the rights, for just
fifty dollars. The song became a hit and Bobby Bare still gets worked up even now
about his lack of business experience at that time.
There was one good thing about the success of 'All American Boy', however: immediately
after he was demobbed, he signed a contract with RCA, quickly put a few more singles
up in the charts and still found time to compose a few songs for the rock'n'roll film
'Teenage Millionaire'. In 1963 he hit the jackpot with 'Detroit City'. He still doesn't
know exactly how many records he sold, even today, but even now the guy from Ohio
manages to surprise his listeners with something new. Maybe that's what made him so
popular, even in our part of the worlds. "Chet Atkins, the Anita Kerr Singers and I were
the first country and western stars to go to Germany", he reminisces "and we were given
a fantastic reception". Things haven't changed, either. Bobby Bare was one of the stars
given a great send-off at the First International Country and Western Festival in Frankfurt
on April 21, 1979, and he even made the grade with teenagers on Ilja Richter's "Disco"
programme.
