Interview: Jazz vocalist Elli Fordyce, Bobby Darin's High School Classmate and Friend

by Michael Macomber
Elli Fordyce	There are many parallels between the artistic and personal triumphs of jazz vocalist Elli Fordyce and her good friend Bobby Darin. Both faced major physical and personal obstacles in their struggles to succeed, and both confronted those obstacles with great strength of character and dedication. In Bobby's case, he had to overcome his poor upbringing and a rheumatic heart. In Elli's case, she has had to overcome feelings of self-doubt and a devastating car accident that left her physically and spiritually injured. Just as Bobby refused to let anything keep him down, Elli has fought her way back to where she belongs, onstage, singing jazz.
On Sunday, April 1st, one day after her 70th birthday, she will be recording her very first live album at the Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson Street (near Spring Street) in New York City. Admission is free and there will be 3 sets between 2 and 5pm. For more info and to reserve your spot, email lezlie@JazzGallery.org. For directions and further info visit JazzGallery.org. I sat down with Elli on the eve of this momentous occasion, to talk about Bobby, life, music and the glory of being true to your dreams. Elli first met Bobby Darin (then Bobby Cassotto) when they were both students at Bronx High School of Science in the early 1950s. She was just 15 and Bobby was a year ahead of her. At that point, Bobby was playing drums in the Eddie Ocasio Quintet, which also featured Ocasio on piano, Steve Karmen on sax, Richard Behrke (later a Darin arranger/conductor) on trumpet and Walter Raim on guitar. "My first year at Bronx Science, I somehow heard the Quintet, doing standards, playing at a school dance," she explains. "I found out some of the guys (and a few other musicians) often had jam sessions during lunch and while cutting classes, in the cafeteria or music room. Having been turned on to jazz and being obsessed with it by then, I used to attend as often as possible. The memories are fuzzy, but I remember it was exciting. Bobby seemed to me to be a very good drummer, those kids were all very much into jazz and playing it, and I thought they were really good (plus they got to play in the Catskills summers, so someone else thought they were good). He hadn't begun singing at all yet, that I ever heard about." Like many others, Elli was taken by Bobby's powerful personality. "I had such a crush on Bobby, which he probably picked up on. Once, when the subways were rerouted for some reason, we wound up going to school in the same car, though we lived in totally different areas. I was too shy and embarrassed to let him know I recognized him, and since he 'couldn't get my attention,' he started whistling a swing tune, sitting across the aisle in the crowded car, which I eventually couldn't help tapping my foot and bopping to. When he spoke to me as we started leaving the train, I did a great 15-year old 'Oh, hi' as if I hadn't known it was him. I always thought he was very appealing, though not cute. He was more charming and charismatic than attractive, and he was quite tiny, whereas I'm 5'8"." As she points out below, Bobby's natural charisma served him well in many situations. "My take on Bobby in those days from here is that he'd learned that adults liked him if he was nice and polite, and he used that, all in a good way. He wasn't phony, but he had a mature way of interacting that got him support, respect and good vibes. (A very healthy approach I wish I'd learned sooner.) He definitely liked people to like him and he was driven by great ambition, though not ever in any way I saw as obnoxious or even obvious." As time went on, their friendship grew, fueled by their mutual love of music. "I hung out (was his first 'groupie') for a while, eventually inviting him to parties and great jam sessions in Greenwich Village with my jazz-obsessed boyfriend and his step-father, our jazz mentor. I don't remember the sequence, but a year or so later I introduced Bobby to my friend Marie, they immediately hit it off and began dating soon after, which lasted some months--before and after which he was basically too focused on his career and studies to date. He graduated half way through the following year (1953) but we stayed in touch. When he and Dick (Behrke) moved into a small apartment together I'd hang out, go to parties there, help them when they threw parties, etc." During her junior year at Bronx Science, she recalls Bobby having a deep effect on her intellectual outlook. "Bobby and I hung out a lot at parties my junior year and he told me about books he'd read, which I then read and we discussed. He changed my life, since I hadn't read any 'adult' books before. They were by profound authors, books such as Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World.'" Sadly, Elli was torn from her friend's side in 1954, when her family moved to Massachusetts. The last time she saw Bobby before the move was on a New York City subway platform. "I was moving away the next day and really miserable about it," she says. "We both were really sad about losing each other's friendship. He couldn’t afford another subway token so we stayed on the platform talking for a few hours on a bench, after which I went off to my little dog-walking after-school job and he went home. He told me then that if he weren't so focused on his career, which he knew he would succeed at, somehow, some way, and if he'd felt he had the freedom of time to date, I was the girl he'd want to be with. As an insecure girl and often an insecure woman, I took that to the bank with me for much of my adult life." After the move, Elli began to make strides with her own singing, sitting in with a jazz trio all summer of the next year. But months after a triumphant debut before a thousand other freshmen at the University of Massachusetts, Elli decided to take a different path, choosing instead to concentrate on marriage and a family. It was around this time that Bobby Darin came back into her life. She sent him an announcement about the birth of her child, and he responded by making a surprise visit to her home at 7 in the morning, with Dick Behrke in tow. "I thought my husband--always a jealous guy--would freak," she laughs, "but Bobby could always make people like him. My former husband told many people about meeting Bobby after Bobby became so big. I remember him coming to get me at the other end of the apartment, while I was taking care of our week-old baby, saying, 'It's Dick Behrke and Bobby Cassotto!' I couldn't believe my ears. I'd told him earlier about them, but never expected they would show up! I was elated. To me they'd always been minor celebrities. He took it very well, for him." The next time she saw Bobby was on TV, when "Splish Splash" hit in 1958. She remembers being amazed and more than a little surprised. The Bobby Cassotto she knew was a drummer and an actor, not a singer. "When he released an album of standards, I couldn't figure out where that voice came from," she says. "I'd never heard it before and couldn't believe its power. I remember thinking and saying, when 'Splish Splash' was new, that I knew he could do something like that if he wanted to, he could do anything, but why would he? He was way too hip for that bubblegum sh-- (excuse me, but that's how we talked). Then again, he was smart: it got him in, then his talent took over and got him where he always knew he would go."
	She would not see Bobby again until 1971, in Las Vegas. In the meantime, she launched what was to be an on-and-off singing career at the age of 30, mainly singing with various top-40 cover groups, eventually fronting a jazzy-pop quartet, and plying her craft in hotels, restaurants, clubs and on cruises. This led Elli back to her old friend.
"I'd had a big epiphany and felt invincible," she explains. "I'd wanted to try to see him for years and had written a couple of years before through his agent, but I doubt he ever saw it, and there was no reply. (In Miami where I was living around '65, he'd been booked at one of the big rooms, and when I called his hotel for him, he accepted my call. It was great to talk with him, but I was too shy to push and he didn't invite me to the show or suggest we get together, so I left it at saying hello and chatting. At least he'd accepted the call--which I got the idea was not frequently the case--so I felt he hadn't changed and always remembered old friends.) All those years later in Vegas, I felt like I'd learned something about life and could maybe be of help, but it was hard to reach past Bobby's illness, medication and all it took for him to get up there on stage every night and do a show with all the dancing and energy he put into it, not to mention the great singing--he was amazing! So I coasted with him and just did what he seemed to want: he included me in his small circle when he was up and about, I stayed in the background the rest of the time." This would be her final meeting with Bobby. Two years later, in 1973, he was gone. Meanwhile, Elli was about to face the biggest personal, physical and spiritual challenge of her life. After 14 years of sporadically performing in the U.S., Bermuda, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, she would see her career suddenly sidelined against her will. A year-long tour by "Elli Fordyce and Her Favorite Things" came to an abrupt halt when, on a snowy road en route to a gig in Illinois, the band's drummer drove Elli's car containing the band and all its equipment into a disabled truck. She would not sing again for 15 years. "Not even 'Happy Birthday,'" she says. "Not even in the shower." All of her time was spent struggling to heal her injured body and soul. Then she got a little ginger-colored Yorkie puppy and named her "Dindi" (Portuguese for "little jewel"), after the title of her favorite Antonio Carlos Jobim bossa nova. She began singing the song to her sweet Dindi, and this led her to reclaim her voice, and her purpose. (Elli's glorious, tender rendition of "Dindi" can be heard on her website, ElliFordyce.net.) With the help of jazz pianist and music educator Barry Harris and many others, she got herself back on track, and now she is ripe for a comeback. "It feels great," she says, "but there's still emotional baggage I'm deleting from my system as fast as I can. I have a lot of support: a career coach, a psychic healer, a vocal-awareness master, a chiropractor who does other alternative health modalities, and many others with whom I share a lot. I also have great musicians with whom I'm on the same page and my producer is amazing. He and I are a real and committed team. When I get scared (which kept me from doing as much as I could have many times over the years) I yell for help and get over myself as thoroughly as all my resources can help me to do. It's challenging and exciting and terrifying and exhilarating and in the long run I think it will go well." She is also finding some perspective on the time she shared with her dear friend Bobby. "I carried my feelings for him, his declaration of his attraction to me and the quality of our friendship, with me obsessively, probably till I spent those few days with him in Vegas. That experience allowed me to let go and put it in its place. As a performer, seeing him in-person in Vegas especially (and footage of some of those years' performances), I find very inspirational. He had such life and was so in-the-moment. I loved his energy and his taste. He was a great entertainer even more than he was a singer or actor. I admire all of those qualities immensely." Clearly, Elli possesses many of these same qualities, as evidenced in her talent, dedication and her refusal to let anything stand in the way of her dreams. As she says, "It's never too late." Readers can contact Elli Fordyce at ellifordyce@msn.com and visit her on the web at ElliFordyce.net. You'll find performance clips, audio samples from her soon-to-be-released studio CD, "Something STILL Cool," and more.
Reference sources for this article include: "Bobby Darin: The Incredible Story of an Amazing Life" by Al DiOrio and The Bronx High School of Science Website.