Bobby Darin & Carol Lawrence: Words & Hole in My Bucket (The Bobby Darin Show, April 20, 1973)

This pair of rather disparate duets comes from the penultimate episode of The Bobby Darin Show. This was the last episode to have the regular formula, with the final episode of the series (the following week) reverting to a concert-style episode featuring Bobby with special guest Peggy Lee. In many repsects, these duets with Carol Lawrence are examples of how the series could get it right and how it could get it oh-so-wrong! The face-to-face duet of "Words" is really quite lovely, with a nice, understated arrangement, and the two voices melding together beautifully. It's one of the best duets in the entire series. And then, in the same episode, for no obvious reason, we also have There's a Hole in My Bucket - a song that might have worked as a fun duet with semi-regular guest Charlene Wong, but she was eight years old. There's really not any excuse for two adults in a variety show of 1973 filling four minutes of an episode with this. Surely there was a better humourous duet song available? It's almost as if the writers knew the series was over and couldn't be bothered. Perhaps even more bizarre than the choice of material is that Bobby and Carol both seem to throw themselves fully into the number! But it is what it is, and it remains a fascinating snapshot of an episode of Bobby's TV series - an episode that was one of the best musically of the whole series, with Bobby singing Get Me to the Church, Come Rain or Come Shine, Shilo, and Guys and Dolls. We will be sharing more duets from the series in the coming weeks and months.