BOBBY VINTON Songs keep on creating new generations of fans

His songs have been featured prominently in movies.
By JOHN BENSON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
Forget what you think you know about Bobby Vinton.
Sure, he has plenty of early '60s hits -- "Roses Are Red [My Love]," "Blue on Blue," "There! I've Said It Again," "Mr. Lonely" and "Blue Velvet" -- but more importantly, he's got stories. In fact, there are so many unbelievable tales that involve pop culture history, Hollywood couldn't dream up his Forrest Gump-like life.
There's something about Vinton's clean-cut music that keeps attracting new generations and thus reviving his career. How about director David Lynch's decision to name his controversial 1986 movie "Blue Velvet?"
"Lynch spent a week with me in Vegas, where I was performing at the Sands Hotel and he was there writing it," said Vinton, during a phone call to Reno, Nev. "He said, 'Your music just creates a mood, and I want to create moods with my movies. I want to do a movie where it shocks people, and I'm going to have perversion and your music playing in the background.'"
Another movie
Vinton turned down the movie role of the detective because he was busy. This is somewhat the same scenario -- minus the perversion part -- that transpired with Martin Scorsese and his 1990 mob movie "Goodfellas."
"Once again, I didn't want to go," Vinton said. "Martin Scorsese called me and said, 'Can you fly to the Copacabana tomorrow? I want to shoot a scene.' I said, 'I'm really locked in to Reno for this week and can't really take off, but let me send my son Rob, he looks like I did 20 years ago.' And Scorsese said, 'I like that idea better.'"
Throughout his 40-plus-year career, there have been a number of these improbable events, which have not only resulted in financial gain for Vinton but have seemingly rounded his square image into hipness once again. Truth be told, it's mind-boggling the number of lives Vinton has had and continues to experience.
Just last year, hip-hop came calling with newcomer Akon rapping over Vinton's sad tale "Mr. Lonely."
"What he did was speed up my record so it's real fast to get the rap beat," Vinton said. "I got paid a lot of money for him to do that. It was six figures. It surprised me. In fact, I cashed those checks real fast because I figured somebody must have made a mistake."
No mistakes in Vinton's career, just great timing and lots of talent that early on found him being named the top-played artist on radio by Billboard magazine with Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley coming in second and third, respectively. Granted, this was before the British Invasion, but unlike similar artists who quickly fell into obscurity, Vinton surprisingly survived.
"Mick Jagger asked me one day, 'How does it feel with us coming over here and taking all of this [radio] airplay away from you?'" Vinton said. "And I told Mick, 'In a way, you have eliminated all of my competition. There are no more American boys on the charts except me, thanks to you guys.'"
Biography
Born in Canonsburg, Pa., Vinton has done it all. Yet despite all of his success, he's still trying to sway new audiences with what he says now is a rarity in the business -- the stand-up entertainer. You can see Vinton in a hometown show Sunday at the Chevrolet Amphitheatre in Pittsburgh.
"They should expect the unexpected," Vinton said. "They're going to enjoy themselves. The nonbelievers will believe. I fight it every night wherever I go. The mother wants to take the daughter, and the daughter doesn't want to go; it's not her cup of tea. And when they leave, they're fans."
He added, "In fact, I did a show recently and got a letter from a daughter who said, 'I didn't really want to come to see you but I'm glad I did because for the first time I saw the teenage girl in my mother. And it was nice to see it.'"