‘Didn’t I’: the dark life of Darondo, the Bay Area’s greatest soul sensation
The summer of love is resplendent in the Bay Area, and everything seems right in the world. There are thousands of soldiers being pointlessly slain in Vietnam, and the president’s brains haven’t long been swept off the streets of Dallas. However, Darondo forgets all that as he cruises through the temporary utopia that the hippies have set up in this corner of California. He parades around in a luxury vehicle, vowing soon to be king of this little perch of paradise.
And soon enough, he is. The summer of love might’ve vacated its lease holding on the zeitgeist when the counterculture finally suffered its inevitable comedown after Woodstock, but that didn’t preclude Darondo from enjoying the spoils of modern nirvana. Why would it? He had grown up in a poor household in Berkley before being gifted a shitty guitar and quickly stirring up such heavenly soul music that it was able to yank him through the ranks of society via his bootstraps.
Now, he’s cruising along San Francisco’s famed Columbus Avenue in a white Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, with the number plate reading, in embossed capitals, ‘DARONDO’, just in case people didn’t recognise the angelic vehicle or the guy in a fur coat and snakeskin boots driving it, sweat dripping from his brow in a blistering sun that he’s too cool to shade from. He’s headed to a concert at Bimbo’s 365 Club, ready to open for James Brown.
For this task, a casual disposition was surely required. You only have to look back at the TAMI club to see how capable Brown is of wiping the floor with the supposed cream of the crop. The Godfather of funk still has Mick Jagger waking up in fright thinking about following him, but for Darondo, it was just another day at work. And not that he cared much about it, but it was a day at work that saw him eclipse the man that many called the king of performing.
There were apparently many such nights in his long-running stint as Brown’s opening act during his early 1970s Bimbo’s Club residency. And alongside the radio hit ‘Didn’t I’, a song as close to perfection as you can get in a realm as subjective as music, he became a cult hero in the area. But this raised two pertinent questions: firstly, how did he live so lavishly? He’d frequently lounge back in restaurant booths, swirling a toothpick in his mouth before throwing down a tip that outstripped the bill itself—a move that apparently earned him his nickname after a grateful waitress purred it in delight.
Secondly, why did this supreme talent never become more than a mere local legend? In many ways, the answers are one and the same: he was king of the Bay Area, so why bother being just a lord in danger in the wider world? It’s long been known that Darondo loved being the Bay Area’s head honcho, and it has also long been suspected his motives in life stretched beyond music. There are many claims that his riches were not purely derived from his sublime soul but that he also worked as a pimp, a claim that the late singer denied with a glint in his eye.
But even if there was a glint, it was one left long in the past when interviewers finally did come knocking. The ever-independent soul sensation grew weary of having to wrestle his interests with those of others in the music industry. So, his recorded output is sadly measly, blighted by the fact he hated contracts and the grubby hands that stained them. So, in the late ‘70s, with some of the greatest soul music the world has ever heard under his diamond-studded belt, he turned his back on music.
Alas, he did so with a monkey on his back. He might not have enjoyed the industry all that much, but he had loved the spoils it afforded him… particularly cocaine. This left him somewhat spiralling, and the pitfalls of his abdication plagued his post-music ventures. The local cable TV show he hosted, Darondo’s Penthouse After Dark, didn’t go well, and Tapper the Rabbit, his attempt to be a snorting children’s TV star, understandably, went even worse.
But Darondo had his wits about him. Nobody goes from Berkeley to driving a White Rolls Royce without them, and he knew he had to start over—to get away from his former kingdom. And so he went searching for his soul once more in Europe and found it as the entertainment on a cruise ship. This was music at his pace. And he loved it. But it was Bimbo’s, and he was keen to get home.
So, in the latter days of his 66 years that ended in 2013, he ventured back to the Bay and trained up as a physio. Living just long enough to see record collectors have their minds blown by his ethereal ways, he had a voice, tone, and ear for a tune that floated like a feather that could shatter a window upon impact. In fact, when one came calling, he can see him quite literally rediscovering his soul as he strums through ‘Didn’t I’ for the first time in 30 years, fumbling his way back through the years before feasting on the memory of his former glory that you just about still see in glinting flashes.
