I don’t wear it on my sleeve, but I do have a lapel pin. I am a rabid, card-carrying, born again Bat-Fan.

While many critics and comic book fans hail the Neal Adams/Denny O’Neill run in the comics for establishing the dark mood that is still present today, I believe, instead, that it was the Marshall Rogers/Steve Englehart run that truly established the theatricality of the character, his threatening personality to criminals, the art of evocative illustration, and a swirling cape of darkness that could stretch to infinity.

What, you ask, does this have to do with music?  For a short while, the only Batman that the mass public envisioned was the one popularized on ABC TV in the mid ’60s, and that’s where this video comes from.  Well, enamored as I still am of the lyrics-heavy Batman theme, it is not a Batman tune I present here today, but merely a Bat-related tune.  For in an episode of the Adam West Batman series, a young lady performed a short, private concert for three of Catwoman’s henchmen.

That young lady was popular singer Leslie Gore, who left us just a few short days ago, and the song she sang was one I heard many times, over and over, on WGH Radio (Hampton-Norfolk-Newport News).   Before she ever sang it on Batman, it was already a favorite of mine.