It is easy to forget, after decades of calling him Direk Bobot, that Edgar Mortiz did not begin in show business behind the camera.
Before the iconic comedy shows, the youth-oriented programs, the sitcoms and the countless stars he helped guide, Direk Bobot was first a singer. Not an actor who later learned to sing for variety shows or a director who decided one day to make music for nostalgia’s sake, but a boy whose first door this business opened because he could carry a tune.
“My first love was really singing,” the legendary director said in this one-on-one interview. “That was where I started. I only entered movies because of my singing.”
It is this first love that brings Direk Bobot back to the stage in “Goin’ Standard,” his first solo concert after so many years, on June 13, 7:30 p.m., at the Proscenium Theater. Carrying the same title as his successful 2024 all-standards album under Curve Entertainment, the show is presented by Wacky Solution and Charry Ito, with Maestro Rodel Colmenar conducting The Manila Philharmonic Orchestra, with Mikko Angeles as director.
For Direk Bobot, however, the evening is less about staging a grand comeback than finally singing the music that has stayed with him all his life.
He was around nine or 10 when his parents first brought him to “Eskwelahang Munti” on Channel 7, a children’s television program he remembers as a kind of training ground. By 12, after watching the would-be Superstar Nora Aunor rise through “Tawag ng Tanghalan,” he told his parents he wanted to join the same contest.
He was too young at first.
“They waited for me to turn 13,” Direk Bobot recalled. “So when I turned 13 in August, they booked me in September.”
From there, the young Edgar became a 13-week champion, singing standards he did not yet fully understand but already loved.
“We just copied the records,” he said with a laugh. “People would say, ‘You’re so young, but your songs are all about heartbreak.’ We didn’t understand the meaning. There was no Google for lyrics then. Sometimes, even the lyrics we heard then sang were wrong.”
Still, the music stayed. Standards became the sound that shaped him — the classics of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Jack Jones and the romantic phrasing of an earlier generation.
“I was attached to that kind of music because I am a romantic,” he admitted. “Back then, you had standards, rock and roll and kundiman. Before the Beatles came, Sinatra and Bennett were the idols. You listened to the voice and nothing else.”
His recording break came after “Tawag ng Tanghalan,” though not without a little family intervention. A song meant for him was initially passed over because he was new, and Direk Bobot went home disappointed. His grandmother stepped in, though, to the young singer’s delight.
“She gave P500,” he said, still amused by the memory. “That was big then, and that became the recording. Then it became a gold record.”
That song was “My Pledge of Love,” which not only became one of his defining recordings but also led to his first starring role in a movie with another showbiz treasure, Vilma Santos.
“The song came before the movie,” Direk Bobot said. “They made the movie because of the song.”
In those years, music, movies and love teams flowed into one another. First came his pairing with Ate Guy, then the rise of Guy and Pip left him, as he put it, “back to singing.” A year later, he met Ate Vi, and Bot and Vi became their own phenomenon.
But as time passed, the industry changed. Music changed, too.
“When hip-hop, reggae and other styles came in, the taste changed,” Direk Bobot said. “There came a point when I asked myself, ‘Do you like what you are doing? Why are you doing it if you don’t?’ So I decided to stop until I could do what I really wanted.”
For years, music became private. The singer-turned-actor-turned director just listened at home, collected records, played old albums and kept his standards close.
“[I am] Old school ako,” he said. “I have records, open reel, cassettes and a turntable. Mostly standards. I have the complete albums of the great standards singers. Sometimes, I even have three copies of the same album without realizing it.”
What brought him back was not ambition. It was time, and perhaps the knowledge that the songs he loves are no longer as commonly sung, or as patiently heard.
“Actually, the songs are the story of my life,” he said. “I’m sentimental. Your first heartbreak has a song. When you are looking for your life, there is a song. When I met my wife (Milette Santos-Mortiz), I had a song for her.”
That song is Sinatra’s “All My Tomorrows,” and is part of the “Goin’ Standard” album.
“At the time we got together, I felt I had nothing. I had no work,” Direk Bobot said. “That was my song for her. She became all my tomorrows.”
Now 71, he knows his voice is not the same. He does not pretend otherwise.
“Of course, it’s harder now. I’m older. My voice is lower,” Direk Bobot said. “What is important to me now is not to show that I am good. I just want to tell the story of the songs I love beautifully. It doesn’t have to be about having a beautiful voice. It is about the feeling.”
And with a full orchestra behind him on June 13, that feeling may well be the point.
After a lifetime of directing other people’s timing, confidence and moment, Edgar Mortiz is allowing himself this one — not as a grand reinvention, but as a heartfelt return to the music that first gave him a place in show business.
“I just want to show that this is really what I love,” he said. “If I can entertain someone, that is enough.”
