Dean Martin-King Of Cool

The Rat Pack!  Frank, Sammy and Dino!

Back as a snot nosed brat, I disowned everything from these squares cause they were not rock and roll.  Far from it, but over time and age and tired of crappy music from crappy bands of the 80s and 90s, I basically to scour the bargain bins for certain albums.  While Frank Sinatra remains the all time great vocalist according to everybody, I was more into the king cool of Dean Martin more than the MOR Pop of Frank and while someday I may attempt to pick the ultimate Sammy Davis Jr, I will cast my lot for Dean Martin.  After all he was Matt Helm in those mid 60s spy movies and of course The Dean Martin Show which I did watch and of course they can be found on DVD and the Dean Martin Roasts are always campy but good fun.

For music, Dean could nail a song with one or two takes tops.  The guy could sing a telephone book and get a hit with it.  With the Reprise albums, Bowen would record the tracks, then have Dean come in later and lay them down the greatest of ease. The early years Capitol has always managed to put out  albums via CD.  Like Frank and Nat King Cole, there's a lotta fluff to go with the pop but once in a while Dino would make a winning single (Memories Are Made Of These, Standing On The Corner)  but most of the time the dated charts and background singers made it a chore to listen to.  While pop, Dean Martin was also (to me) a damn good country singer, had Jimmy Bowen, his Reprise producer lined him up with folks from Bradley's barn or Nashville rather than the Your Hit Parade backing singers.

The period I'm more familiar with is his Reprise/Warner Brothers tenure which he had the number 1 single that knocked the Beatles off the top spot, with Everybody Loves Somebody Sometimes, but when you listen to this on the Collector's Choice mixtape of The Long Lost Reprise Hits, you hear the same arrangements over and over, (The Door Is Still Open To My Heart, a carbon copy of Everybody Loves Somebody and did fairly well)  Bowen always did surround Dean with some great session players, The late Earl Palmer on drums but Godalmighty the cheesy background muzak singers really didn't do anybody any favors. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened had Lee Hazlewood taken a crack at production, the track Houston is the best percussion use of a coke bottle ever done.  And Houston plays to the strengths of Dino, for it's a country based song, something not out of character on a Roger Miller album if Roger even attempted to do that song.  While later songs didn't chart as high or well, Martin was best at the country croon like I Take A Lot Of Pride In What I Am or Little Ole Wine Drinker Me, or the 56th version of Gentle On My Mind.  Capitol, sensing this issued a couple of Country based themes in around 1998, the one I found, Hurtin Country Songs while good, suffered from dated production.  Martin covered the country hits at that time and did credible versions of For The Good Times which could rival the late great Ray Price, but he beats out O.C. Smith in Little Green Apples.

There's no shortage of Dean Martin on vinyl, any thrift store will probably have a few scratched up copies of Houston or Everybody Loves Somebody and for the casual listener that borderlines on overkill if you only looking for the hits.  Collector's Choice in the 2000's managed to reissue all of the Reprise albums as 2 on 1 CDs and certain ones do command higher prices than the 25 cent copy at the Salvation Army.  Although Dean was winding down in the late 70s, he managed to return to lush pop sounds on the just about forgotten 1978 Every Once In A While.  But Martin would reunite with Jimmy Bowen one more time for the 1983 Nashville Sessions, Dean's final album and actually had a country hit with My First Country Song. 

Capitol for the most part has continued to keep Martin's legacy alive with a slew of Best ofs and ICON series which makes decent but spotty sampler of cherry picked hits that come both from Capitol and Reprise but this year, The Dean Martin Family Trust has signed up with Sony/Legacy to reissue Dean's Reprise albums once again, will they do it as the 2 albums on 1 CD that Collector's Choice or will they be issued as stand alone albums?  The one that I am most interested in would be The Nashville Sessions though  I don't think Collector's Choice ever reissued it.  With Martin Family Trust moving the Reprise stuff over to Legacy, Capitol's revamping of Dino, The Essential Dean Martin, takes out the Reprise stuff and adds a second cd of Capitol recorded stuff. But the original 2004 Dino Capitol Comp does have most of the Reprise hits.  The new Legacy Playlist of the Reprise Years (2014) to me is a disappointment with the omission of key tracks (Gentle On My Mind, Too Many Indians) in favor of lesser known stuff and leaves off My First Country Song and instead has Drinking Champagne.  It's buyer beware and this will not let me give up the Collector's Choice version of Long Lost Reprise Hits, which omits Gentle On My Mind.  Out of everything that is out there, Dino (2004) Essential Dean Martin covers most of it.

In the smoke filled Las Vegas Sahara ballrooms and lounge areas of the long gone 40s, 50s and 60s nothing could compare with the laid back cool of Dean Martin.  He's gone now, been gone for over 25 years but his music, his movies and his roasts still remain.

Forever cool.