Dean Martin Albums (38)
'The Door Is Still Open to My Heart'
Release Date 4/14/2009
Tracks 12
Label Hip-O
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What The Critics Say
The chart-topping success of Dean Martin's spring 1964 single "Everybody Loves Somebody" rejuvenated his recording career, and it created considerable demand for his records where there hadn't been much before. As a result, Reprise Records had to scramble, quickly issuing an Everybody Loves Somebody LP that consisted of the hit and tracks borrowed from other albums and singles. Martin then followed with a Top Ten hit, "The Door Is Still Open to My Heart," in the same watered-down rock & roll style, and Reprise had the happy dilemma of having to put together another tie-in album only two months later. This time, the label had a handful of newly recorded tracks to use, but the album still had to be padded with three selections that had appeared previously on the 1963 album Dean "Tex" Martin Rides Again ("I'm Gonna Change Everything," "The Middle of the Night Is My Cryin' Time," and "My Sugar's Gone"), along with both sides of the single. Since the new songs were minor efforts, the resulting lineup fit for the most part into the "hit plus filler" formula of albums assembled mainly for people who didn't like to buy 45s. The exception was a revival of the 1946 Russ Morgan song "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You," again done with those piano triplets that had been employed on "Everybody Loves Somebody" and "The Door Is Still Open to My Heart." Released as a single from the album, it became a Top 40 pop hit and Martin's third consecutive easy listening chart-topper. That was enough to earn the album an average ranking among Martin's long-players. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Dino, Dean Martin's 1972 album, was another in a long line of country-pop confections designed for him by producer Jimmy Bowen, with whom he had worked since 1964. It had been Bowen who had the idea of doing the 1940s evergreen "Everybody Loves Somebody" in a 1950s rock & roll style, setting off a string of hits for Martin, and the producer had used the singer as his mouthpiece for redoing some of country music's biggest hits in the years since. It worked well for quite a while, but by the early '70s everyone involved was just going through the motions. This time, Bowen chose a couple of good Kris Kristofferson songs, "Just the Other Side of Nowhere" and "Kiss the World Goodbye," and got another contribution from longtime Martin songwriter Baker Knight, "The Right Kind of Woman." For old time's sake, he did Jesse Belvin's 1959 R&B hit "Guess Who" in the same manner as "Everybody Loves Somebody." The rest of the material was a collection of formula Nashville castoffs. Martin, who probably heard the songs for the first time upon entering the studio, nevertheless managed to bring his usual sense of personality to his interpretations. He was best on "Just the Other Side of Nowhere," which had the same sort of down-on-your-luck tone as numbers he had done well in the past, such as "King of the Road" and "Houston," and he had some fun with "Party Dolls and Wine," which quickly became a country hit for Red Steagall. Martin fans who enjoyed his latter-day country sound may have been pleased but, as the generic album title suggested, Dino was a minor effort. It also became his last album to hit the charts. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
By mid-1967, it seemed as if the soft rock, country-pop musical style that arranger Ernie Freeman and producer Jimmy Bowen had developed for Dean Martin on the number one hit "Everybody Loves Somebody" three years earlier finally had run its course. Martin kept making records in the same style, but sales began to fall off. Then something odd happened. Reprise, his record label, looked back to the 1965 album Dean Martin Hits Again and found a particularly slavish version of the formula in a cover of the 1936 song "In the Chapel in the Moonlight." Belatedly released as a single in the summer of 1967, it became a Top 40 hit and topped the easy listening charts, Martin's biggest hit in two years. Suddenly, the formula didn't seem moribund anymore, especially after a newly recorded single, "Little Ole Wine Drinker, Me" (which touched on Martin's image as a boozer), followed it into the Top 40. Reprise quickly assembled an album and named it after "Chapel"'s B-side, a 1965 recording of "Welcome to My World" that had appeared previously on (Remember Me) I'm the One Who Loves You. Producer Jimmy Bowen commissioned Martin versions of a couple of old country hits that had recently been made into pop hits by Martin imitators Engelbert Humperdinck ("Release Me") and Tom Jones ("The Green, Green Grass of Home"). Martin aced them, naturally, despite some bizarre electric piano playing on the former. Welcome to My World may have been another of Reprise's mix-and-match Martin LPs, but it was a successful one, restoring a measure of his commercial clout. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'The Hit Sound of Dean Martin'
Release Date 3/24/2009
Tracks 11
Label Hip-O
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What The Critics Say
Dean Martin's career turnaround in 1964 came as a result of his hit recording of "Everybody Loves Somebody." It led to a higher profile on television and in the movies, which may have given the entertainer less time to make records. Nevertheless, the demand for them remained constant, and Reprise, his record label, satisfied that demand by mixing the new sides he managed to cut with previously issued ones. The Hit Sound of Dean Martin, like the previous year's Dean Martin Hits Again, had a title that implied it was a hits compilation. In fact, it was a combination of Martin's two most recent Top 40 pop and Top Five easy listening hits, "Come Running Back" and "A Million and One," with six newly recorded songs, the B-side of "A Million and One" (Lee Hazlewood's "Shades"), and two tracks, "Any Time" and "Ain't Gonna Try Anymore," that had been released originally on Country Style in 1963. ("Any Time," in fact, was making its third LP appearance, also having been used on Somewhere There's a Someone only four and a half months earlier.) The new songs, as usual arranged in a style that would define them as country music if they had been recorded in Nashville by a singer with more of a twang in his voice, were no great shakes. (The chart for "A Million and One" was a dead ringer for the Ray Charles version of "I Can't Stop Loving You.") And there was evidence that Reprise's blatant exploitation was starting to hurt Martin with record buyers. Previously, his albums had been reliable Top 20 entries and gold-sellers. The Hit Sound of Dean Martin only made the Top 40 and became his first LP since "Everybody Loves Somebody" hit not to go gold. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'Everybody Loves Somebody'
Release Date 10/3/2006
Tracks 12
Label Dean Martin Family Trust
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'(Remember Me) I'm the One Who Loves You'
Release Date 10/3/2006
Tracks 12
Label Dean Martin Family Trust
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What The Critics Say
By the summer of 1965, the formula arranger Ernie Freeman and producer Jimmy Bowen used to come up with hits for Dean Martin starting with "Everybody Loves Somebody" a year earlier -- piano triplets, a 4/4 beat, swooping strings, a female chorus -- had become so obvious that even the unsigned liner notes to his new album, named after his most recent hit, (Remember Me) I'm the One Who Loves You, referred to it as "the Formula." In fact, however, Bowen and Freeman were moving beyond the formula by this time, having developed for Martin what those same notes called "an updated pop-country sound." With the hits still coming ("Remember Me" was his fifth straight Top 40 entry), Martin was willing to let them do what they liked, and the team looked around for current material suitable to the singer and chose Roger Miller's "King of the Road," Jewel Akens' "The Birds and the Bees," and "Red Roses for a Blue Lady," the old Vaughn Monroe hit recently revived by Vic Dana. They also picked good vintage country and countrypolitan songs like Jim Reeves' "Welcome to My World," Ray Price's "My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You," Leroy Van Dyke's "Walk on By" (not to be confused with the Bacharach/David song that had been a hit for Dionne Warwick in 1964), Hank Williams' "Take These Chains From My Heart," and Dottie West's "Here Comes My Baby." Martin was fortunate to have a producer with such a broad knowledge of pop and country music and a sense of what would work for him. The country market never bit at these records, but Martin had a clutch of material that sounded fresh to pop fans. And, the liner notes notwithstanding, Bowen and Freeman knew that the time had come to vary the formula. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'Happiness Is Dean Martin'
Release Date 10/3/2006
Tracks 11
Label Dean Martin Family Trust
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What The Critics Say
After putting five Dean Martin albums into release in 1966, Reprise may have felt it could afford a breather in 1967, and the label waited until spring to put out the first of its two Martin LPs for the year. Then, too, with Martin hosting a weekly television show and starring in three movies in 1966, the public may have been becoming sated with the entertainer; another reason for delaying a new album was that Martin's recent singles had not performed so well. After eight consecutive Top 40 hits between 1964 and 1966, his 45s began struggling to make the middle of the pop charts (although they continued to soar into the Top Ten of the easy listening charts). Mid-chart entries "Nobody's Baby Again," "(Open Up the Door) Let the Good Times In," and "Lay Some Happiness on Me," all of them arranged in the soft rock style of "Everybody Loves Somebody," didn't seem to justify tie-in LPs. All three, along with their B-sides, were rounded up for Happiness Is Dean Martin, which meant that more than half the album consisted of tracks that had been released previously on singles. The rest were in the familiar country-pop style Martin had been pursuing for the past few years, the most impressive being a recasting of the old Patsy Cline hit "She's Got You" as "He's Got You." But the declining sales curve of Martin's releases indicated it was time to find a new formula. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'Gentle on My Mind'
Release Date 10/3/2006
Tracks 10
Label Dean Martin Family Trust
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What The Critics Say
Dean Martin appears to have tired of maintaining his position as a major record-maker of the 1960s before his public got tired of him. With a weekly TV series to maintain and movies to make, the entertainer who had recorded frequently in the three years after his comeback with "Everybody Loves Somebody" in 1964 made his presence scarce thereafter. Reprise Records maintained a singles release schedule by issuing previously released LP tracks as singles in 1967-1968 ("In the Misty Moonlight," "You've Still Got a Place in My Heart"), while Martin avoided the recording studio for almost a year. When he did return, the resulting singles, "April Again" and "Not Enough Indians," only did well on the easy listening charts. Finally, after issuing two Greatest Hits sets, Reprise released Gentle on My Mind, Martin's first album of new material in 16 months. In the interim, the country-pop sound he had pioneered with producer Jimmy Bowen and arranger Ernie Freeman had taken hold with others, and he found himself covering the country crossover hits "Honey," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," and "Gentle on My Mind." Of course, he did it superbly, but he was now chasing a trend instead of leading it. Bowen and Freeman kept the sound contemporary, and Martin was comfortable with the slightly more pop direction that country-pop had taken. But you couldn't help thinking that record-making had fallen far down his list of priorities. Meanwhile pent-up demand made Gentle on My Mind his highest-charting album in three years and his last LP of new recordings to go gold. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'The Dean Martin TV Show'
Release Date 10/3/2006
Tracks 10
Label Dean Martin Family Trust
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
For two and a half years following the spring 1964 release of "Everybody Loves Somebody," Dean Martin cloned numerous successors to his comeback hit, all of them employing the prominent backbeat and vocal chorus, the triplets driving the rhythm, as well as a lengthy series of country-pop efforts that borrowed from the Nashville sound for a kind of Hollywood sound that might have made the country charts if the singer had not been the pride of Steubenville, OH, by way of Beverly Hills. Gold records rained down on Martin's head during this period, but he largely ignored his core constituency, the adult pop audience that expected him to wear a tuxedo and sing staples of the Great American Songbook over a wash of strings as he had on his Capitol recordings of the 1950s. Using as an excuse a tie-in with his successful television series (although this is not a soundtrack album), Martin finally prepared just such a set of recordings on the LP called The Dean Martin TV Show. For the first time since 1964's Dream With Dean, he applied himself to traditional pop standards as the drumkit remained discreetly in a timekeeping mode in the back. The result may not have been his best such LP (especially because, boasting only ten tracks, it was so short), but for his most faithful fans, it must have come as a considerable relief. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
