I would've let this thread go cold, except I had to post this. It's Buddy's last published article (in praise of Dean Martin, no less):
Buddy Blue Wrote:
Kids know doodley-squat from music. I reluctantly include myself in the equation even though I'd much prefer readers to believe I emerged from the womb clutching a Dock Boggs 78.
This painful confession is borne out by the fact that, while I was fortunate enough to live through the heyday of the Rat Pack, I hated that stuff and all its ilk, adjudging anything not targeted at my own pea-greenerly demographic to be cornball crapola for elderly squares.
I clearly recall assiduous avoidance of my parents' record collection – which included nuggets by respective Rat Packers plus Ray Price, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King and Al Hirt, to name a few – even as I actively enjoyed music by Herman's Hermits, a band weaker'n an anemic poodle from Somalia.
While I still maintain my nascent Hermits jones was preferable to my mother's accursed Barbra Streisand habit, it became apparent as adulthood loomed, all dank 'n' eggy, that I'd missed out on a whole lot of great stuff due to the dimwitted prejudices of my tender years.
Which brings us to Dean Martin, a man, to my belatedly erudite mind, the greatest of the Rat Packers. Compare Dino not to the admittedly more versatile but shamelessly tomming of Sammy Davis Jr., festooned be he in an afro, Nehru jacket, love beads and Beatle boots at a vintage when he ought to have been stubbornly continuing to conk his hair and sport sharkskin suits.
And especially, compare Dino not to fellow Italian person Frank Sinatra, whose personal charm calls to mind an echidna sporting sharpened, poison-tipped quills – this was a man clearly far too enamored of the way he wore his own hat, and whose Mediterranean charisma was more Vito Genovese than Jimmy Durante. Umbriago!
Compare instead Dino to, well, no one else, for he was nothing if not a great American original, without whom the existence of singing entertainers ranging from Elvis Presley to Country Dick Montana is nigh unthinkable ('twas Dick who first steered me from the wayward path of Dino-neglect; I subsequently came to appreciate that my bandmate harbored oodles o' well-studied Dino licks in his own arsenal).
Had you attended a party at Sinatra's house, I'm certain he'd have personally belittled you, then have his friends beat you up as one and all laughed cruelly at your expense.
Dino, on the other hand, wanted to feed you cannoli handmade by his mother, share his most expensive Chianti over inappropriate jokes, cuddle you until you started to feel a bit of manly discomfort, then release you amid a cadence of heartwarming chuckles.
OK, the point of all this wordy Dino-worship is that I'm the lucky beneficiary of an ambitious reissue campaign by Collector's Choice Music, which has kicked up nine of Martin's original Capitol Records albums recorded between 1953 and 1962, including rare single and EP tracks.
Regale yourselves of that marvelously lazy, behind-the-beat phrasing, that velveteen timbre, that winking grin behind each note! It's delicious, that's what it is! Outside of Cab Calloway, I'm hard-pressed to think of another singer whose voice exuded such unbridled joy, such nonchalant class, such wonderful lack of inhibition.
Check the ease with which Dino slays “Volare,” shaming the hit Jerry Vale version; marvel at how Dino's easy magnetism somehow erases the unpleasant cracker connotations from the antediluvian “When It's Sleepytime Down South”; play Dino crooning “Relax-Ay-Voo” over and over and you'll wind up tossing your Xanax 'script!
Delicious, I say!
So here's how it is, youngsters: Go ahead and think yourselves oh-so-superior by simple dint of the fact that I shall expire 'ere yourselves; the truth is that, due to your lack of Dino-appreciation, I am an inherently advanced being to you and will remain so, even within the inky depths of my sepulcher, unless and until you smell the Dino-love in your midst. You are but a trilobite to my homo erectus – and Dino will now and forevermore serve as the Great Spirit in the Sky.
Go out and buy the Dino reissues.
Yes, all of them.
Yes, now!
You're welcome.
