Dream With Dean [VINYL]

An excellent recording on to vinyl with all the techniques provided. Great singer with lovely lullaby type songs.

Must have

Perfect

We have a few of Dean's albums, I gave this one 3 stars because it's just not as good as the others.

Dean Martin was a tremendous singer with a God given voice of amazing smoothness and warmth, underrated by critics, self deprecated by the star but adored by millions worldwide. There were echoes of Jolson, Crosby and Harry Mills (of the Mills Brothers) in his voice, but there was only one Dean Martin both in vocal delivery and in style. This seminal album produced by Jimmy Bowen (who produced Dean till the end of his recording career) and recorded in a couple of sessions (Dean never believed in wasting time away from the golf course by over rehearsing) in 1964 turned out to be one of his best. A collection of late night ballads crooned in Martin's inimitable and compelling style. Accompanied only by guitar, piano, drums and bass, Dean knows that there is nowhere to hide the croon behind choruses or big orchestrations and gives it his best shot. He is a revelation especially to those who are familiar only with the Italianate or c&w hit side of Dean. He fashions beautiful versions of songs, some of which would sound hackneyed and obscure in other hands. For instance 'Melancholy Baby' and 'If You Were the Only Girl in the World'. Here, Dean gives us some beautifully controlled singing, tone spot on, impressive breathcontrol, even improvising the endings with aplomb. Right from a gentle 'I'm Confessin'' to begin, through a smooth 'Blue Moon'', a deeply sung 'Fools Rush In' and so on, it's a masterclass of classic crooning. And then, when you expect the last track to follow suit, Dean surprises us with the best song on the album, 'Baby, Won't You Please Come Home?'. You wouldn't think this antique could win out but Dean growls his way ever so smoothly at a semi-rock pace and makes it sound like an invitation Baby will find hard to resist. It's Dean at his best. A historical footnote is of course that the laid back version here of 'Everybody Loves Somebody' was shortly afterwards transformed by Bowen and Dean into the pop version which hit #1, Dean's first since 'Memories Are Made of This' nine years earlier. The rest is history. And to think that Dean only recorded the album version because he didn't like the scheduled tune, and after it was suggested by it's composer Ken Lane who actually plays piano on this album. But then a year or two later, Dean was actually in the studio to record ' Strangers in the Night' but didn't actually finish it and Sinatra had the smash! Destiny. Anyway, if you've any taste you'll snap this up in whichever version as it's available in various CD releases. It's a cracker.