Dean Martin

Enjoying great success in music, film, television, and the stage, Dean Martin was less an entertainer than an icon, the eternal essence of cool. A member of the legendary Rat Pack, he lived and died the high life of booze, broads and bright lights, always projecting a sense of utter detachment and serenity; along with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr. and the other chosen few who breathed the same rarefied air, Martin – highball and cigarette always firmly in hand – embodied the glorious excess of a world long gone, a world without rules or consequences.

Includes the following albums - Pretty Baby, Sleep Warm, A Winter Romance, This Time I'm Swinging, Dino Italian, Love Songs, Cha Cha Cha De Amour, Free Style, Dino Latino.

Dean Martin finally got access to conductor/arranger Nelson Riddle for an album project, and the result was an easy swinging collection with appealing horn charts and a series of comfortable readings of recent and vintage standards. Especially notable were the two songs borrowed from My Fair Lady, "On the Street Where You Live" and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face," which Martin and Riddle re-imagined as straight-forward love songs; "You're Nobody 'til Somebody Loves You" (which Martin would try again in a more contemporary arrangement four years later for one of his biggest hits); and a solo version of "Just in Time," which the singer had recently done with Judy Holliday in the film version of the musical Bells Are Ringing. This Time I'm Swingin'! was a good, confident set by an artist who had figured out how to make competent albums without expending a lot of effort, which was a key to his charm.

A relaxed, easy vocal stylist who clowned with the Rat Pack, developing into an extremely popular ballad singer and light comedian.

Dutch reissue label Disky's Golden Greats series of triple CDs of the works of major pop singers takes advantage of the European copyright law that releases recordings more than 50 years old into the public domain. When it comes to people like Billie Holiday and Judy Garland, that puts a substantial number of the artists' recordings at the label's disposal for no charge. Dean Martin is another story. Something of a late bloomer, he didn't start to take off as a recording artist until 1953, when "That's Amore" became his first gold record. But given that this album was released in 2002, that and Martin's later hits were off-limits to Disky.