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 /TiVo