Search - Dean Martin :: Dean Martin Greatest Hits King of Cool

Kevin V. (thekev) from ELDON, MO
Reviewed on 5/2/2007...

Martin's warm, velvety vocals are timeless.

1 of 1 member(s) found this review helpful.

From The President of the Official Dean Martin Fan Center

Neil T. Daniels | Arcadia, California USA | 08/11/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Let me be honest and tell you what the fans have said to us about this cd... about 80% just love it! It has great liner notes and information, along with Dean's Greatest hits in remastered digital sound. (This pressing has been upgraded from the original Greatest Hits release, where inferior mastering was done to get this product out for the fans... but it has all been fixed, and excellently done!).We have heard a few complaints that they keep putting the same old "That's Amore" and "Return to Me" on the releases, but you need to bear two things in mind... this IS a compilation of Dean's GREATEST hits (both Capitol & Reprise years), and second... if it were not for Capitol Records (Dean's first recording label) we would not have a company that would be finacially able to offer Dean's catalog of "Reprise" recordings. The money that Capitol earns on the releases that they own, help fund the tremendous cost of releasing the Reprise masters.It's a long and complicated story (we have explained in our Dean Martin publication) but the bottom line is that this cd is a wonderful place to start in obtaining the great body of work that Dean has left for all. If you have grown up with Dean over the years, or simply looking for a good cd filled with wonderful music when music was fun and arranged well, then this is a must! From here you can go on to buy other titles and find out more about Dean's vocal directions and legacy he left us. admin@deanmartinfancenter.com"

Guaranteed to make you a Dino fan for life

Daniel Jolley | Shelby, North Carolina USA | 08/15/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The King of Cool is truly an appropriate moniker for Dean Martin; he was suave and cool, delivering timeless ballads in a velvety voice with a seemingly effortless delivery. No one will ever croon a tune the way Dino did. For those who are unacquainted with his musical legacy, this is an excellent introductory purchase. You can find Dean Martin CDs of all shapes and sizes, but this item is the first to offer hits from both his Capitol and Reprise years on a single CD. "Powder Your Face With Sunshine" may be my least favorite tune on this album, but it was Dean's first big hit in '49. Throughout the 50s and early 60s, Dean turned out one amazing Italian love song after another--Memories Are Made of This, Volare, Return to Me, Innamorata, That's Amore, to name a few. These are the songs most treasured by many a Dean fan (including myself), and you cannot hear a single one of these titles without thinking immediately of Dean. Ain't That a Kick in the Head is a great song many would hail as Dean's best, and it marked a transition toward livelier, "pop" music in the 60s. Dean Martin pretty much towered over the 60s with huge hits such as The Door Is Still Open to My Heart and the classic You're Nobody 'til Somebody Loves You. His experiments with even different types of music also proved quite successful--Houston, for example, strikes me as a terrific song, but its different sound does not quite win over all Dino fans as it does me. Two songs I adore which don't receive quite as much attention as I would give them are In the Misty Moonlight and In the Chapel in the Moonlight. If you really want to see how popular Dean was in the 60s, just consider the fact that his Everybody Loves Somebody knocked the mighty Beatles out of the top spot on the charts in 1964.Frankly, I don't know how anyone cannot love Dean Martin. He basically defined the words cool, suave, and hip. I believe Judy Garland is the greatest singer ever, but I am just as convinced that Dean Martin had the most beautiful singing voice the world has ever heard. If you were to lay a stick of butter beside your stereo, I'm half convinced Dean's rich, mellow singing would melt it. There is also no singer I enjoy singing along with more (except I do let Dino handle the occasional Italian lyrics by himself), and this CD affords me the opportunity to sing along with almost all of his best tunes one after another. This collection is basically a Dean Martin starter-kit sure to make even the most disinterested listener a Dino fan for life."