HISTORY OF DINOSONG "THAT'S AMORE"

Hey pallies, here is a cool little Dinohistory Dinolesson on "That's Amore.' If you woulda like to view it in it's original form, just click on the link of this Dinopost. So great to be learnin' more 'bout our great man Dean Martin.




“That’s Amore” is a 1952 song by composer Harry Warren and lyricist Jack Brooks. It became a major hit for Dean Martin in 1953. Amore means “love” in Italian.

The song first appeared in the soundtrack of the Martin and Lewis comedy film The Caddy, released by Paramount Pictures on August 10, 1953.

The track that was used for the single released by Capitol Records was recorded on August 13, 1953 (Session 3098; Master 11694-6), with the orchestra conducted by Dick Stabile, at Capitol Records’ studios at 5505 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, California. On November 7, 1953, Martin’s record of the song, with “You’re The Right One” (which was recorded at the same session as “That’s Amore”) on the flip side, peaked at #2 on the Billboard charts. The song was kept from the #1 spot when Les Paul and Mary Ford’s Capitol Records single “Vaya Con Dios” returned to the #1 spot after being knocked out by Stan Freberg’s Capitol Records single “St. George And The Dragonet”, which had been #1 for the past four weeks, after “Vaya Con Dios” had been #1 for the nine previous weeks.

The song remains closely identified with Dean Martin; That’s Amore was used as the title for a 2001 video retrospective of Martin’s career, and his son Ricci Martin entitled his 2002 biography That’s Amore: A Son Remembers Dean Martin. As an iconic song, “That’s Amore” remains a secondary signature song[1] for Dean Martin (second only to “Everybody Loves Somebody” of 1964).[1]

The arrangement of the 1953 hit was scored primarily for mandolins. The lyrics affectionately ridicule the Italian-American ethnic stereotype, with lines like “When the moon hits your eye/Like a big-a pizza pie/That’s amore”, “When the world seems to shine/Like you’ve had too much wine/That’s amore”, and “When the stars make you drool/Just like pasta fazool’/That’s amore.” Martin did not attempt to deliver the lyrics in an authentic Italian accent, but used the accent of an American trying to mimic Italian pronunciation.

Since the verse starts “In Napoli/where love is king,” the setting of the song is Naples, Italy. That is evident in the lyrics (cited, above) that contain what may be called jocularly either the best or the worst rhyme in the history of popular music–that is, the bilingual rhyme of “drool” and “fazool,” the Neapolitan dialect word, fasule, for the Italian fagioli–beans.

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One Comment to “Thats Amore”


dino martin peters Says:
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Hey pallie, what a great bit of Dinohistory on one of our Dino’s greatest songs of amore. I so love the Dinoversion contained in “The Caddy”…so full of Dinolive! Thanks for sharin’ this…hope it draws even more to knowin’, lovin’, and followin’ our great man. Never was, never will be anyone as cool as the King of Cool…oh, to return to the days when Dino walked the earth.