Semi-Obscure Album Review: Dean Martin - The Nashville Sessions

Hey pallies, likes wow pallies....just loves to find so much pure Dinodevotion by bloggers. Check out a blogg tagged "Wack Beats" modded by pallie Scott and his cool review of our Dino's last vinyl ..."The Nashville Sessions." To read this in it's original format, just clicks on the tagg of this Dinopost...and pallies, might I ask that you takes the time to leave Scott some Dinopatter to encourage his Dinoaddiction...you will note that he sez that only ever comments on his blog posts/

How cool is it to find 'nother lover of our Dino sharin' his Dinodevotion in print...Scotty doesn't speak of the stellar Dinotune "Since I Met You Baby" so am gonna have to put him on to the Dinovid of that for Dinosure. Again, just lovin' findin' pallies all over the web who are sharin' their passion for our great man. Dinopassionately, DMP

2009-07-10
Semi-Obscure Album Review: Dean Martin - The Nashville Sessions
With this "feature," making about 700 "things" I do on this blog nobody reads, I want to talk about albums that really nobody gives a flying shit out. All of five people on RateYourMusic have rated this particular piece of music, and we're talking about Dean freaking Martin here. It has never been given a CD release. I got a pretty copy of this baby on vinyl at an antique mall in Coloma, Michigan. It's one of my favorite pieces of my music collection. I wrote this review in 2005, shortly after purchasing it and giving it a curious listen.


=-=-=-=-=-=

DEAN MARTIN
The Nashville Sessions
1983, Warner Bros.

I suppose if this were particularly good, and/or worth recommending to much of anyone on earth, it wouldn't have been Dean's last studio album. However, in the great tradition of trying to defend things you like for no real reason - the albums you see the obvious flaws in but somehow warmly embrace them, the albums that you know if anyone else listened they wouldn't really get it - let me just say this: I liked it.

The Nashville Sessions is intriguing on a few levels, but this may only be intriguing to, well, me. I love Dean Martin and I have a special place in my heart for Billy Sherrill-style country production, with the cheesy ass-sounding guitars and repetitive drumming, the silly cornball strings. Everything about it is obnoxious, but I don't care. But Sherrill, and producers like him, need a voice in front of that shit or it's going to be absolutely horrible. George Jones and Tammy Wynette made Sherrill; Dean Martin makes Jimmy Bowen sound a lot better here. I know the production sucks, and I don't care.

Dino's voice sounds old, but what can you expect? I'm not entirely certain he was actually alive, because he is quite clearly a Dean Martin figure from a wax museum on both the front and back covers for this album. However, it's not a bad old. He just sounds like what you'd expect an old Dean Martin to sound like, sort of like the Cash American series.

Nothing about these songs would be any good unless it was Dean Martin singing them in vintage Dino style, aged like a fine wine. He gets some help from Merle Haggard ("Everybody's Had the Blues," the best song on the album) and Conway Twitty ("My First Country Song," which comes out far better than I expected), and in both instances, the two parties sound excited to work with one another, rather than doing it to make a buck. And that's good, because I'm pretty sure this didn't make any bucks at all.

"Old Bones" starts the album perfectly, as Dino puts it out there that he's an old fart, but he's had a good run, fighting the aging process with all he's got, but at the same time realistic that it's going to happen anyway. He also has that classic drunken slur, which is just nice to hear.

What can you say about songs like "Shoulder to Shoulder" or "Love Put a Song in My Heart"? They're gaudy, old woman songs; things you'd have expected even that curmudgeony Dorothy to like if the Golden Girls gave it a spin. But they work OK enough, really. I couldn't exactly tell you why. They just sort of do.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, but I'll go so far as to say I really do enjoy it, and it's probably going to be a frequent listen for me. It's totally flawed, in no way great, and I think about zero percent of anyone would get why I like it at all. But damned if I didn't try to explain anyway.



Posted by Scott at 5:00 AM
Labels: 1983 reviews, dean martin