THE DEAN MARTIN TELEVISION SHOW

A Selection of the Most Marvelous Melodic Moments from the NBC-TV Series

If he could, Dean Martin might perform his entire television series from a hammock. Face down.

He'd probably still have a Top Ten TV show.

As it is, often standing almost erect, Dean Martin sings and slouches his way through television's most engaging young musical hour.

He makes television look like something any damn fool could pull off. All the DF'd have to do is stand up there and goof his way through, reading off idiot cards, falling off pianos, and singing in barroom baritone.

Easy? Just try it.

In fact, it seems like thousands of other, now-forgotten "TV Hosts" - all smiling, all talented, all dull - have tried it. And fallen flat on their hammocks.

Dean needs none of this. Where other TV hosts smile like there's a banana caught in their teeth, Dean stares glassy-eyed at the little red light on the camera, and gets it out as best he can.

Which is, after all is added up, pretty damn good.

Even if he does look as if he could forget the words to "Row Row Row Your Uh Uh..." Dean Martin inside is - surprise! - actually a seething mass. Of bubbling ideas, of feelings and emotions and tensions and straining organs. He hides all this real well is all. But he does strain and worry. Very few people alive today know just how much Dean Martin worries. Worries about how bars close on Election Day. Many like things plague him.

But, good Scout that he is, he don't show it none. Like Flo Nightingale, like The Smith Brothers, like Mayo Clinic, Dean Martin has dedicated his whole life to soothing others' worries. And this dedication has taken its toll. No one man could possibly live with all of this burden. But Dean faces this rigor bravely.

Where others might sniff glue, or worse, Dean Martin instead has chosen to support the Hops Growers of America.

Where others might have stooped to mugging widows, Dean instead raises his face heavenward, drinking life-giving booze.

Who dast blame this man?

It is thus that Dean Martin, bearing the world's troubles, hiding a seething inside, keeps up his cavalier exterior as he stumbles through life. You can, on this album, actually hear Dean stumbling in some of the introductions to the songs. Hear Dean taking a taste, hitting the mike with his leg, lighting a cigarette, all in preparation for another magnificent Ernie Freeman arrangement.

In times gone bye, Dean could have pretended to be the Town Drunk. Now, through the miracle of television, Dean can be our National Drunk.

Progress on the march.

Is it any wonder, then, that we humbly ask you to lift your glass in praise, folk, to the greatest musical moments from Dean Martin's Television Show album...an album that is your vinylite guarantee that Dean Martin will at last remember all of the words.

And then some.

- Stan Cornyn