Three significant things about 1995. We moved again, this time across Michigan to Saginaw. But we couldn't find a proper house to rent, and got a large apartment, instead, at "garden level." My oldest daughter sort of foundered for months in a class for slow kids while waiting for a spot in the gifted school to open up; a sort of bizarre irony. The next one was in kindergarten, and the teacher had little patience with her the way her preschool teachers did. But she was still sweet and enthusiastic and warm to everyone she saw.
Toy Story was released that fall. Changed all our lives, in a way, hard to explain. At the time, the artistry and character of it blew us away. I still think it's one of the finest films every made.
And at Christmas, Dean Martin died. I hadn't thought much about him over the years other than that he was funny and kinda cool. But the announcement of his death was when I began to sit up and take notice.
Always funny, but actually most known as being said by Dean Martin, who probably got it from Joe E. Lewis…or from Joey Bishop, who wrote a lot of the Sands Hotel schtick. They all “borrowed” heavily from each other.
You see, because I'm not 14 or 74, I don't spend a great deal of time in shopping malls. I wouldn't know Adele if she bit me. I honestly don't know much about Alec Baldwin, who said this earlier? But I do know Dino...
I'm trying to decide which singer I'd have had a crush on if I was 30 in 1965. This would mean my formative music years came between 1950-1955, when crooners and 3 and 4-part harmonies were heavily featured on the radio. Bing Crosby, Frankie Laine, The Ames Brothers, Nat King Cole, Jo Stafford, Eddie Fisher, The Four Aces, just a bit of Dean Martin, and the beginning of Frank Sinatra's comeback.
"Rock Around the Clock" was released July 9, 1955. No way I wouldn't have loved that and launched into that sound, having previously dug the swing and bebop I heard around the house. But nobody swooned over Bill Haley, as far as I know.
Me being me, it's quite likely I've have been married by then. So the next ten years would be filled with clotheslines of diapers, learning to make over the old furniture my husband and I found on weekend hunting trips, listening to the radio and saving money for a TV. Now and then attempting to be glamorous in the late evening after the kids were in bed. Going to movies, of course!
I hope that doesn't sound depressing. It's how things were, for most women, a little easier or a little harder depending. Hopefully I wouldn't have married a man who thought of me as a golden ticket inside a candy bar wrapper, only to realize later that marriage and children would require patience, effort, and dedication, instead of being a trip to a magical wonderland with all the hard icky things shoved into a drawer out of sight. That's how things often are, as well.
Back to music and singers. My musical taste is a perfect fusion of my parents' tastes, with a bit of my time period thrown in. If they were born around 1910 instead of 32 and 36, they'd have been witness to the birth of popular song on radio, the developing pop orchestra sound, lots of slow sentimental love songs mixed with ragtime and a certain amount of kitsch. They'd be used to hearing singers belt out tunes through megaphones, and marvel when that was no longer necessary. They'd listen to the radio every evening, and, of course, would also own a gramophone player. I'd have had Rudy Vallee and Bing Crosby and maybe Jimmie Rodgers records passed along to me that I'd eventually share with my own kids when they were little.
My husband would be into Leonard Bernstein, and he'd dig post-Romantic, Modern, and probably Neoclassic classical music. Maybe some West Coast jazz, which I'd try to like but mostly I'd listen to pretending I didn't feel a little restless. He'd sometimes indulge my taste for crooners, rock and roll, and what was then still called "race music," but I'd end up listening to it and singing along mostly while he was at work and I was at home surrounded by endless mounds of baby laundry.
So, all of that together brings me to age 30 in 1965, a pivotal year in many areas of pop culture. And probably around the time I'd start reforming my own identity.
Seriously, as I grow older, I realize that while I was right about us all being partly nature and partly nurture, nature takes the lead, eventually. My nature is to let other people have their way most of the time, and just indulge myself in the quieter solitary hours. But I've spent the past 15 years continually having to give myself permission to do that.
When I was little, I remember my mom listening to her Tom Jones record, Live in Las Vegas. She told me she wished she could see him in concert. Lots of her friends would rather see Elvis Presley, and she couldn't understand at all what they saw in him. I remember studying that album cover and thinking about what she said.
I decided she was right, but then, I was seeing Elvis from a 1970ish point of view. His best years were already behind him, poor man.
Tom Jones is totally a better singer than Elvis was, but Elvis was so weighed down by his circumstances, wasn't he? I'd have enjoyed hearing him in later years, as we've had the opportunity to do with Frank Sinatra (post-bitter My Way years,) Tony Bennett, and, well, Tom Jones. There's no question he had a good voice. But when Elvis was in his heyday, I doubt I'd have liked him anymore than my mom did, though I'm a bit more broad-minded about music and appearances, I think.
You know who Elvis thought was cool? Dean Martin. It's true. And in 1965, Dean was 48 years old, sexist and silly, but still smart, charming, and well, sexy.
Me being me, I think I'd have "discovered" him in those TV years, and crushed on him the way I'd surely be crushing on all the handsome Western stars and sitcom fathers. Who knows where that discovery would have led? Well, used record shops, mostly. The weekly TV variety show, of course. And looking through the newspaper for late night movie listings so I could revisit his younger years. I'd still have loathed Jerry Lewis, though.
Epilogue: A dozen years after giving birth in 1965 to someone a little like me but with more of a wandering spirit and aching soul, my record collection would cover WWII big bands through late 60s Motown, yet the car radio would be tuned to disco dance music unless no one else was around. Then it would be all about me and Dean, singing along with the 8-Track player.
When I hear music like this I'm transported back in time to a quiet afternoon spent in my grandpa's tavern: sipping fruity "pop" from 10 ounce glass bottles, trailing my fingers through the sand on the big long shuffleboard table, watching the moving waterfall on the big Hamm's clock on the wall behind the bar. This song was actually released the year I was born, but of course, it all ran together for me back then, just as it does now.
That world is so distant now; another time and place, sure, but it feels practically like another dimension I can no longer get to. At least we still have the music, though.
(and it's a Dean Martin extravaganza at my right-brain Tumblr page today.)
"I don't discuss his girl with Frank or who he's going to marry. All I discuss are movies, TV, golf and drinking." –Dean Martin, date unknown. Pictured: The stars, photographed in a recording studio by LIFE's Allan Grant, take a cigarette break during the recording of Sleep Warm in 1958. The album was re-released in 1963 with a much more direct title: Dean Martin Sings/Sinatra Conducts.
"He likes to pretend that he cannot remember lyrics and, blowing a line while singing, will gaze appealingly heavenward and plead, 'Don't just look down. Help me!' When he is on stage with other famous folk, the air is likely to clatter with competitive ad libs, many of which have been polished to perfection by re-use.... A favorite Martin target is his ex-teammate. 'These muscles,' he will declare, flexing his abundant supply, 'I got them from carrying Jerry Lewis for 10 years.'" —From LIFE's "Make-a-Million Martin," 12/22/1958. Pictured: Martin on the set of an unknown production that year.
You know I do this once or twice a year or all of the time in my mind; decide who I'd like to keep company with in a holodeck. There's the live version, the dead version, and the never was alive or dead version.
I'm pretty sure that after last night's episode of House, Hugh Laurie tops the one list this week or month or something. But anyway, this isn't about that. I mean, well, yes, it is, but also.
Here's my current Top Five on the dead guy list, in semi-random order:
A. François-Marie Arouet, aka Voltaire
Voltaire was a happening guy. He wasn't just part of the Enlightenment, he kind of was the enlightenment. He used a jillion pen names, and seems to have come up with them in much the same way I think of mine, meaningful yet slightly tangential. Anyway, I'm aware there's an ongoing view of how much French people didn't used to bathe, but a man who says plain truth like this to me, en francais, is worth the price of a bar of soap.
Put two men on the globe, and they will only call good, right, just, what will be good for them both. Put four, and they will only consider virtuous what suits them all: and if one of the four eats his neighbour's supper, or fights or kills him, he will certainly raise the others against him. And what is true of these four men is true of the universe.
(Mettez deux hommes sur la terre, ils n'appelleront bon, vertueux et juste, que ce qui sera bon pour eux deux. Mettez-en quatre, il n'y aura de vertueux que co qui conviendra à tous les quatre ; et si l'un des quatre mange le souper de son compagnon, ou lo bat, ou le tue, il soulève sûrement les autres. Ce que je dis de ces quatre hommes, il lo faut dire do tout l'univers.)
Being French means examining society, its contracts and your role in them. He understood that, too, pointing out that each society chooses its rules based on who its people are. What tastes good to the French does not necessarily taste good to the Germans. I've been thinking a lot about that lately, so I'd let him pour me some wine and tell me these things, and then whatever.
I'm not really into the ginger thing, like the lost dwarf, but Jefferson has to be an exception. I think it's pretty clear he knew what it was all about, when it came to women. Also, nature, liberty, and the cultivation and preparation of good food. That's sexy, my friend.
I bet Jefferson and Voltaire would have an interesting holodeck discussion of this statement:
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
And these two, as well:
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned—this is the sum of good government.
I know you're thinking Michael Faraday was a hotter-looking 19th century physicist, but it's my contention that Maxwell had a lot more going on where it counts. I mean, I don't even know what I mean by that, but anyway. Maxwell was Scottish. At some point in his career he started growing this manky beard and just let the thing go, all willy-nilly, but before that, he was a handsome young man.
I'd happily bore you with actual facts, but I won't, so if you are interested, you can start here for a light overview.
Basically, he invented what became modern physics. Maxwell led to Einstein, Planck, and the fictional invention of the holodeck, which is not 100% fiction anymore.
Over at the card table, Tommy and Vinny were arguing again. Oddly, it was about who put on a better show; Tom Jones or Engelbert Humperdinck.
“Did you know that Engelbert Humperdinck’s real name was Arnold? Who goes from Arnold to Engelbert? Somebody who takes himself way too seriously, that’s who!” Tommy shook his head mournfully. “Tom never did that. That’s why he still has a career.”
Vinny laughed, shuffling the cards slowly and deliberately, as he always did. He’s never in a hurry. “Some producer or agent named him that, that’s all. It’s what they did back in those days. Didn’t you ever think about what name you’d take to become a big star, Tommy?”
Most years I do a tribute to Dean Martin on or around his birthday. Last year I put him in my NaNoWriMo book in a way, and he appears here on a regular basis.
I have most of his recordings, but this is one of my favorites. I can't do a whole blog post at the moment; as my neighbors know, it's been a hassle lately so it's better for daytime hours. Plus I have had a rather strong gimlet this evening, and am contemplating another. Whee. So this is the thing here, so awesome, and worth the entire listen, I promise. If you hear this (but ignore the slides because they're lame) and don't just *love* this man, well, I don't quite know what to say.
I Love Vegas - Dean Martin - I Love Vegas Medley
Scroll down a couple of posts for a fun live Dean performance.
