Christmas with Dino

AMG Review of Christmas with Dino

William Ruhlmann
All Music Guide

Between 1953 and 1966, Dean Martin recorded one Christmas single (1953's "The Christmas Blues") and two Christmas LPs, A Winter Romance (1959, Capitol Records) and The Dean Martin Christmas Album (1966, Reprise Records), the material consisting of a total of 23 recordings of 19 different songs. ("Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!," "The Things We Did Last Summer," "Winter Wonderland," and "White Christmas" were each recorded for the two albums.) Christmas With Dino, the first Martin seasonal compilation to combine tracks originally issued by Capitol and Reprise, features 17 of those recordings. Although all 23 recordings could have fit on a single CD, compiler Frank Collura has made a judicious choice, omitting songs that had only a tangential connection to the holidays or that have not proven memorable ("The Things We Did Last Summer," "June in January," "Canadian Sunset," "Out in the Cold Again," "It Won't Cool Off"). His inclusion of both the 1959 and 1966 versions of "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow," "Winter Wonderland," and "White Christmas" is welcome, but the billing of the repeated songs as "bonus alternate versions" is a deceptive marketing ploy. It doesn't much matter that recordings made over a 13-year period are sequenced non-chronologically. Martin takes the same nonchalant vocal approach in all the sessions, and arrangers Gus Levene (for the 1953 and 1959 tracks) and Bill Justis and Ernie Freeman (for the 1966 tracks) take similar approaches as well. The charts often employ a ig-band swing style, even with their strings and prominent vocal choruses. The oddest track may be "Baby, It's Cold Outside," not exactly a Christmas song, but rather one in which a Lothario tries to persuade his girl not to go home due to winter-like weather conditions. Usually, the song is performed as a male-female duet; here, Martin instead interacts with a whole female chorus, which has the strange effect of making it sound like he's trying to seduce a roomful of women instead of just one!