Introduction
It begins with a hum. A low warm vibration that feels less like a musical note and more like a reassuring hand placed gently on the listener’s shoulder. When the needle drops on the 1958 LP This Is Dean Martin!, the audience is not merely hearing another collection of pop standards. They are witnessing an act of quiet defiance. Dean Martin does not sound like a man in retreat. He sounds like a man who has already won.
At the time, few believed that would be the case. Two years earlier, after the highly publicized split with Jerry Lewis, much of the entertainment press had already written Martin’s obituary as a solo artist. For a decade, he had played the straight man, the handsome anchor to Lewis’s manic brilliance. When the partnership ended in 1956, conventional wisdom held that Lewis would soar while Martin would fade into nightclub obscurity.
“I was supposed to be the one who lost,” Martin later admitted in a rare moment of candor.
“They said Jerry was the genius and Dean was just the singer. And singers were everywhere.”
Yet what critics underestimated was Martin’s refusal to panic. As rock and roll thundered across America with the arrival of Elvis Presley and Little Richard, Martin did not chase youth culture or attempt reinvention. He leaned into refinement. He sang as if the noise of the world simply did not apply to him.
That confidence crystallized in his recording of Volare, originally titled Nel blu dipinto di blu. Written and popularized in Europe by Domenico Modugno, the song arrived in the United States with operatic force. Modugno’s version was theatrical, exuberant, and unmistakably Italian. For an American crooner in 1958, recording it was a gamble.
Martin’s genius was subtraction. He stripped the song of its grand gestures and replaced them with intimacy. The Italian chorus remained, but it floated rather than exploded. The English lyrics, adapted by Mitchell Parish, were delivered as a private invitation rather than a public proclamation. Martin did not sing to the back row of an opera house. He sang to one person across a candlelit table.
The result was transformative. His voice moved effortlessly between languages, trailing smoke and ease. The arrangement lifted but never rushed. Strings rose and fell like controlled breaths, while the rhythm section anchored the song in the familiar warmth of late night American clubs. Martin sounded unhurried, in command of every second.
In a nation shaped by postwar anxiety, suburban conformity, and Cold War unease, Volare offered a different kind of escape. It was not about rockets or conquest. It was about romance, imagination, and the deliberate choice to remain unburdened. Martin offered listeners permission to drift.
That philosophy extended far beyond a single recording. His daughter Deana Martin has often spoken about how carefully constructed her father’s apparent effortlessness really was.
“He made everything look so easy that people thought he didn’t care,” she once said. “The truth is he worked harder than anyone so you would never see the effort. He wanted you to feel like life was a party and he was the host.”
The success that followed was undeniable. Volare reached number one on the Billboard chart for multiple weeks and earned a Grammy Award for Record of the Year. More importantly, it repositioned Martin at a critical moment. He was no longer the lesser half of a broken duo. He was a singular presence with a clearly defined identity.
There was also a broader cultural shift at work. In the 1950s, Italian American identity in popular culture was often reduced to caricature or confined to specific roles. Martin did something quietly radical. He embraced his heritage without explanation or apology. By doing so, he made it elegant. What had been labeled foreign became aspirational.
The album cover of This Is Dean Martin! captures that moment perfectly. Dressed in a patterned brown suit, smiling as if sharing a private joke, Martin does not look defensive. He looks relaxed. The confidence is not theatrical bravado. It is the calm of someone who has stopped needing approval.
Later, television audiences would come to associate Martin with his deliberately loose on screen persona, the famously simulated drunkenness that became part of his comedic armor. But the man preserved on this recording is sharp, precise, and deeply aware of every musical choice. Nothing is accidental. The ease is earned.
More than six decades later, Volare still resonates because it captures a rare artistic stance. In an industry driven by urgency and reinvention, Dean Martin chose serenity. He refused to be rushed by trends or intimidated by criticism. He simply sang, trusting that authenticity would outlast noise.
As the final notes fade, what remains is not spectacle but reassurance. A blue sky painted in sound. A reminder that even when the ground below feels unstable, it is possible to rise above it without force. Dean Martin did not argue with his critics. He floated past them.