Gotta admit I felt a wistful twinge last night when I first heard about the passing of Al Martino at the age of 82. Not that I was a major fan; "Spanish Eyes" and "Love Theme from The Godfather" aside, his recorded work paled pretty drastically in comparison to the holy red-sauce trinity of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Tony Bennett. But he played the "Sinatra as pathetic little bitch" role in The Godfather to perfection (a performance which supposedly rendered him a permanent persona non grata in the Chairman's boardroom), and his album covers — where he always seemed to be wearing the same "I got the world by the cannolis" grin — gave me a lot of much-needed smiles back in my record store days.
And I gotta give him massive props for his amazing 1976 Italo-disco version of Volare, which my pal Rachel turned me on to yesterday. I'm pretty sure none of the other three crooners mentioned above ever cut anything as coke-erriffic as this recording, nor ever wore groovy goggles like Al sports in the song's video. RIP, Al; you weren't the best, but you were better than most.
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