Bear Family's
Return to Me is the follow-up to its
Memories Are Made of This, a second eight-CD, over-nine-hours box set finishing the reissue of the complete Capitol recordings of
Dean Martin; in this case, from 1956 to 1961. (These take up the first six discs; the seventh contains soundtrack material from films released between 1956 and 1961, and the eighth contains airchecks dating from 1944 to 1953.) As on its predecessor, the material on
Return to Me is a sprawling collection of 221 tracks (some of them not reissued since they appeared as singles, a few never released before) by a singer for whom studio recording came well behind live performing and film acting on his list of priorities. Inadvertently,
Martin did record a few hit singles during this period, notably the title song and a cover of "Volare," but it was only on the relatively rare occasions that he undertook an album session with some strong figure at the helm --
Frank Sinatra, who conducted 1959's
Sleep Warm,
Nelson Riddle on
This Time I'm Swingin'! (1960) -- that the results really displayed what the singer was capable of at his best. There are also occasional moments that approach those efforts, such as the Italian-flavored material he takes on here and there, and his songs for the 1960 movie based on the musical Bells Are Ringing. But there is also a lot of pedestrian stuff here that will be of interest only to collectors and fans.
John Chintala's annotations lay out
Martin's activities in detail and with understanding, but
Billy Vera's essay, essentially cribbed from
Nick Tosches' exaggerated biography of
Martin, could have been done without. Both are contained, along with a discography and many photographs and movie posters, in a hardcover book included in the box.