Dean Martin scored another Top 40 pop and Top Five easy listening hit in the late winter of 1966 with "Somewhere There's a Someone," a song recorded in the same sort of familiar 1950s-style rock & roll arrangement that had been giving him hits since his comeback with "Everybody Loves Somebody" almost two years earlier. Reprise Records naturally wanted an album tie-in, but apparently
Martin was too busy with his TV show and movies to oblige, so the label simply borrowed ten tracks from two of his earlier albums, added the two sides of the recent single, and titled the result
Somewhere There's a Someone. All the tracks were listed on the front cover, so you couldn't accuse Reprise of deception.
Dean Martin fans probably would have realized that "Any Time," "Blue Blue Day," "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," "I Walk the Line," and "Room Full of Roses" had been released previously on 1963's
Country Style and that "Candy Kisses," "I Can't Help It" (aka
Hank Williams' "I Can't Help It if I'm Still in Love With You"), "Bouquet of Roses," "Just a Little Lovin'," and "Second Hand Rose (Second Hand Heart)" had been on its follow-up,
Dean "Tex" Martin Rides Again, also in 1963. Those who didn't know probably didn't have those two relatively poor-selling albums in their collections. And the LP's commercial success justified the approach: Although
Somewhere There's a Someone didn't chart as high as
Martin's recent efforts, it eventually became his eighth gold album. But this was the most egregious example yet of Reprise's tendency to recycle its
Martin catalog. ~ William Ruhlmann