American crooner Dean Martin cadges a lift on the light waves!

Whilst checking my final draft for Ghostwriters in the Sky I arrived at a paragraph mentioning Andy Williams and thought ‘oh, did I check that Andy Williams is okay?’  Yes, he is still with us….’ but someone from the same era was connecting on a ‘law of attraction’ basis, waiting in the wings for a lift home.  Someone sang a lullaby in Italian, which I couldn’t understand, but vaguely remembered from my childhood, when my parents played endless and wonderful LP’s on their ‘coffin on legs’ record player.  Whoever was connected to this song shot off at great speed, eager to have been able to cadge a lift on the airwaves! 

I phoned my dad, certain he would know who this tune and words were associated with – and I was not disappointed.  I sang (lucky dad!) the following into his ears: “so lo tu, so lo tu, so lo tu…mia …something!” and he said immediately “Dean Martin, American singer, comedien, entertainer etc…Give me a minute and I’ll tell you the name of the song.”  True to his word, he rang back within a minute and said ‘Return to Me’! 

Age 41 in 1958

I thanked him and looked up the song words to this particular Dean Martin hit and sure enough the chorus went ‘retorna me (return to me) cara mia tu amo …solo tu, solo tu, solo tu, mio cuore…!  Dean Martin was Italian! 

In the meantime, I tested the spiritual airwaves to see if Dean Martin had been the lost soul who needed a  leg up to the other side and was delighted to find that he had arrived safely and I could have a quick word with him!  

“Do you have anything you would like to say to the general public ?” I asked.  

“I’m not particular,” he said lazily…

“Surely you have something?...”

“There’s no business like show business!” came a rendition from a large crowd of fellow showmen, there to welcome him home and calling their regards to someone named Jerry Lewis…”We were muckers!” Martin called back, lifting his glass in celebration.

“Why did you keep yourself earthbound for this long….?”

“Decrepitation” he said, “my AN-tenni (antenae) weren’t working….had a silver spoon in my mouth…” and that was it; the end of our conversation.  I think he meant that he was decrepit, meaning ‘weakened by old age; feeble; infirm; a decrepit man who can hardly walk’ and not decrepitation which means ‘to roast or calcine (salt, minerals, etc) so as to cause crackling or until crackling ceases’ – but you never know!!!

He lived from 1917-95 (so was aged 78) and searching through his biography I found that he did indeed have a ‘mucker’ by the name of Jerry Lewis! –  ‘Slapstick and funny-face specialist Jerry Lewis was one of the top movie comedians of the 1950s and 1960s. Lewis and Dean Martin were a hugely successful comedy team of stage, screen and radio. They made a string of popular movies from 1949 to 1956, with Martin as the straight man and Lewis as the zany cut-up’ .  (Answers.com)

 

Lewis is still going strong as far as I know but how nice it would be if he were to read this sometime?

 I awoke the next morning with “Return to Me! playing round and round in my mind – a typical utterance of someone calling Dean Martin to ‘hurry home, hurry back…‘ part of the song words ….And now it all made sense.  Knowing I was about to check this chapter in my book, my guides and Deano’s guides had collaborated, along with his friends and family on the other side who knew he was floundering in the seas of no-man’s land between heaven and earth, to draw him in so that he could be fished out and landed safely in his right place. 

I do love the work to which I am entrusted! 

'Old Muckers'