Dean Martin - For the Good Times (1971/2018)

Dean Martin, who, by 1970, had scaled back to recording one album a year, invariably in two three-hour sessions on successive days in the spring, got more industrious and made a second album for the year in September 1970, resulting in the winter 1971 release For the Good Times. Otherwise, there wasn't much new to report about his recording tendencies. Once again, producer Jimmy Bowen and arranger Ernie Freeman, who had been his team since the success of 1964's "Everybody Loves Somebody," hunted up a clutch of country and country-flavored hits for the singer to cover in arrangements that didn't vary much from the standard Nashville sound approach. The title song, of course, had been a big hit for Ray Price and helped establish its writer, Kris Kristofferson, as a major force. "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" was the Bacharach/David Oscar winner that had been a hit for B.J. Thomas. "Raining in My Heart" remained familiar from Buddy Holly's recording, although it actually had been written by Felice & Boudleaux Bryant, best known for their work with the Everly Brothers. And "For Once in My Life" had been a big hit for Stevie Wonder. The rest of the album consisted mostly of recent country hits Ron Lowry's "Marry Me," Jerry Reed's "Georgia Sunshine," Don Gibson's "A Perfect Mountain," and George Hamilton IV's "She's a Little Bit Country" all of which would be familiar to country fans, plus Ned Miller's 1964 country hit "Invisible Tears" and "Sweetheart," a Bee Gees song that became a minor pop chart entry for Engelbert Humperdinck. Martin handled the material with his usual careless aplomb, but the result was just another record, no better or worse than its immediate predecessors.