My pal Joseph Laredo sends some thoughts on the ubiquitous Dean Martin record I mentioned here the other day…
Dino's "Ain't That A Kick In The Head" was written for Ocean's 11, and stalled as a single release in 1960 because many radio stations considered it too suggestive (!). It was included on a two CD career overview entitled "The Capitol Years" that I worked on in 1996. The retro-hipsters who discovered that The Rat Pack was cool some 30 years after the fact hear the flippant Sammy Cahn lyric, note the movie association, and have decided (in unison, en masse) that they've stumbled upon not merely an overlooked gem, but the sine qua non of Dino's discography. A similar "feeding frenzy" enveloped Bobby Darin's "Beyond The Sea" a little while back, although that was a Top 10 record in its day.
Interesting. So here's my question: Did Dean ever sing his sine qua non in any venue after he recorded it? He had a batch of songs in his club act, including "Houston" and "Welcome To My World" and, of course, "Everybody Loves Somebody." On the TV show, he sang somewhere around a dozen times a week and since Dean didn't rehearse, they seem to have used (and repeated, over and over) songs with which he was familiar. I don't recall hearing "A.T.A.K.I.T.H." ever on that show, which suggests to me he hadn't been singing it anywhere.
By the way: The discography over at The Dean Martin Fan Center says that "Ain't That A Kick In The Head" was released as a single on 5/10/60. Like you said, it probably didn't get much air play, and Capitol may have dumped it quickly, as they did with many records. But it's interesting that even that couldn't kill it. In many ways, Mr. Martin led a charmed life, and it appears to have extended beyond his passing. One of his flops is being heard more often than most current singers' hits.