{"id":25690,"date":"2017-08-27T00:30:19","date_gmt":"2017-08-27T06:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/?p=25690"},"modified":"2017-08-27T00:30:19","modified_gmt":"2017-08-27T06:30:19","slug":"a-marshmallow-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/a-marshmallow-world\/","title":{"rendered":"A Marshmallow World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mmc-220a5.kxcdn.com\/x\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/the-dean-martin-show-christmas-1968-08-300x234.jpg\" alt=\"Dean Martin\" width=\"300\" height=\"234\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-25692\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mmc-220a5.kxcdn.com\/x\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/the-dean-martin-show-christmas-1968-08-300x234.jpg 300w, https:\/\/mmc-220a5.kxcdn.com\/x\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/the-dean-martin-show-christmas-1968-08.jpg 616w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><em>It&#8217;s a Marshmallow World<\/em> was introduced by <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/the-legendary-bing-crosby\/\"><strong>Bing Crosby<\/strong><\/a>, of course, way back in 1950. It was a golden era for new <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> music and Bing cranked them out better than anyone.<\/p>\n<p>It was a hit, but a minor one for Crosby, at least compared to his other <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> tunes.<\/p>\n<p>The song was covered by several artists over the next several years but it never found its lasting identity until Dean Martin recorded it in 1966 as part of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Dean_Martin_Christmas_Album\" target=\"_blank\"><strong><em>The Dean Martin Christmas Album<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Funny thing is it wasn&#8217;t hit for Martin at the time.<\/p>\n<p>The album did well &#8212; as did the four other albums Martin released in 1966 (who does four albums in a year anymore?).<\/p>\n<p>Despite the British Invasion and the emerging era of Rock &#8216;n Roll Martin was one of the hottest artists of 1966.<\/p>\n<p>But this song, <em>A Marshmallow World<\/em>, was yet to become the <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> classic as many think of it today.<\/p>\n<p>It is one of those rare songs that depends on a variety of media &#8212; mostly television &#8212; to support it as a <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> classic.<\/p>\n<p>This clip, from Martin&#8217;s 1968 <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> television special, showcases one of the reasons why the song is so fondly remembered.<\/p>\n<p>Here he is in classic Dino form &#8212; cigarette in hand, a girl on each arm, and horsing around with a poor performance so signature in nature it is a classic in its own right:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"853\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4l6KcK_QTBs\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You cannot watch that clip and not enjoy Martin or the kind of <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> he represents. It is just fun.<\/p>\n<p>Martin was an actor, a singer and a comedian &#8212; and completely natural and unapologetic in front of a camera and an audience.<\/p>\n<p>He possessed rare qualities as an entertainer that few stars of today duplicate.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> music, Martin is a wonder. He lacks the overall dollar sales of Crosby, Como, Sinatra and Williams &#8212; yet his <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> tunes are considered every bit the lasting classics that theirs are.<\/p>\n<p>For a song first made famous by Crosby it is something poetic that it is best remembered as coming from Dean Martin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a Marshmallow World was introduced by Bing Crosby, of course, way back in 1950. It was a golden era for new Christmas music and Bing cranked them out better than anyone. It was a hit, but a minor one for Crosby, at least compared to his other Christmas tunes. The song was covered by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":25691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":442,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[400,661,286,594],"class_list":["post-25690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-music","tag-400","tag-a-marshmallow-world","tag-bing-crosby","tag-dean-martin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}