Credit: Far Out / MGM
Tue 29 September 2026 23:00, UK
What could be cooler than being considered the ‘King of Rock and Roll’?
When Elvis was introduced to one of his favourite singers’ daughters, Dean Martin, he told her, “They call me the ‘King of Rock and Roll’, but your dad is the ‘King of Cool’”. There can’t have been anything at all cooler to her in the world right then and there.
Whether he was rocking his jet black quiff with a pink checkerboard blazer and a pair of two-tone shoes, his gold lamé Nudie suit, Jailhouse Rock jacket and jeans or any one of his stunning Vegas era jumpsuits, nobody ever rocked (and rolled) every outfit they wore, like Elvis Presley did, but even the coolest cats have their own heroes, people they look up to and admire or aspire to be like, and he had his fair share of those.
He loved the songs and sounds of Fats Domino and Jake Hess, his outfits were inspired by the zoot-suits and colourful clothes worn by blues and gospel singers he knew from Beale Street, and alternatively by movie stars like James Dean and Marlon Brando. He got his jet black hair from Tony Curtis, and he was raised right by his parents to be deeply respectful of those around him, to have humility in everything he did and to aim to help anybody he could, in any way he was able to. And he also got a little of all those things, and probably more, from the man he considered to be the ‘King of Cool’, Dean Martin.
Martin might even have been one of the very few entertainers who could have rivalled Elvis for popularity at the peak of his fame. Such was his popularity that when NBC approached him to host his own weekly variety show in 1965, they were willing to meet any demands that Martin might make, not that he knew that.
To ensure the studio changed their mind and set their sights on a different host, he came up with the most preposterous list of demands he could think of; hoping to hamper NBC’s enthusiasm, he stipulated that he would only work one day each week (Sunday, the day the show was to be taped), that he would not be required to rehearse, learn lines or prepare any material for the show himself, that he wouldn’t be asked to introduce any guests he didn’t like, that he wouldn’t be made to sing unless if he didn’t feel like it, and that he only need put in the minimum amount of effort during any given episodes.
If all those demands didn’t put the executives off, then surely his final request, that he be paid $2million per season, would do the trick. Martin was as stunned as anyone when he got home to his wife Jeanne and their kids and announced that “they went for it. So now I have to do it”.
Further reading: From The Vault
The Dean Martin Show ran for nine seasons and 264 episodes and is one of the most delightful, enjoyable, warming, funny, charming and uplifting television shows ever made. Among the estimated 40 million viewers who tuned in to watch each week, Dean Martin could count Bob Dylan, Jimmy Stewart and Orson Welles, alongside Presley, as his biggest fans.
Before making his entertainment breakthrough, alongside Jerry Lewis, with whom he made 16 feature films between 1949 and 1956, Martin had tried his hand at boxing, before becoming a roulette stickman and croupier in an illegal casino in Ohio, but really, deep down, he knew all along that he wanted more than anything to be a singer.
Sounding a little like Harry Mills of the Mills Brothers and a whole lot like Bing Crosby, he could have made it on any one of his singing voice, his looks, his charm, his comedy, his acting chops, his charisma and his suave and sophisticated manner, but he didn’t need to worry about making it on just one of those things. He had the lot and more.
No wonder Elvis thought he was the ‘King of Cool’. Who doesn’t?
