A 8 Year Old Played Dean Martin’s Song on a Broken Guitar — Dean Couldn’t Hold Back Tears D

Los Angeles, California. April 11th, 1965, 2:37 p.m. He heard it before he saw who was playing it. He had come around the corner of the east corridor of Sacred Heart Children’s Home on Sunset Boulevard following Sister Catherine, who was the home’s administrator and who had been giving him the specific tour that charity visits produced.

The dining room, the dormitories, the outdoor play area, the library where the older children did their school work. Phil Barker was behind him with the small notebook. The photographer who had come with the advanced team was somewhere outside. The charity visit had been scheduled for 45 minutes. 33 of those had passed.

The sound that came around the corner was a guitar. Dean stopped. Sister Catherine said, “That’s Marco.” The sound was not a clean guitar sound. It was the sound of a guitar with structural damage. A slight buzz on certain strings, the intonation slightly off on the upper frets, the tone of an instrument that had been through something and had not been fully repaired.

But the playing was deliberate, not the practiced playing of someone who had been taught, the specific determined playing of someone who had taught themselves, who had worked out the melody by feel rather than instruction, who had played the same sequence of notes enough times that the fingers knew them even when the guitar’s condition made them difficult.

The melody was “That’s Amore.” Dean stood in the east corridor of Sacred Heart Children’s Home and listened to it from around the corner for approximately 30 seconds. Then he walked around the corner. Marco Vitale was 8 years old. He was sitting on a small wooden chair in the east sitting room, which was the room where the children at Sacred Heart were permitted to bring their personal belongings.

The specific institutional accommodation of a children’s home that understood that personal belongings mattered, that the things a child brought from their previous life were not obstacles to the institutional function, but part of the human function that the institution existed to serve. He had not heard Dean Martin come around the corner. He was not performing.

He was doing what he did in the east sitting room in the afternoon when the homework was done and the outdoor time was finished and the dinner hour was still ahead. He was playing his guitar. He was 8 years old. He had dark hair and a slight build and the specific quality of concentration of a child who is inside something and has temporarily become unavailable to the peripheral world.

The guitar he was playing was a dreadnought acoustic guitar that had been good once. The neck had been repaired imperfectly after a crack. The repair was visible, a darker strip of material running along the back of the neck where someone had attempted to stabilize it. The third string was missing entirely. The bridge saddle had separated on one side and been reglued but not perfectly.

The action on the bass strings was high enough that playing them required more pressure than a standard instrument. The finish had worn through in several places along the body and there was a crack in the lower bout that had been filled with something dark. The guitar had been his father’s Antonio Vitale had brought it from a pawn shop in East Los Angeles in 1958 when Marco was less than a year old.

He had paid $14 for it because $14 was what he had and what he could spend on an instrument. He had played it on Saturday evenings, the specific domestic music of the Vitale household on Saturday evenings when the week’s work was finished and Antonio sat in the living room and played and sometimes sang.

Antonio Vitale had died in November of 1963. He was 31 years old. He died of a heart condition that the doctors had not known was serious until it was too late to address the seriousness in the specific way that 31-year-old men sometimes died in 1963 when the medical apparatus available to working-class families in East Los Angeles was not comprehensive.

Marco’s mother, Rosa, had kept the household together for 14 months after Antonio died. In January of 1965, Rosa had been hospitalized. A different medical situation, one that the doctors described as temporary, but the temporary covered several months, and Marco had been brought to Sacred Heart, which was where children went when their mothers were hospitalized and there was no other family.

He had brought the guitar. He had brought it in the specific way of someone carrying the most important thing, carefully, in a case that was too large for it and that he had to hold against his body to keep from slipping. He had brought it because the guitar was Antonio Vitale, because on Saturday evenings Antonio had played and sometimes Marco had sat beside him, and sometimes Antonio had let Marco put his hands on the strings, and sometimes the sound that came out had been something close to music, and sometimes it had not, but it had always been Saturday evening, and it had always been his father’s hands and his own hands on the same instrument simultaneously. He had been at Sacred Heart for 3 months. He played the guitar every afternoon. He had been teaching himself That’s Amore since February. He had chosen it because it was the song his father sang along to.

Antonio had not been a singer. He had been a mechanic, and his singing voice was the specific functional voice of a man who sang because music required participation and not because he had any ambition about the result. He sang along to Dean Martin records on Saturday evenings when the record player was going.

He sang “That’s Amore” with the specific unselfconscious quality of a man who is not performing, simply singing along. Marco had heard this approximately 150 times before November of 1963. He could still hear it. He was playing it on a broken guitar in a children’s home in April of 1965 when Dean Martin came around the corner. Dean stood in the doorway of the east sitting room. Marco did not look up.

Sister Catherine, behind Dean, did not speak. Phil Barker, beside Sister Catherine, did not open the notebook. Dean watched Marco Vitali play “That’s Amore” on the broken guitar with the missing third string and the repaired crack and the worn finish. The playing was imperfect. The melody was identifiable but not clean.

The missing string required Marco to work around certain notes by finding them on adjacent strings, which he did with the specific creative problem-solving of a child who has decided that the thing the instrument cannot do is a technical challenge rather than an obstacle. The intonation was slightly off in the upper register.

The rhythm was not metronomic. It breathed the way self-taught music breathes, following the player’s relationship to the song rather than a formal understanding of the timing. It was recognizably “That’s Amore”. It was recognizably something more than “That’s Amore”. Subscribe to this channel right now and hit the like button because what happens in the next few minutes and what Dean Martin did when an 8-year-old finished playing a broken guitar in a children’s home in Los Angeles is one of the true stories about the specific moment when a person stops being what the world has decided they are and becomes simply a person receiving something that has gotten past all of the barriers. Now, back to the East Sitting Room. Marco is still playing. Dean Martin is still standing in the doorway and he has not made a sound. Marco reached the end of the melody. He stayed with the last chord for a

moment. The way he always did, not because he had been taught to, but because the ending felt incomplete if he left it too quickly. Then he looked up. He looked at the doorway. He saw Dean Martin. He was 8 years old. He looked at Dean Martin the way an 8-year-old in a children’s home in Los Angeles in 1965 would look at Dean Martin standing in the doorway of the East Sitting Room.

With the specific combination of recognition and disbelief that children produce when something from the world of television and records appears in the same room as their broken guitar. He said, “Hello.” Dean said, “Hi.” He came into the room. He was wearing the dark charcoal suit and the white dress shirt with the dark tie loosened that was his usual daytime presentation and he walked across the East Sitting Room and found a small chair.

The specific small chairs that children’s home rooms contained and he pulled it to where Marco was sitting and he sat down. He sat at a height that in a small chair was not so much smaller than Marco that it felt like a parent and a child. They were approximately level. Dean said, “Can you play it again?” Marco said, “The whole song?” Dean said, “The whole song.

” Marco looked at him for a moment. then he put his hands back on the strings. Dean Martin had been a musician for 28 years. He had been in recording studios across America and had put his voice beside the voices of the best orchestras and arrangers and musicians of his era. He had performed in venues where the acoustics were designed to receive exactly what he gave them.

He had heard extraordinary music in extraordinary circumstances. He sat in a small chair in the east sitting room of Sacred Heart Children’s Home and he listened to an 8-year-old boy play That’s Amore on a damaged guitar with a missing string. The second playing was different from the first. Marco knew he was being heard.

He was not performing. He was too young and too inside the playing to perform it, but he knew that someone was listening specifically, which changed the quality of his attention. He played it with more deliberateness. The melody was more clearly shaped. The workarounds for the missing string were executed with the specific care of a child who understands that they are showing someone something.

Dean watched Marco’s hands. The left hand was navigating the neck with the specific practical inventiveness of self-teaching. The fingers finding positions that no textbook would suggest but that produced the correct note from the available strings. The right hand was strumming with the specific rhythm of someone who had found the song’s pulse by listening rather than by counting.

At the bridge of the song, the specific melodic lift that That’s Amore contained at its center, Marco’s concentration deepened visibly. His brow contracted slightly. His fingers moved with particular care. He made the bridge. Not cleanly. The timing was slightly off and one note was half a step flat.

But he made it, found the specific melodic shape of the bridge on an instrument that was working against him, and continued through to the final verse. He reached the end again. He held the last chord. He looked up at Dean. Dean Martin was crying. Not the theatrical crying of a performed emotion.

Not the visible, announced crying of someone who knows they are being watched. The specific private tears of a man who has been reached somewhere past the barrier he usually keeps. The tears that arrive when the management of emotion has been suspended not by choice, but by the thing that arrives being larger than the management. His jaw was set.

His expression was not the expression of someone who is crying. It was the expression of someone who is discovering that they are crying, who has registered the fact a moment after it began. He said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “That’s good.” Marco said, “It’s broken.” Dean said, “I heard it.

” Marco said, “The third string is missing. I found where the notes are on the others.” Dean said, “I know.” He looked at the guitar. He said, “Can I see it?” Marco held it out. Dean took the guitar with the careful particular respect that someone shows an object that they understand has weight beyond its physical weight.

He turned it in his hands. He looked at the repaired He looked at the worn finish. He looked at where the third string should have been, at the empty tuning peg. He played one chord. The buzz of the high action. The specific voice of a damaged guitar that had been played enough that it had found its own accommodation with its limitations.

He played the opening chord of “That’s Amore” on the damaged instrument. In his hands, it sounded different from how it had sounded in Marco’s hands. Not better, different. The voice of someone who knew the instrument fully meeting an instrument that had its own specific voice. He handed it back. He said, “How long have you been playing?” Marco said, “Since we moved here.

Sister Catherine said I could practice in the afternoon.” Dean said, “How did you learn the song?” Marco said, “I listened to it. Then I found the notes.” Dean said, “Who taught you to do that?” Marco said, “Nobody. My dad played. I watched his hands.” Dean was quiet. He said, “What did your dad play?” Marco said, “This one.

He played this guitar. He played on Saturday evenings.” He said, “He sang along to your records.” The specific past tense. The sang. Sister Catherine in the doorway had her hands folded in the specific way of someone who is watching something they did not arrange and would not have known how to arrange. Phil Baker beside her had closed the notebook.

He had opened it once to begin the notation and then had closed it. Some things were not notation material. Dean said, “What’s his name?” Marco said, “My dad? Antonio?” Dean said, “Antonio.” He said it in the way he said Italian names, with the specific vowel emphasis that his own Italian-American background had given him.

The same background that had given him the vowels in Dino Paulo Crocetti before the name became Dean Martin. Marco said, “He died.” Dean said, “I know. Sister Catherine told me.” Marco looked at his hands on the guitar. He said, “He liked your songs.” Dean said, “I know.” Marco looked at him.

He said, “Did you know him?” Dean said, “No, but I know he had good taste.” Marco thought about this. He said, “He sang along in the living room. He wasn’t very good.” Dean said, “Most people aren’t.” Marco said, “Are you?” Dean said, “People say so.” Marco considered this with the specific critical assessment of an 8-year-old for whom reputation is less persuasive than evidence.

He said, “Can you sing it the way it’s supposed to sound?” Dean Martin sang “That’s Amore” in the east sitting room of Sacred Heart Children’s Home without accompaniment, without an orchestra, without the production that the recording had and the television performances had and the Copa Room shows had.

He sang it the way the song existed before the production, the melody and the words and the voice that had been recording it and performing it for 11 years. Marco sat with his broken guitar in his lap and listened. This was not the voice from the television set, not the voice from the record player in the living room on Saturday evenings.

It was the same voice, the same voice that Antonio Vitali had sung along with in the living room on Saturdays, but without the glass between the voice and the person listening, the specific difference between a recording and a room. Marco was 8 years old. He had heard this song 150 times before November of 1963.

He had not heard it in a room since then. He listened to it now in a small room in a children’s home with the voice that had been his father’s Saturday evening in the room rather than on a record coming from a man in a dark suit sitting in a small chair across from him. He held his guitar very still.

He did not cry. He listened in the specific complete way of a child receiving something that will be inside them for the rest of their life. After the song was finished, Dean sat for a while. He talked to Marco about the guitar, about the neck repair, about what the missing string did to the playing, about the specific practical inventions Marco had developed for navigating the absent note.

He talked about these things with the technical interest of someone who understood instruments and the specific admiration of someone who understood that the adaptations Marco had made were evidence of something. He said, “You figured out the guitar had a problem and you solved the problem.” Marco said, “I couldn’t fix the string.

I don’t have a new one.” Dean said, “So, you found the note somewhere else.” Marco said, “Yes.” Dean said, “That’s the thing. When you can’t get to the note directly, you find where else it lives.” Marco thought about this. He said, “Is that a music thing or an everything thing?” Dean looked at him. He said, “Both.

” Phil Barker made two calls that afternoon. The first call was to a music shop on Western Avenue, a guitar repair and supply shop that Phil had called before on Dean’s behalf for various instrument needs over the years. He arranged for a new set of strings to be delivered to Sacred Heart the following morning along with a replacement bridge saddle and the specific materials needed to address the neck repair.

He arranged for the shop’s repair technician to come and address what could be addressed without replacing the instrument. The second call was to a guitar dealer in Hollywood, the specific dealer where serious musicians bought serious instruments. He arranged for a new guitar to be delivered to Sacred Heart the following morning.

A new acoustic guitar of sufficient quality for someone who was going to play seriously and would grow into the instrument. He did not tell Dean he was making these calls. Dean had not asked him to. Phil made them because he understood after 16 years what Dean’s presence in a room containing a specific situation meant.

And because the calls were the correct next step. With the new guitar, Phil included a note in Dean’s handwriting. The note said, “Keep the broken one. It already knows the song.” Sister Catherine read the note the following morning when the deliveries arrived. She kept a copy of it in the Sacred Heart files.

She mentioned it 20 years later in a letter she wrote to a former resident of Sacred Heart who was compiling memories of the home for a reunion gathering. She wrote, “He came one afternoon in April of 1965. He sat with a small boy who was playing a broken guitar. He cried. He didn’t try not to. And the next morning two guitars arrived, one new and the materials to repair the old one and a note that said, ‘Keep the broken one.

It already knows the song.'” She wrote, “I have thought about that note many times in the years since. I think it was saying something about the boy as much as about the guitar. That what had been broken had been made to work anyway imperfectly in the specific creative problem-solving of a child learning alone. That this was not something to be replaced. That it had its own knowledge.

That the broken thing that had been played through contained something the new thing would have to earn.” She said, “He was a man who understood that.” She said, “He was sitting in a small chair crying and he understood that.” Marco Vitali’s mother Rosa recovered from her illness and returned home in September of 1965.

Marco came home with his two guitars. The repaired guitar hung on the wall of his room in East Los Angeles for 30 years. The new guitar he played he became, eventually, a music teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. He taught guitar to children for 26 years. He retired in 2005. At his retirement party, his former students gave him a card.

Inside the card, someone had written, “Thank you for teaching us that when you can’t get to the note directly, you find where else it lives.” He kept the card. He keeps it still. Beside the guitar on the wall, the one with the missing string and the repaired neck and the worn finish and the crack in the lower bout that had been filled with something dark, the one that already knew the song.

That is the whole of it. That is still the whole of it. There is one final piece. Phil Barca retired from road management in 1977. In a farewell dinner in his honor in Las Vegas, someone asked him about the most memorable moment of his career. He had managed Dean Martin for 22 years. He had been in every room.

He had seen everything. He said, “There was an afternoon in Los Angeles in 1965, a children’s home, a boy with a broken guitar.” He described what had happened. He said, “Dean cried. He didn’t try to stop it. He just sat there in a small chair and let it happen.” He was quiet for a moment.

He said, “I’ve worked with performers my whole career. I know what performed emotion looks like. I know the difference between someone producing a feeling for an effect and someone having a feeling they didn’t ask for and can’t manage. He said, “That afternoon, that boy was playing a guitar with a missing string, and Dean Martin was not managing it.

” He looked at the people at the table. He said, “The crying was the whole thing, not what he did afterward. The strings, the new guitar, the note, those were Phil things. I arranged those.” He said, “The crying was Dean’s. The specific thing of a man in a small chair who heard an 8-year-old play his song on his dead father’s broken guitar and had no defense against it.” He paused.

He said, “He sang the song to the boy afterward, without being asked. Just sang it in that small room, and the boy sat with the broken guitar in his lap and listened.” He said, “That was the 22 years, right there in 20 minutes in a children’s home in Los Angeles.” He said, “When you can’t get to the note directly, you find where else it lives.

” He smiled. He said, “The boy said that, 8 years old.” He said, “He was right, the whole of it.” Still,