Last month, Iconic acquired an equity position in the rights held by the Dean Martin estate, which includes his music, vast amounts of work across the audiovisual spectrum, along with a lifetime of archival ephemera - and will use all that material to put Dean back in front of the whole world again. “Irving deeply cares about his artists,” Edwards says, “and he wants to make sure their legacies are preserved.” Iconic, Edwards says, assumes the position of the artist at the negotiating table, managing present-day branding opportunities while looking ahead to the ways in which audiences might encounter these artists in emerging and future mediums. Last summer he became the president of Iconic Artists Group, a company that manages the legacies of a roster of eminent rock and pop artists, including the Beach Boys, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Linda Ronstadt and Nat “King” Cole.įounded in 2018 by megamanager Irving Azoff - legendary in his own right for his pugnacious advocacy of the interests of artists like the Eagles - Iconic is part of a growing sector of firms making big bets on the enduring appeal of 20th century superstars and the long-term exploitability of the work they have (or will have) left behind.

Edwards is a music industry veteran whose résumé includes a decade at Warner Music Group as well as a few years at Frank Sinatra Enterprises. Lately, a guy named Jimmy Edwards has been thinking a lot about Martin’s place in the modern media landscape - where Dean is right now, some 27 years after his death at age 78, and where he ought to be, culturally speaking. It’s a strange state of affairs for an artist who was once a year-round fixture of the entertainment landscape - a genial omnipresence whose breezy, boozy, hardly-workin’ charm came across on every platform he touched, from stage to screen to radio to records, in comedy and drama and celebrity roasts.

1, with 351 million streams, presumably racked up largely between Black Friday and New Year’s Day. “ Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” is No. Of the 10 most-played Dino tracks on Spotify right now, seven are holiday novelties - jovial corn for popping. ’Tis the season for Dean Martin - the one month of the year when he’s ubiquitous once again, haunting tinseled malls and cocktail-party playlists, a ghost of Christmas past whose voice can make even the balmiest West Coast day feel like a marshmallow world in the winter.

Dean martin let it snow