Cha Cha de Amor Songwriting Credits by Dean Martin

Cha Cha de Amor is a pure interpreter's record. Dean Martin wrote none of it; every track is an older standard or a Latin, French, or Yiddish-theater song fitted with a cha-cha arrangement, and the songwriting spans figures as different as Mitchell Parish, Gabriel Ruiz, and the Yiddish-stage team of Alexander Olshanetsky and Chaim Tauber. Several credited names are pen names rather than legal ones: Robert Mellin was born Israel Melnikoff, Sunny Skylar was born Selig Shaftel, Mitchell Parish was born Michael Hyman Pashelinsky, and Elsie Janis was born Elsie Bierbower. Nelson Riddle's arranging is the album's other authorial voice, reshaping a dozen decades-old love songs into a single cha-cha-driven suite. The record closes out Martin's Capitol tenure on a novelty of format rather than of songwriting, a singer's showcase built entirely from other writers' catalogs.