AL MARTINO

Al Martino’s first hit came in 1952, and while his career has had more ups and downs, fizzles and comebacks than many, he says that reinventing himself has always been the key to continued success.

He repeats something Winston Churchill told him at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953: “The definition of success is when you go from failure to failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” Martino says, “I’ve always remembered that.”

What was Martino doing sitting next to Winston Churchill in the first place? We’ll get to that.

While Martino (born Albert Cini) started off working alongside his bricklayer brothers, it wasn’t long before he started singing, inspired in part by Mario Lanza, a family friend from Philadelphia. Martino remembers that one of his first engagements was a week at the Rancho, “on the highway a couple of miles from Providence. It closed down a couple of years later and became a furniture store. I don’t know what it is now; this was maybe 55 years ago.”

Just as Martino’s recording of “Here In My Heart” was about to come out in 1952, he heard that Lanza had been asked to do the same song. He knew that the bigger star’s version would bury his, so he got Lanza’s number from the family and called the Coast.

“His parents gave me his phone number and I called him and said ‘I understand that RCA is going to call you to cover me.’ Mario would’ve done it if I hadn’t called him. Mario said ‘I know you’re from Philadelphia, and my family knows your family, so I’ll tell RCA that I’m gonna decline.’ ”

“Here In My Heart” was not only a hit here in the States; Martino was the first American artist to hit number one on the British charts. “I got to England and the crowds were at the airport waiting for me. They charted me as a number-one record, and I never forgot it.”

That’s how he ended up sitting next to Churchill. He didn’t figure on staying in England for the rest of the ’50s. But he had been told not to return.

His voice lowers as he says, “I had managerial problems. My contract was purchased by a guy from New York, and I didn’t approve of it, so I fired him. And they ran me out of the country.”

(The story goes that the Mafia was involved, and while Martino doesn’t get into that, he later mentions that his role as Johnny Fontaine in The Godfather and The Godfather III was a role that he had lived.)

Eventually, he was able to return, but when he did, rock ‘n’ roll was king and “everyone had forgotten about me. …

“There was still room for guys like us — Sinatra was making it, and Dean Martin and Andy Williams. But now you have to play leapfrog, and the only way is to find the right song. You have to be on top of it.”

He put out a few records, but nothing went well until he found “I Love You Because,” an album track from an Eddy Arnold LP that he turned into a lush pop song.

“I had to make a transition now; it was 10 years later,” Martino explains. It was hard to find good pop songs to record, and the best ones were going to the biggest stars, but “the country songs were plentiful. … We’d look for other artists who had never released these songs as singles, and we’d go pop with them.”

That revitalized his career, as did “Spanish Eyes,” perhaps Martino’s signature hit, which was a vocal version of the song “Moon Over Naples” with lyrics that Martino commissioned himself. (He later repeated the trick with a vocal version of “Love Is Blue.”)

“You’ve gotta make that transition. If you can’t do that, it won’t happen.”

He also had a comeback that wasn’t musical at all: His role as the Mob-controlled singer Johnny Fontaine in The Godfather, which he reprised in The Godfather III.

“It threw me into another plateau of my life and my career,” Martino says. “It was a great experience; I’m glad I pulled it off. But it was a very stressful period, because of the resistance that I got from motion-picture people who didn’t think Al Martino, a singer, could cut the mustard.” Actors, he says, “don’t like non-actors to invade their domain. And yet these actors want to be singers! And we don’t care, but they care if we want to be actors.”

He lowers his voice again. “These guys shipped me out, so I thought the part was perfect. Because I lived that part. I did it in only two takes.”

He came back again in 1976, when Martino made yet another comeback with a disco version of “Volare” produced by Mike Curb. “Again, it’s that transition. Every hit I had was because of a transition, a departure from what I did before.”

And he says he’s begun work on a new record that will be “an extreme departure from anything I ever did. I hope it works out.” He said that it was still too early in the process to give out any more details on it.

At 80, he’s capitalized on the popularity he enjoyed in England all those years ago, going back to Europe roughly every other year. He came back from England a few months ago and is headed to Germany and Italy next month. And he still talks about performing and recording with more enthusiasm than a lot of performers less than half his age. “It’s something I’ll do until I say to myself that I can’t sing anymore. I’ve got no reason to quit.”

Al Martino sings this weekend at the Providence Italian Arts and Music Festival this weekend in downtown Providence. He performs in the Bank of America Skating Center on Saturday and Monday nights. The festival is free; call (401) 808-5614 or go to www.providenceitalian

festival.com for more information.

rmassimo@projo.com