Busy crooning almost every night, singer Tony Ocean may be the hardest working man in old-school showbiz

Dean Martin’s real name was Dino Paul Crocetti and he was born in Steubenville, a city in eastern Ohio. Tony Ocean, whose real name is Maurizio Carrara, was born outside of Chicago. Dean Martin died on Christmas Day in 1995 but Tony Ocean, who was born a few days after Christmas in 1962, is going strong at 60 years old, performing many nights a week, keeping alive that vanishing entertainment of freewheeling glory known as showbiz.

“Dean and I have been tied together in song for a long time,” Ocean says. “I’ve sung Dean’s ‘(Ain’t That a) Kick in the Head’ a lot more times than he ever did.”

He has also, it can be persuasively argued, sung “My Way” more than Frank Sinatra because he has been in the singing business for more than three decades and counting, figuring he has had 8,000 performances and counting.

His showbiz durability was celebrated in late May with a 30th anniversary show at the Des Plaines Theatre. It drew more than 600 people and made Ocean feel “blessed and proud and humbled.”

He will tell you that “I am not the greatest singer” but he has sung in Las Vegas, Arizona, New York, Aruba and elsewhere. He has opened for Tony Bennett and Don Rickles. He has thousands of devoted fans spread across this area.

Ocean has been singing for as long as he can remember, which takes him back in time to his birth shortly after his parents Giovanni and Graziella Carrara moved from Lucca, a small village in Northern Italy and settling in Cicero. His sister and father worked for the Gonnella Baking Co. That was to have been Ocean’s career destination too and he started working there while going to Elmwood Park High School, where he was in a choir group that once performed for Pope Paul VI in Rome.

On weekends, he started singing in rock bands. There were many of them, names that are now forgotten. But it was as one of the five members of The Big Band Rodeo that he finished in second place during a 1992 edition of the Ed McMahon-hosted TV talent fest called “Star Search.”

Fame deferred, he soon caught the attention of a producer when singing Dean Martin songs at a karaoke bar, which led to him being cast as Martin in, “The Pack is Back,” a tribute show to Martin, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.

That was when he changed his name. “Nobody could pronounce my real name so I borrowed the name from the Sinatra character in ‘Ocean’s Eleven,’” he says. “He was Danny Ocean in the movie but people told me, ‘You look more like a Tony than a Danny.’ And so that is how Tony Ocean was born.”

“The Pack is Back” enjoyed serious success, including years at Piper’s Alley in Old Town.

I saw him in that show and, after it ended its run, many other times over the next 15 years when he was a house act at Jilly’s, once a popular Rush Street saloon.

“It was a small place, no food and filled with smoke. But it was great. It opened a lot of doors for me,” Ocean says. “I performed Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights. Met all sorts of people, like Kevin Costner, Tom Jones. I made all kinds of connections that led to a lot of great gigs and some good friendships.”

His conversation still pleasantly touched with a neighborhood accent, he is a lively and personable sort. His stage presence is of a compelling and palpable aim-to-please energy. Though he has sung many songs thousands of times, he seems to bring new life to whatever pours from his mouth.

“Another part is just the music I perform,” he says. “Martin, Sinatra and hits of the ‘50s to the ‘80s.” But he also gives audiences the music of Cheap Trick (in the form of his tribute band “The Dream Police”) and his shows and CDs feature the work of such unexpected but welcome performers as the great Bonnie Koloc.

“To do what I do I really have to be a human jukebox,” Ocean says. “People want to hear songs they know, songs that can bring back memories. And I still do love rock and roll.”

He says it’s the audiences who make the shows.

“Some people are there to forget whatever problems they have in their daily lives and some of the songs take them back. There’s an old-school cool to it too. People are dressed up and for three hours at least, they can pretend they are living life the way it used to be, the way they used to be.”

He is ever mentioning members of his bands and support personnel, and talks about how worried they all were when the pandemic curtailed performances. But during that time, he could still be found at socially-distanced outdoor venues, one of them the driveway of his home in Elk Grove Village.

There Ocean could also be found sitting around the fire pit in his backyard, indulging in the three or four cigars he smokes each day and maybe a cocktail. He used to, like Sinatra, be fond of Jack Daniel’s. “Lately, it’s been vodka and water,” he says.

His backyard interludes inspired “Ocean’s Pit,” an internet venture that started on Facebook and has since spread to other platforms. It’s a weekday talk show that he calls “a little show about big things” and it features him talking about life, politics, sports and business, and interviewing all sorts of guests, from first responders to such celebrities as actors Tom Dreesen and Michael Madsen. He built a studio in his home and there have been a few remote broadcasts from various restaurants. In October, it was named Internet Show of the Year at the Josie Music Awards, a global, multigenre award show.

On Thursdays, Ocean’s wife Laura is his co-host. She is his fourth wife and they first met long ago at — where else? — one of his performances. They have children from previous marriages and they both understand the demands of his career.

“She is my rock, my partner in everything,” he says. “She understands the world we have and me. There are some days when I think ‘I don’t want to go out, I don’t want to perform.’ It can be tough. But she gets it. She knows.

“And then comes what Laura calls ‘shower time,’ time for me to get ready. When I get out of that shower I am Tony Ocean and I’m ready to go. It’s like having a split personality, I guess.”

Now, ain’t that a kick in the head?

rkogan@chicagotribune.com