- Vocal Master an influence since late 50’s breakthrough with Dion and the Belmonts
By Bill Dahil
GOLDMINE March 9.2001
(Thanx to Doug for forwarding this articles)
The balmy, sun-kissed climes of south eastern Florida are a long way from the mean streets of New York City in countless ways. But rest assured the Bronx-bred, street-corner swagger that has always defined the rich musical legacy of Dion DiMucci will never fade away, though he long ago relocated to the Sunshine State. You can hear it the second he answers the phone-"Yo!" instead of the expected "Hello," and you'll find it on display throughout his recent album Deja Nu, a conscious but never self-conscious throwback to his rockin' 1950s beginnings.
That swagger permeates the three jam-packed discs that comprise The Rock And Roll Hall Of Famer's (class of '89) new career-spanning anthology King Of The New York Streets for EMI's The Right Stuff subsidiary Its 65 well-chosen tracks (Dion had direct input when the track list was being drawn up) encompass an intriguing array of contrasting yet interwoven styles: doo-wop, rock 'n' roll, blues-rock, singer/song-writer, contemporary Christian and back around full circle to the '50s sound that spawned him.
"I just always moved forward. The anthology album's almost like the narrative overview of my life, so to speak, like a diary I didn't get stuck anywhere. I always was expressing myself," Dion told Goldmine. "[The Right Stuff] cared about representing each album or each period, instead of just loading it with what they own. So my hat's off to them in that respect. I think they tried to express the heart of what I'm about or what my music is about. So that's well appreciated."
Containing insightful liner notes from rock journalist and long time admirer Dave Marsh, a complete discography and glowing written testimony from high-profile friends Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, and Lou Reed, the compactly designed box holds together uncommonly well in both artistic and listening terms from start to finish. Even its newest inclusions - especially the "lost track" "Shu-Bop" -resonate with a timeless vitality often absent from the final discs of such expansive compilations.
"Shu-Bop" hails from Deja Nu, his recent Collectables CD that started out as something else altogether - the soundtrack for a proposed film treatment of Dion's candid autobiography, The Wanderer.
"It's an interesting album, because I wasn't making an album," he explained. "I'm writing these songs, and I decided to lean into the period of the '50s and '60s. In other words, embrace the heart of it and not try to enhance the music, but try to embrace what was really happening. So I recorded - I wrote songs that would sound like they came from that period. I used the same equipment and techniques and effects and approach that I did on "The Wanderer" and "Runaround Sue." Each song was specifically designed to kind of enhance one of the scenes or montage or whatever was going on. And 'ShuBop' was a street corner song.
"When 1 finished, I had a lot of just really cool songs. A lot of my friends said, 'Release it!' because the movie wasn't getting done this year. It's sort of like a movie soundtrack that couldn't wait. So I put it out and people are really liking it a lot. The funny thing about it is, I was writing it for a certain period, and what was in my head while I was writing it was, 'What would I be singing at 19 on a street corner? What would I be listening to in a car?'
"Well, of course I would be listening to 'Maybe' by The Chantels or something. But I'm thinking, 'If I had to write a new song, what would it sound like?' So I wrote 'Hey Suzie and 'Ride With You.' What would I listen to? Jimmy Reed singing at The Apollo Theatre. I wrote 'If You Wanna Rock & Roll.' What was I singing on the bus when I was travelling with Buddy Holly? I remember I was singing that song, ~ My Radiator.' So I finished that. Then I wrote a song called 'Every Day (That I'm With You)' because that was reflecting on my friendship with Buddy Holly"
Dion And The Belmonts co-starred on the ill-fated tour that tragically took the lives of Holly Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper on Feb. 3, 1959, in a snow-strewn Iowa field. "I remember playing his guitar," said Dion. "When he left to get on the plane, he gave me his guitar. We all had the same guitars - Ritchie Valens, myself, Buddy Holly We had these new Fender guitars, and we were in a kind of a contest to see who would make them ring the longest. So when I refused to go on the plane because of a $36 plane ticket - that's what my parents were paying for rent in The Bronx, New York City, and I said, 'Nah, think I'll take the bus."'
Deja Nus "Hug My Radiator" jumps with a twangy rockabilly-enhanced energy for good reason. "That's a song that I actually was singing in 1959 on the bus," noted Dion. "1 never recorded it because nobody knows what a radiator is. But I was trying to engage The Big Bopper, Waylon Jennings who was playing bass for Buddy Holly at the time - and Buddy and Ritchie. I was trying to engage everybody on the bus to make up some verses. But that's more or less what it sounded like. I wish we had a tape recorder on the bus to hear what we all sounded like. In February of that year, man, it went down below zero - 20 below, 30 below That was stuff I wasn't used to. But when you're 19, you know you've got afresh head." By the time of that horrific plane crash, Dion was already a seasoned rock 'n' roll veteran. Born July 18, 1939, in The Bronx, he was exposed to a sumptuous vein of roots music from a young age that inexorably shaped his future.
"I think for me it started when 1 first heard Hank Williams. There was a guy named Don Larkin who had a radio show out of Newark, NJ.," he said. "He had a show from three to four. I used to run home from school just to catch maybe the last 15 minutes 'or whatever. When I 'first heard Hank Williams doing 'Honky Tonk Blues' and 'Jambalaya,' I didn't know exactly what that meant in the 50s, but it sounded so cool. I think that really lit the flame.
"Then I grew up with a lot of blues around me. The Rev. Gary Davis used to sing on the street corners of Harlem. He'd sing gospel songs with his big Gibson J-200. So that, plus Hank Williams, plus some of the doo-wop stuff that was happening, it kind of fused together for me. So that's kind of like the sound. It's kind of country-blues-doowop, like 'Ruby Baby' and 'The Wanderer' and 'Drip Drop."'
Blues-savvy janitor Willie Green also played an integral role in young Dion's ongoing musical education. "He introduced me to 'Walkin' The Boogie' by John Lee Hooker. He played a lot of Sonny Boy Williamson's stuff. I don't know exactly who his influences were. I don't remember. But I knew I loved what he was doing. It's all kind of a part of me."
There were also the doowop groups whose sweet harmonies floated through the urban air like warm, fragrant breezes. "1 liked The Harptones. I liked The Dells. They had tbat 'Oh, What A Nite,"' he said. "Loved being on a show with The Coasters. They brought a sense of humor to rock 'n' roll. And you know, The Cadillacs. To be honest with you, I didn't go too much for The Moonglows, all that smooth kind of - I more or less went for The Cleftones, those kind of guys."
Dion was beginning to make a name for himself locally when someone recognized his potential. "There was a songwriter in my neighbourhood, kind of a weird guy," he said. "He wanted to take me down and play for these two guys that were opening up this company. I took a shot. I went down with him. 'Cause I used to play at the high school dances and on the stoop with Willie Green. I went down there, and they were like, 'Where'd this guy come from? Sign him up!' And off I went."
Pacted to tiny Mohawk Records, he cut his first single, "The Chosen Few" biw "Out In Colorado," in the spring of '57. "At first they put me with two existing tracks which were done by Hugo Montenegro, and they were really square," he said. "I don't know what they were. But they begged me to sing on ‘em, so I did. I was kind of like, 'Guys, please - let me go to my neighborhood and bring some guys down."' Released as by Dion & The Timberlanes, the singer's debut single was bland, unadulterated pop, bearing nary a trace of the rock 'n' roll he loved.
Clearly, changes were needed post-haste, so a determined Dion returned to his neighborhood on a recruitment drive. First to hop aboard was the remarkable bass singer Carlo Mastrangelo (born Oct. 5, 1938), who was also a talented drummer (he filled in on traps on the holly tour). traps during the Holly tour).
"He kind of impressed me, because he wrote a song, and I liked the way he sang," recalled Dion, who also sought two polished tenors to round out his new outfit. "Then he introduced me to Freddie. And then I knew Angelo." Angelo D'Aleo, born Feb. 3, 1940, would be first tenor; Freddie Milano, born Aug.22, 1939, would serve as second tenor. There wasn't a great deal of competition yet between teenaged vocal groups in their neck of the borough.
"There were The Mello-Kings," Dion recalled. "They were in Yonkers. Later on, we heard about this group, that they were great looking, and they danced great. We couldn't move. But they weren't from our neighborhood. You might think there was a group on every comer, but there wasn't."
One task remained - settling on a suitable name for the freshly minted quartet. "I was gonna call it Dion & The Crotonas. People named themselves after cars and birds -Flamingos, Cadillacs, all that kind of stuff," he said. "So we took a street. Two of the guys lived on Belmont Avenue, Freddie and Angelo. It had a good ring, and we went with it."
That July, Dion And The Belmonts waxed their first single as a unit, coupling the original doo-wop ballad "We Went Away" with a rockabilly-tinged "Tag Along" that was partially undermined by its producers.
"They ruined it," stated Dion. "They did it too fast." He expresses much the same complaint about a frantic '58 remake of Fats Dominos "I cant go on Rosalee". Thata another song they reuined Dion said supporting his claim by strapping on his acoustic guitar and demonstrating the proper rhythm with 12 ringing bars over the phone.
"Fats Domino, golly. Cajun accent, those little chubby fingers dancin' over the ivories, you know?" he said. "1 remember I was at a party with Ricky Nelson, and I was sitting on the piano bench with [Domino]. There wasn't much room on the piano bench, but I was sittin' with him. And it was just great listening to him that close. Ricky Nelson and I were real Fats Domino fans."
Mohawk co-owners Bob and Gene Schwartz amicably split with their partner Irving Spice at the end of the year to form Laurie Records, taking Dion And The Belmonts with them. Laurie's debut release would be the quartet's breakthrough. Their upbeat doo-wop classic "I Wonder Why," written by Melvin Anderson and Ricardo Weeks, sailed to #22 on Billboard's Pop chart in the spring of 1958 and put the group on the map in a big way
"It was a song a friend of mine wrote, and we just put a different spin on it, because it was a good song," Dion said. "It asked a lot of good questions - I thought timeless questions. We just put our own spin on it. We kind of created this rhythmic percussion sound. Not to be different, we just didn't know how - we kind of were more into sounds than we were writing lyrics or copying anybody. So I really liked it when we were fooling with it. It was just great to be in the middle of that sound, you know?"
Mastrangelo's staccato bass intro and the soaring acappella responses of D'Aleo and Milano were enormously influential to a plethora of New York doo-wop outfits to come. "To me, it's as unique as Chuck Berry is playing 'Johnny B. Goode,' or the sax solos on The Coasters' records," Dion said of The Belmonts' interplay "We knew it was a great record. It was quite exciting to get that kind of recognition for what we were doing. We knew it was good. We knew we were good, you know'? But for people to acknowledge it 'is a real kick."
The group showcased its smooth ballad blend on their next pair of national hits for Laure - "No One Knows" that summer and "Don't pity Me" at year's end. And in March of '59 Dion And The Belmonts teamed with veteran New York composers Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman to wax the smash "A Teenager In Love "'which blasted up to the #5 slot on the Pop listings.
"Actually, the way 'A Teenager In Love' came in, Ricky Nelson had 'Poor Little Fool,"' he explained. "So I kind of sang it to The Belmonts, and they started doing this thing. Then Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus, they had another song, I forget what it was called and they kind of changed it to Teenager In Love,' and put that together. So it was kind of wonderful to just kind of sit on this blanket, the sound that the group was making. But definitely, if you listen to Poor Little Fool,' you can hear what kind of inspired it.',
Dion had coveted another Pomus Shuman copyright, but fellow first-name-only teen idol Fabian beat him to it. "I wanted to do 'Turn Me Loose," said Dion. "I liked 'Turn Me Loose."' The tunes climbed the charts at the same time; Fabian hit #9, Dion #5. Pomus and Shuman also supplied the flip, "I've Cried Before."
"Doc Pomus was like a father to me. Very much so. He really encouraged me. I miss him. He was just a great guy I just used to like talking to Doc. Mort Shuman I loved. Mort Shuman was totally incredible. He spoke seven languages, had a photographic memory; played all kinds of instruments, wrote in different languages," said Dion. "He was a great guy to hang out with. He was so interesting. I loved being with him." Both sides of the group's less distinguished Laurie 45, "Every Little Thing I Do" and "A Lover's Prayer," charted (#48 and #73, respectively), though not on the same exalted level of "A Teenager In Love." Like many producers of the day who were convinced rock 'n' roll was nothing more than a passing fancy, Gene Schwartz sometimes steered the group in more overtly pop directions, the strategy working to perfection on a beautifully harmonized revival of the Tin Pan Alley standard "Where Or When," which was a #3 smash at the beginning of the new decade (a gorgeous treatment of The Channels' dreamy "That's My Desire" graced its flip). But Schwartz's subsequent efforts along the same Lines grew wearisome to Dion, even if "When You Wish Upon A Star" was a solid Top 30 hit in the spring of 1960 (backed by a doo-wop soaked remake of The Five Satins' "Wonderful Girl"). Cole Porter's "In The Still Of The Night" followed suit for them three months later, topping out at #48.
"He had a good ear for a song, for a hook. His gift was in that area," Dion said of his producer. "We did an album called When You Wish Upon A Star, and that was a Gene Schwartz concoction. I thought he lost It right' there. I much rather would have stayed with originals, maybe that we could have come up with." Faced with recording ill-chosen chestnuts such as "When The Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along" for the album, his feelings were justified.
Dion's wide-ranging musical passions were more apparent on two tougher pieces from the summer of '59. The distinctive Bronx swagger that soon identified all his work within the first four bars turns up full force on "I Got The Blues," Dion growling low down as a studio band slinks through Bill Doggett's instrumental "Honky Tonk" in the background. "We were writing 6ver the record," he chuckled. "Couldn't play it." "You Better Not Do That" was a playful hillbilly number written by Bakersfield bard Tommy Collins.
"Little Jimmy Dickens, I heard him do it on this show, on this Don Larkin show, and I kind of picked up on it," remembered Dion. "I was foolin' with it. I used to sing it to this girl, just to get a reaction from her. I used to play with it when I was a kid. so I threw it on there." Both tracks graced the quartet's debut Laurie album in July 1959, Presenting Dion And The Belmonts.
With Dion hell-bent on rockin' and The Belmonts content to croon supper-club standards, something had to give. "Fred-die, Carlo, and Angelo wanted to sing more like The Gaylords or The Lettermen," said Dion. "I loved 'Where Or When,' but just following it wasn't what I wanted to do. I think that's what really split Dion And The Belmonts up, this idea of this smooth sound. I just couldn't embrace it. It was like singing my father's music, and I just wasn't into it. I had too much country; blues and doo-wop to go backwards. I was right, because those songs didn't really stick. They didn't really get to anybody's heart. it kind of landed in no-man's-land."
So Dion broke loose to do his own thing at Laurie, beginning with the plaintive "Lonely Teenager" in the autumn of 1960, reaching #12 on the chart. "That definitely had its roots in the frustration of growing up a teenager in New York and growing up with all the questions, feeling kind of separated," he noted (its flip "Little Miss Blue," written by Midwesterner Ronnie Isle, also nicked the charts at #96). Two minor sellers, "Havin' Fun" (#42) and "Kissin' Game" (#82), and the sorrowful "Somebody Nobody Wants" (which bubbled under the Hot 100 but should have done consider-ably better), preceded Dion's first and only chart-topper in the fall of 1961, the immortal rocker "Runaround Sue."
"'Runaround Sue' was created at a neighborhood part~;" he explained. "I used to hand out parts. Even if guys didn't know how to sing, I used to give 'em something simple. I used to give them like a mantra. And I had my guitar, and if they could follow the chords, I could get a song going for 45 minutes. That's what 'Runaround Sue' basically was. It was like a spontaneous kind of stream-of-consciousness song. But when I put it into a three and a half minute song, put some lyrics to it, put a bridge, we had a song. That's what it came out of."
Even with a cadre of New York session pros at his behest, re-creating that testosterone4oaded energy level inside a sterile recording studio was no simple task.
"When I heard the whole American set of drums, it just didn't have what it had at a party that I created it at in the Bronx," he said. "We were banging on cardboard boxes. We just had kind of a backbeat. And the vocals were on like the upbeat. So I told the drummer t9 get off the drums. I think he played on - some of that was played on some tympani drums, with the canvases still on the drums. Then we had some tom-toms there for him."
The pompadoured young vocalist made it two certified smashes in a row late in the year with the #2 seller that became his signature song: "The Wanderer." The rousing shuffle was written by his pal Ernie Maresca (born Aug.21, 1939), who shares compositional credit for "Runaround Sue."
"Ernie Maresca, who was a partner of mine in the Bronx, actually really encouraged me to write, 'cause he was writing before I was. So he kind of brought that out in me. He lived across the street. We featured ourselves like street-corner poets," says Dion.
"It was about a guy named Jackie Burns, who was in the Navy Every time he went out with a girl, he tattooed her name on his arm somewhere. A lot of people don't realize it, but 'The Wanderer' is a sad song. The guy's goin' nowhere, but it sounds like he's having a great time goin' nowhere. It's a very macho-sufface kind of song. I don't know what happened to Jackie Burns. He was in the' Navy - probably took off. I haven't seen him since." Its flip, a dance workout called "The Majestic," was written by Brenda Lee Jones and Weldon Young (better known as Dean ,& Jean on their '63 hit "Tra La La La Suzy" for Laurie's Rust subsidiary) and charted (#36) in its own right (it was originally intended as the plug side).
Though The Belmonts were off doing their own thing, Dion found another group of harmonious conspirators in The Del-Satins, who added their strong voices to his solo Laurie smashes.
"They were from Brooklyn. When Dion & The Belmonts split, there were some sounds I wanted to use, and I decided to get another group. They were the first group I auditioned, and I really liked 'em. They were good. In fact, I got more hits with them than I did with Dion & The Belmonts," he said. "I made them a studio group, but they were an existing [group] - one of those street-corner groups that was singing in Brooklyn. They thought I was insane with the parts I gave them for 'The Wanderer' and 'Runaround Sue.' They never heard anything like that. They tell me 'til this day, 'We thought you were crazy!'
Dion's usual lusty sax soloist was Buddy Lucas, an Alabama-born veteran of countless New York sessions whose own hits included "Diane" in 1952 for Jubilee and "7-11" six years later as leader of the Gone All Stars for George Goldner's Gone logo.
"He was a great horn player. My favourite," said Dion. "Jerome Richardson we used on a few things, but those solos - there's even an alternate version of 'Ruby Baby' with Buddy blowing horn that was good."
Dion's distinctive vocal style, usually dotted with a blast of the staccato scatting that became his trademark, was now in glorious full bloom. "It was a Bronx thing. We were like punks, you know?" he said. "I always say that my music is like black music filtered throughan Italian neighborhood and comes out with an attitude: 'Yo!' It's true. It has all those elements. But the New York Italian-American, there's an element of, 'Yo! You talkin' to me?' There's this kind of idea, like you come across like you're supposed to know everything. I don't know where I got that idea, 'cause it's absurd, but anyway, that's the attitude. I would say it's a confidence. I don't know what the foundation is. It might be a little shallow; but it's kind of a New York foundation."
Runaround Sue, his huge-selling #12 album from late '61, found Dion in a position to proudly wear his rockin' influences on his sleeve. Now he could revive The Elegants' "Little Star" (their lead singer Vito Picone was a long-time favourite of Dion's), fellow Bronx native Bobby Darin's "Dream Lover," The Five Satins' breathtaking "In The Still Of The Night," The Harptones' "Life Is But A Dream," Wilbert Harrison's Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller-penned blues shuffle "Kansas City" and the Gerry Goffin/Carole King composition "Take Good Care Of My Baby" then topping the charts for Bobby Vee.
The handsome young singer made his way to the silver screen twice in 1961'. He mimed "Runaround Sue" and "The Wanderer" in the musical Twist Around The Clock, which stars Chubby Checker and features a cameo from The Marcels.
"Those movies were just a very commercial deal. They were done in three weeks. They're kind of funny, the way they're done," he said. "The way that Hollywood put those songs together, it's 50 incongruous to the way the music really looked. Here we were on the street corners with T-shirts and jeans, and when we went into the studio we went in with hero sandwiches, and they were all black musicians.
"You go out to Hollywood, and they had the tables there -it looked like a nightclub scene - and they put all white musicians behind you. You have a tux on. So I look kind of puzzled on the screen, and that's why"
Earlier in the year, Dion had lip-synched "Somebody Nobody Wants" and "Kissin' Game" in the obscure quickie flick Teenage Millionaire; Jimmy Clanton stars, while Jackie Wilson, Marv Johnson, the ubiquitous Checker, and The Bill Black Combo contribute two tunes apiece (inexplicably, the lame comedic plot was filmed in black-and-white, but the hastily edited-in performance clips were presented in washed-out "Musicolor").
Dion co-wrote his next smash, "Lovers Who Wander," with Maresca, retaining much the same infectious up-tempo shuffle feel and enjoying a #3 smash in the spring of '62. "I came up with this title. I really liked it. It was kind of like those - there had been a song that Hank Williams wrote like that," he noted. "It's that kind of attitude - like the guy's living in denial, trying to look cool, but he's hurtin'." Its innovative flip, "(I Was) Born To Cry" also cracked the hit parade at #42 despite Dion's ominously dark and foreboding lyrics - the absolute antithesis of the "Runaround Sue's" happy-go-lucky feel. A Middle Eastern melody further set it apart; its inventor light-heartedly terms the hybrid approach synagogue rock 'n' roll."
"Little Diane" was another imaginative departure: The Del-Satins were still providing muscular harmonies, but the minor-key progression and Dion's hooting kazoo gave it a sound unlike anything else riding the Top 10 during the summer of'62.
"That song lyrically came out of a Hank Williams idea," he said. "Again, it's just that kind of yin and yang thing, the idea of, 'Everything tells me I should be walking away from this, but there's nothing I can do. You're in my heart.' The guys really hung up on this girl. Musically, I was listening to horn players at The Apollo Theatre. And you know; here I am a kid, I buy a kazoo, and I thought I was gonna really wail. ln my head, I was really wailing. When I listen to it today, I laugh, 'cause I wasn't doin' much.
"That particular song had a lot to do with passing the synagogue and meeting a cantor and absorbing and digesting some Jewish tradition - actually what happens in the synagogue with the cantors. There's a lot of minor chords. So that kind of got down in me, and I kind of used it."
Lovers Who Wander, another hit LP from the summer of '62 (#12), again alternated his recent hits with a brace of rockin' classics - Darin's "Queen Of The Hop," Checker's "The Twist," Lloyd Price's "Stagger Lee," The Isley Brothers' "Shout" - and more doo-wop gold in the form of The Mello-Kings' "Tonight, Tonight" and The Dell-Vikings' "Come Go With Me."
The booklet accompanying King Of The New York Streets reproduces a Supersonic Attractions tour poster promoting a startlingly diverse talent line-up (Sam Cooke, The Drifters, Solomon Burke, Gladys Knight & The Pips, Dee Clark, Barbara George, The Sensations, and Chicago-based Elvis Presley disciple Ral Donner, backed by B.B. King and his orchestra) that illustrates the changing face of rock 'n' roll and R&B at the time. Routing such an integrated show through the South during the early '60s wasn't without its perils, but Dion took it all in stride.
"That was some tour. Memphis - you know, we were travelling around through Virginia, down through the South, Mid-Atlantic. lt was kind of tense at times. Not Sam Cooke. Sam Cooke was a real gentleman. Him and I talked a lot. But I'd say some of the other guys, some of the musicians -Bobby "Blue" Blands players, some of the roadies or whatever they were. The gophers, guys who were hanging on to Bobby "Blue" Bland, they got attitudes. So that was a little difficult. Sam was kind of a champion for that, cooling everybody out," said Dion. "I miss him. He was quite unique. He was full of music."
The introspective "Love Came To Me" gave Dion and Laurie another Top 10 seller in late '62, but his contract would expire before year's end, and Columbia Records was interested in signing him;
"They were a bigger company;" he said; "My manager at that time spoke to Laurie, and I don't know They were trying to push me into some - I don't know It was just the idea of getting the music out to more people, and [Columbia] could do it."
Though Laurie continued to reap the occasional hit by excavating its archives - the distinctive "Sandy" almost pierced the Top 20 in early '63, spawning the album Dion Sings To Sandy three months later - his fresh material would heretofore appear on the mighty Columbia logo. The young singer would soon learn the conglomerate harboured no qualms about infringing on his artistic inclinations. (Or spelling his last name wrong on his albums to boot - Ed.)
"Ruby Baby;" his first Columbia smash in early '63 (peaking at #2), was a brilliant blues-kissed extension of the Laurie sound. Driven by the singer's acoustic guitar; it was consider-ably more down and dirty than The Drifters' original '56 reading of the Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller-penned rocker for Atlantic. "I was a fan of the early Drifters. They did some good stuff," he said. "Leiber And Stoller are great, man. But when Columbia piggybacked a Ruby Babv LP off the hit, it was weighed down with the schmaltzy "My Mammy" and "You Made Me Love You" - his father's music all over again. To be fair, the album did offer the defiant rocker "Gonna Make It Alone."
Prolific Brill Building tunesmiths Carole King and Gerry Goffin brainstormed Dion's encore Columbia hit, the macho "This Little Girl," while the singer delightedly looked on.
"I was a big fan of Carole King's. I used to hang out with her and listen to her," he said. "I would have loved to have done 'Take Good Care Of My Baby,' but they gave it to Bobby Vee. I love that' song. So I said, 'Write me one!' and they wrote me ['This Little Girl']."
A couple of months after "Be Careful Of Stones That You Throw" made only a mild showing on the charts at #31, Dion bounced back strong with "Donna The Prima Donna," a delightful vocal group rocker written by Dion and Maresca that recalled the stylistic parameters of "Runaround Sue" and "The Wanderer" and climbed to #6 during the fall of '63. "It was kind of written about my sister," he said. "I liked the title." Contemporary listeners may require a quick primer on the identity of platinum blonde (and often-betrothed) Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, whose glamorous moniker figures prominently in the song's clever storyline. The Donna The Prima Donna album was a doowoppers' delight, stacked with revivals of The Cleftones' "Can't We Be Sweethearts" and "Little Girl Of Mine," The Five Satins' "Oh Happy Day" (first a 1952 pop hit for crooner Don Howard) and the singer's own infectious "Flim Flam."
Dion reached back into his collection of Drifters classics for another Leiber/Stoller-penned gem, "Drip Drop," which vaulted to #6 shortly before the end of 1963. The next year would be a different story: Like so many of his contemporaries, Dion saw his unbroken string of hits dry up in the face of the British Invasion. Other than a galloping, harmonica-spiced revival of Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" that slipped onto the bottom end of the charts at #71 in the summer of '64, the singer's subsequent Columbia singles made negligible commercial impact. Dion was hurting on a personal level too, but the emotional ravages of an increasing heroin habit somehow didn't seem to interfere with the increasingly daring music he was cutting for Columbia.
If the label's stodgy execs had only grasped where he was coming from during the mid-60s, they might have beaten The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, The Animals and other celebrated blues-rockers to the punch. They did issue his country-blues rendition of Willie Dixon's "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man" as a single (not the wisest choice in retrospect), as well as his throbbing, band-backed "Spoonful" and the chunky "Chicago Blues" but left a ton of killer material in the can (the Columbia/Legacy CD reissues Bronx Blues: The Columbia Recordings t1962-19651 and The Road I'm On: A Retrospective rectify that injustice). Legendary Columbia producer John Hammond, who never supervised Dion in the studio but should have, introduced Dion to the music of Robert Johnson, further feeding his blues jones.
"Columbia didn't know what I was doing," he said. "I was experimenting because of a lot of the albums that John Hammond gave me. I was very much into searching out the roots, expressing myself. And it started to take on a different expression, more raw and not as controlled. It was just trying different stuff And at the time, I also picked up a gut-string guitar and started picking."
He kept his blues musings on a largely acoustic level in 1963, surrounding himself with some of New York's top R&B sessioneers - drummers Panama Francis and Sticks Evans, saxist Jerome Richardson, and Lucas now on harmonica. Vocally, Dion imparted a natural quality to Pomus and Shuman's "Troubled Mind," Lucas' tailor-made boast "Sweet Papa Di" and sharply honed covers of material by Sonny Boy Williamson, Lightnin' Hopkins (a swinging "Katie Mae"), Chuck Berry; and Big Joe Williams (a remade "Baby Please Don't Go" displays a decided Mose Allison influence) that would too often be absent from the vocal deliveries of first-generation white blues revivalists. But by '65, he had assembled a snarling combo that kicked up as much dust as the scruffy Brit crowd on Dixon's "The Seventh Son," Sleepy John Estes' "Drop Down Baby" and his own "Kickin' Child."
Neither did he stick to straight blues: A 1965 adaptation of label mate Bob Dylan's "Baby I'm In The Mood For You" rocked as viciously as any of the era's hits but laid unreleased.
"He didn't record it, so I did," said Dion, whose road guitarist, Johnny Falbo, took a savage, slashing solo midway through (Dion had laid down a convincing "It's All Over Now; Baby Blue" three months earlier). "They didn't know what 1 was doing. They didn't release anything, I don't think. They kind of like just shelved it. I said ,'OK, I'll leave.' I left." His last Columbia single, the tough blues-rocker "Two Ton Feather," sank without a trace in mid-1966. In 1969, the company belatedly gathered up some of the long languishing masters for a belated album, Wonder Where I'm Bound, to cash in on his next surge of success.
Dion had written one of his last Columbia singles, 1965's "Tomorrow Won't Bring The Rain," with Mastrangelo, and a full-fledged reunion with The Belmonts wasn't far behind. Signing with ABC-Paramount in 1966, Dion And The Belmonts came up with a pair of singles - "My Girl The Month Of May" and "Movin' Man" - and an early '67 album, Together Again, but few consumers noticed.
"We had ran into each other, and I played some stuff and they started singing," said Dion. "And it sounded so interesting, some of the stuff that we were coming up with. I thought, 'Let's try it. You know; it happened once. Maybe we could start, hook into something. You never know.' So I tried it. And it's what it was, and then we moved on. You just can't go back, you know? It just wasn't there."
Kicking his heroin habit for good on April 1, 1968, with some concentrated help from a higher power, Dion moved to Florida and embraced Christianity. These were turbulent times, and when two of our nation's leaders were assassinated that same year, Dion's soft, folk-styled "Abraham, Martin And John" helped heal the country's collective wounds. Dick Holler, an ex-rockabilly piano pounder who had cut "Living By The Gun" for Johnny Vincent's Ace label in 1957 while in a Baton Rouge combo called The Rockets With Jimmy Clanton, was responsible for the song (The Royal Guardsmen's kooky '66 million-seller "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron" was another of his creations). Dion initially deemed it opportunistic and was wary of recording it for his old friends at Laurie.
"Dick Holler had sent me a demo of it, and it was a shuffle," he remembered. "It was like a sing along. I mean, the melody was there, but I kind of really rewrote the whole melody and structure of the thing."
The populace took to the lilting anthem in droves, giving Dion a gold record that vaulted to #4 in late 1968. Testifying to the song's universal appeal were the raft of covers that followed: Everyone from comedienne Moms Mabley to Smokey Robinson & The Miracles weighed in with wildly contrasting versions.
A very different looking Dion was pictured on the eponymous Laurie album built around "Abraham." Gone was the flashy immaculately combed pompadour - his hair was now fashionably long. Further, he was taking to wearing caps, and his acoustic guitar was never far from reach. However, "Daddy Rollin' (In Your Arms)," "Abraham's" flip side, rocked hard. Cut in Miami at a tiny studio behind a bowling alley its beat was sparked by a cadre of Caribbean’s hammering on suitcases (the Floridian equivalent of "Runaround Sue's" party crowd, one imagines). Otherwise, the new approach was unerringly mellow - even The Four Tops' "Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever" and Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" got the laid-back treatment (the southpaw guitar god gave Dion's unorthodox rendition his official blessing).
The short-lived reunion with Laurie only endured for three more singles, "Purple Haze" and "From Both Sides Now" managing minor chart success (#63 and #91). In January 1970, he released Sit Down Old Friend, his first album in a long-term deal with Warner Brothers that offered him a great deal of creative latitude - in retrospect, both a good and bad development. "Your Own Backyard," his second Warner Bros. single and only chart entry (#75) for the company in the summer of 1970, was a harrowing, unflinchingly honest look at the drug-ravaged existence he'd wisely abandoned. It would be 19 long years before he returned to the hit parade.
"I probably had too much freedom, because I recorded 'Abraham, Martin And John,' and it became a big hit," he said. "Warner Brothers gave me a contract for 10 albums. So there was really not enough pressure. No one was looking at me, so I just was doing anything. Like I was too loose. I was like, rehearsing, you know what I mean? Putting albums together like sketches. And I wasn't used to making albums, so 1 had a lot of freedom and a lot of - I mean, they were financing me. So I wasn't struggling. I was with a company"
Five more Dion albums came out bearing the WB logo:
You're Not Alone, Sanctuary (both 1971), Suite For Late Summer (1972), Streetheart (1976), and another reunion LP with The. Belmonts cut live at Madison Square Garden in 1972. A collection produced by the estimable Phil Spector, 1975's Born To Be With You, emerged on the producer's own Warner affiliated Spector International logo; the engaging Don Robertson-penned title track, previously a 1956 hit for The Chordettes, sported a snazzy King Curtis-styled sax solo by Nino Tempo (no stranger to the silver screen himself, what with his honkin' frenzy at the start of The Girl Can't Help It in 1956 before teaming with sister April Stevens to hit the top of the charts with "Deep Purple" in '63).
Working with Spector in the studio was "frustrating," Dion said.
Signing with Terry Cashman and Tommy West's Lifesong imprint in the late '70s, Dion cut two albums, 1978's Return Of The Wanderer and the next year's Fire In The Night, which were his last secular statements for a decade. As his spiritual pursuits took precedence, Dion's musical interests naturally gravitated more and more toward contemporary gospel, and the '80s saw him recording a series of sanctified albums (he earned a 1983 Grammy nomination for his Dayspring set I Put Away My Idols).
"1955, I'm walkin' down the street, my collar's up, I'm like rebel king of the Bronx. And Father Joe calls me over, and he says, 'Dion, what's this rebel without a cause that I'm hearing about?' You know, 'cause James Dean's movie was out. He says, 'What's this rebelling without a cause? You know; when you rebel for the truth, you've really got something.' So I didn't know what he was talking about, of course. I was like, 'Yeah, Father. Yeah, Father. I gotta go. Nunzio's callin' me.'
"So after some years I started realizing that he was the true rebel in the neighborhood, that he was the true sign of contradiction, that he was the true hero, or radical. Because he was turned and seeking a higher truth, and I was looking to grab on to all the cool guys. Which, actually being around this long, a lot of 'em didn't end up in very good places. You know - jail, dying, hospitals, broken. A lot of 'em. And some of the guys that came out kinda saw that maybe Father Joe was a true rebel. Think about it. So I started growing up a little. That's what made me start writing gospel songs."
The legendary singer also cites his wife Susan - they married in 1963 though their courtship began when they were teens - as an abiding inspiration for many of his beloved compositions. "Listen, without Susan - God put her in my life. I adore this woman," he said. "We've been together a long time, and I love her very much. [She] definitely helped me to look forward and up. She was a big part of me not getting stuck."
Finally, in 1989, Dion returned to the pop music arena with an album for Arista, Yo Frankie, which contained the eventual title track for The Right Stuff's new boxed set. The Arista set was greeted warmly; "And The Night Stood Still," with backing vocals by Dave Edmunds and Patty Smyth, became his first pop chart entry in almost two decades, peaking at #75. He was admitted to The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame the same year, and he's been rocking ever since, sometimes with The Little Kings and always with a loving nod to his resplendent past. Last year, he was inducted with The Belmonts into The Vocal Group Hall Of Fame.
"Those early classic songs, hit records, become more important and valuable to me as time moves on. I love doing them for people. I did a concert up at The Rock And Roll H4all Of. Fame, and they wanted a 40-minute concert. Well, I opened up with 'You Move Me,' like The Little Kings' version," he said. "They were filming it, and I did all hit records, and I loved doing it. It was a lot of fun to do the hit records for these people. It's something that captures the heart of a certain time, expresses the heart of the late '50s and '60s. There's a lot of passion and depth in that music. A lot of people that maybe try to come out and perform it really just capture the very surface of it. They don't really get it. They have untrained ears. They don't le ally capture the depth of it, even though it's simple music. It's beautiful, and it goes deep.
"I don't even think the industry understands it, to an extent, because it was a singles era. It wasn't an albums era. It didn't encourage artists. But there were a lat of artists back then. A lot of beautiful stuff was recorded back then. It's rich, and it's deep."
One enriching listen to King Of The New York Streets certainly confirms that basic truth.