Dion

Dion DiMucci was one of the greatest singers of the late-'50s, early-'60s rock period before the Beatles arrived in the U.S. Born July 18, 1939, in the Bronx borough of New York City, Dion came on the scene at the tail end of the doo-wop era, in 1958, bringing with him a solid musical foundation that found him conversant not only with pop music and R&B, but with country and blues as well. By suggesting (in his wonderfully nuanced phrasing as well as in the words he sang) vulnerability and a tender, even sentimental heart quite at odds with the confident swagger definitively associated with this former member of the Fordham Baldies street gang, Dion challenged his listeners in ways few of his less daring contemporaries could.

Dion's recording career began in 1957 with two singles for the Mohawk label. For the second single, he recruited for support his Bronx buddies Angelo D'Aleo, whose tenor voice was nearly as beautiful and expressive an instrument as Dion's; second tenor Fred Milano; and bass singer/drummer par excellence Carlo Mastrangello. Dion dubbed the group the Belmonts, in honor of Belmont Avenue, in the guys' Italian neighborhood in the Bronx.

Considering how the very mention of their name causes doo-wop aficionados' hearts to flutter, Dion and the Belmonts had only a brief fling together on record -- brief but memorable, to the tune of seven Top 40 hits between 1958 and 1960 -- before Dion went solo. Their second single, "I Wonder Why," launched them onto the charts, peaking at #22, and intro-duced not a trademark sound but a striking one: Mastrangello kicks it off with a forceful rat-a-tat-tat attack of nonsense syllables before the other three voices come in, one after another, until they're all in harmony and singing the intro setup for Dion's soaring, plaintive entrance: "I-I wonder why/I love you like I do . . ."; it's one of the all-time great singles in rock & roll history. Two followup singles, "No One Knows" and a downbeat ballad, "Don't Pity Me," hit #19 and #40 in 1958 and early 1959, respectively, setting the stage for the group's breakthrough hit, "Teenager in Love," from the pens of the formidable songwriting team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. "Teenager in Love" peaked at #3 and was followed in short order by another #3 single, a version of Rodgers and Hart's pop standard "Where or When," done in the close harmony style of early '50s pop vocal groups such as the Ames Brothers and the Four Aces. At the moment "Where or When" reached its chart apex, Dion was in a hospital trying to kick his drug habit. Two more charting singles followed in 1960 -- "When You Wish Upon a Star" and "In the Still of the Night" -- but by that time, the group had already performed its final shows together. Dion and the Belmonts' brief, incandescent history is documented best on Collectables' reissue of the 1959 Laurie album, Presenting Dion and the Belmonts. Disc one of the King of the New York Streets box set, titled "The Wanderer," contains six Dion and the Belmonts tracks, among them four of the seven charted singles ("I Wonder Why," "Don't Pity Me," "A Teenager in Love," and "Where or When"). The group reunited in 1972 to play a reunion show for 20,000 fans at New York's Madison Square Garden, and it turned out to be a great night, as preserved on Rhino's Reunion: Live at Madison Square Garden 1972 CD.

As a solo artist on Laurie, Dion hit the Top 20 right off the bat with 1960's "Lonely Teenager." What happened next created a rock & roll legend. On his first 1961 single, "Runaround Sue," Dion unleashed the persona that had only been hinted at in his work with the Belmonts, and it was credible enough to ensconce the 45 at #1 for two weeks. It was followed immediately by "The Wanderer," a #2 single whose title -- and a swaggering, bravura lyrical interpretation that bestowed an autobiographical feel on the song's account of inveterate, heartless womanizing (the guys in the old neighborhood must have loved it) -- gave Dion a nickname he still answers to professionally. Over the next three years, he cut a succession of singles that reinforced his image as a tender-tough street kid. "Coming from that Italian macho background, with the gangs and everything," he comments in the updated liner notes on the reissue of his first solo album, 1961's Runaround Sue, "you couldn't express loneliness or compassion, any kind of empathy, directly. But when you sang about those things, guys would say, 'That's great!' . . . That was an okay way of saying 'I'm lonely and I'm frightened." Runaround Sue also documents Dion's nascent forays into well-crafted '60s teen pop, though the results are mixed. A weird version of Bobby Darin's "Dream Lover" finds Dion adding "mmm" and "yeah" to the end of several lyric lines and working to an arrangement of no particular distinction, save that common to a smarmy lounge singer. An album-closing take on Goffin and King's "Take Good Care of My Baby," which had been a #1 single for Bobby Vee only three months before Dion's album was released, features a nice, low-key reading appropriate to the singer's plea for reconciliation, but neither the vocal performance nor the arrangement would make anyone forget why the Snuff Garrett-produced Vee single topped the chart. Nevertheless, Runaround Sue is a portrait of Dion at a particular moment in his career and in rock history, and as such, it provides an interesting perspective on the options he felt were open to him at that juncture.

Options appear to be the point of Dion's move to Columbia in 1962. In the same way labelmate Johnny Cash was leaping stylistic boundaries in search of material and selflessly championing other songwriters' work even while developing his own writer's voice, so did Dion use the Columbia years to delve deeper into the roots music that had first influenced him back in the Bronx, gradually supplanting the odes to teen misery with more mature musings on the state of the heart and the world. His first Columbia hit single was both familiar and new: "Ruby Baby," which lodged three weeks at #2 in early 1963, was a tough, grind-ing Leiber-Stoller blues for the Drifters, but Dion's uptempo treatment featured de rigueur background hand claps and a solid backbeat supporting a loose, swinging vocal. At the same time this evolution was under way, Dion remained true to the street, cutting some fine pop/doo-wop singles, including "Can't We Be Sweethearts" (one of his best) and "This Little Girl," the latter peaking at #21. As 1963 wound down, he landed on the charts twice more with remarkable performances. The best of the two, "Donna the Prima Donna," is a big, deep production keyed by insistent hand claps, woodblock percussion, rich background voices alternately singing the titular girl's name and settling into smooth "ooohhhs" as Dion wails the verses.

Peaking at #6, "Drip Drop" was Dion's last chart appearance until 1968, when he returned to Laurie. But he never stopped recording, and for the next three years, he made some of the best music of his career, even though the general public heard little of it. In 1965, he cut a scorching version of an obscure Bob Dylan song, "Baby, I'm in the Mood for You," with a full rock & roll band; that same year, he also delivered a fierce rendition of Willie Dixon's "Spoonful" in an arrangement that echoes the murky, sinister ambience of Bo Diddley's records. No doubt his worsening drug problem and his diminishing commercial fortunes played into his mind-set. His anxiety and insecurity produced some beautiful moments, though, such as 1964's "The Road I'm On (Gloria)" and 1965's "Time in My Heart for You." The Columbia years are now well represented on two releases: The first was 1990's Bronx Blues: The Columbia Recordings, a collection of 20 tracks including the chart hits and eight songs that do not appear on the other Columbia overview, 1997's two-disc The Road I'm On: A Retrospective. Among the essentials on Bronx Blues is a little-heard Pomus-Shuman gem, "Troubled Mind," a terse, shuffling blues with gospel overtones a la "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," and the recording of Dylan's "Baby, I'm in the Mood for You." A less satisfying Columbia package is the ill-conceived Super Hits, a skimpy 10-song long player with no discernible conceptual glue.

In 1966, Columbia dropped Dion and he wound up briefly on ABC, where he reunited with the Belmonts for a few engaging rock & roll sides, one of which, "My Girl the Month of May" (the final track on disc one of the King of the New York Streets box) is a monstrous recording with a Brit-pop feel. Finally, though, he dropped out of sight to overcome his drug addiction, and when he returned sober and focused to Laurie Records in 1968, he was fully engaged in folk, blues, and folk rock. His first release, "Abraham, Martin and John," written by Dick Holler (nom de plume for country songwriter Dick Feller), caught the zeitgeist and rejuvenated his career. A somber, orchestral, folk-based tribute to three slain leaders came on like a soothing balm to a nation rocked by violence and internal strife centered on the civil rights movement and the undeclared war in Vietnam. As illustrated on Dion, his now-out-of-print album for Laurie.

On signing with Warner Bros. in 1969, Dion went full-tilt into folk rock on five intimate, introspective albums, all now out of print, though representative tracks from that period comprise the bulk of disc two of King of the New York Streets. Despite beautiful, affecting songs such as "Sanctuary," the Warners period produced no commercial hits; to make matters worse, a dream project with Phil Spector was deemed such a dud that the label declined to release it domestically, though it was available in En gland.

Moving to Lifesong in 1979, Dion remained on the upswing aesthetically, if not commercially, with Return of the Wanderer. A single, "I Used to Be a Brooklyn Dodger," is one of his most poignant vocals, finding him looking back in fondness and with regret at his youth and what he has lost over time. Rejected by the secular market, Dion turned to gospel and recorded several first-rate albums for the Word label, all extolling his newfound faith in God. One of those, I Put Away My Idols, won a Dove Award and earned a Grammy nomination in 1983.

But the journey was far from over; in fact, it continues to the present day. Dion returned to the secular field following the publication of his autobiography in the late '80s; and in 1989, he teamed up with producer Dave Edmunds for the inspired Yo Frankie on Arista. Edmunds keeps Dion front and center, while surrounding him with a guitar-heavy wall of sound and lush backup vocals. Although the album trades some on the artist's nostalgia value with "King of the New York Streets," "Written on the Subway Wall," and "Little Star," the blending of new and vintage themes inspired impassioned performances, serving notice that work remained unfinished here.

Nineteen ninety-three saw the release of a delightful Christmas album, Rock n' Roll Christmas. Deja Nu, released in 2000, combines two songs Dion wrote for the film The Wanderer with more recent recordings in tribute to, as he writes in his liner notes, "Cars, Girls, Love." It gets a bit deeper than that, thanks to two moving covers of Bruce Springsteen songs: "Book of Dreams," done reverently, with a doo-wop-style close harmony chorus in the background; and "If I Should Fall Behind," which closes the album on an a cappella note, with the Wanderers providing a classic, bopping backdrop, complete with burbling bass and wailing falsetto, as Dion sings the vows of devotion with stirring sensitivity. However retro its sensibilities (even the Springsteen songs, evocative and eloquent though they be, are of a piece with a romantic's idealistic view of the world), Deja Nu is a solid effort that shows 61-year-old Dion DiMucci forever young and in command, in voice and in spirit. (DAVID MCGEE)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide