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The importance of Dion DiMucci, aka “Dion,” to the evolution of popular music cannot be overstated. Dion, with the Belmonts, was one of the first and most enduring white doowop acts to connect with Top 40 radio. As a solo artist in the late 1950s he acquired teen idol status with hits like “Runaround Sue,” “Donna The Prima Donna,” and “Little Diane” which were a cut above the other Brill Building product of the time. While these songs successfully captured the angst and confusion of teenaged males of the era, it was “The Wanderer” that is arguably the penultimate recording of the era. Its bold, swaggering attitude, from Dion’s vocals to the jaunty, almost cocky piano lines and aggressive sax solo, resonates with anyone who has ever heard it and influenced such notables as Bruce Springsteen. By the early 1960s, however, Dion had abandoned the teen idol image and had melded doowop, folk, and blues into a precursor to folk rock. Listen to “Ruby Baby” and “Drip Drop” almost 45 years after they were originally recorded and they sound amazingly fresh, almost timeless. While Dion scored what was possibly his greatest commercial success with “Abraham, Martin, and John,” in the late 1960s, such commercial (though not artistic) success has eluded him for the most part since that time, resulting in the somewhat sporadic release of new material interspersed with endless recycling and reissuing of the old.
BRONX IN BLUE (not to be confused with BRONX BLUES: The Columbia Recordings) was dropped with little fanfare in early 2006. It is a breathtaking work, made moreso by the simplicity of its concept and the excellent of its execution. BRONX IN BLUES is Dion playing his acoustic guitar and singing blues standards, nothing more, nothing less. These songs, for the most part, have been recorded by Eric Clapton, Foghat, Ten Years After, and numerous boogie bands who equated volume and bombast with feeling. Dion, now in his 60s, quietly steps up and shows them one and all how the job is done. It is a bit of a jolt to realize, listening to Jimmy Reed’s “Baby What You Want Me To Do,” that Reed and Dion were in fact contemporaries, with “Baby” hitting the charts about the time that Dion and the Belmonts were there with “Teenager In Love.” The question presented here, and answered, is how does a white Italian boy from the Bronx take “Baby,” or “Crossroads,” or “Terraplane Blues” and make them his own while remaining true to the original? The man is not slumming or goofing here; his voice is sweet and sad and weary, his guitar playing is impeccable. This is the genuine article, and the results could not be more astounding than if your uncle or brother or grandfather picked up a guitar after Christmas dinner and started channeling Ledbelly right in your living room, all the while sounding exactly like himself.
One gets the feeling, after listening to BLUES IN BRONX, that the cycle begun with Bob Dylan’s self titled release in 1962 has been closed and that everything that after this will be, in a sense superfluous. Listen to this great, great music and hear what I mean.
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Joe Hartlaub is in private law practice, specializing in entertainment law. He is the music editor for SavvyInsider.com
For a complete bio, click here.
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