Dion — Dion DiMucci — turned 87 yesterday. Six years ago Dion released a new set of recordings titled Blues With Friends. The friends ranged from Jeff Beck and Joe Bonamassa to Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen. I thought Dion sounded like an artist in his prime. When I saw that the disc was going to be released in 2020 it served as the occasion for a life-in-lockdown edition of this occasional series. Revised and shortened, I thought it might bear repetition again this year. If you only know Dion from his ’60s hits, I hope you will give at least one or two of the other recordings here a listen.
Dion is one of the greats. His 2020 disc also gave Alan Paul the idea of a retrospective on his career. Paul seized on the recording to profile Dion for the Wall Street Journal in “Dion still sings of America.” Richie Unterberger provides the brief Allmusic overview of Dion’s career here.
After I wrote about Dion in 2024 I heard from the publisher of Dion: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Philosopher: Conversations on Life, Recovery, Faith, and Music, by Dion and Adam Jablin. He sent me a copy. It’s coffee-table book full of terrific photographs illustrating Dion’s life and career. Chapter 10 is titled “Runaround Sue.” Dion has been married to Sue for more than 60 years.
Dion’s love of the blues brought me back to him 20 years ago. Dion gravitates to the blues. Just about everything he touches turns to blues one way or another. Although we may not have followed him much since we were teenagers, the music he has made since then is mostly music for adults.
Paul’s Wall Street Journal profile takes us back to Dion on tour at age 18:
In 1959, Dion was the fourth headliner on tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson (the “Big Bopper”); Dion opted out of the plane ride that crashed and killed the other three because he couldn’t justify the ticket’s cost of $36, the very amount that his parents paid in rent on their Bronx apartment.
He was 18 when he returned home after “the day the music died.” Nobody much wanted to talk about it. “There were no grief counselors in the Bronx in 1959,” says Dion. “I lived by instinct, though a priest did comfort me by saying that relationships don’t end, that my friends were closer to the beatific vision and I should ask them to say a prayer for me. But the first way I dealt with that pain is I became a heroin addict.”
The addiction threw a monkey wrench into Dion’s career. Paul added this Sunday morning element to Dion’s story:
In 1968, shaken by the death by overdose of his fellow teen sensation Frankie Lymon, Dion completely reimagined his life. “I got on my knees and said a prayer, and I haven’t had a drug or a drink since—52 years,” he says. “Unbelievable. I just changed, and the Thomas Aquinas and Merton pieces fit together. It went from my head to my heart. I had a conversion experience, and I saw myself as a child of God instead of a rock star.”
Dion’s “Runaround Sue” was a number 1 hit in 1961. Dion wrote the song with Ernie Maresca. Dion explains:
I recorded “Runaround Sue” with The Del-Satins and black musicians from the Apollo theater, Buddy Lucas on sax, Sticks Evans on drums, Panama Francis on percussion, Teacho Wilshire on piano, Milt Hinton on bass, and Mickey “Guitar” Baker. ~ When Hollywood filmed [it] they use[d] all white actors playing musicians behind me, knowing the film wouldn’t get played in the South at that time [if they they didn’t do that].
Here’s his story, sad but (allegedly) true. He says it’s not about the “Sue” (Susan Butterfield) who became his wife in 1963.
Dion was on his own road. Here is “The Road I’m On (Gloria)” from 1964. Columbia’s album of that title collected Dion’s recordings for the label over the years 1962-1966. It is suffused with the blues. Dion himself wrote “The Road I’m On,” which doesn’t exactly fit the template I’m describing. I place it here just to provide some idea of the range of his work.
Dion also covered Woody Guthrie’s “900 Miles.” Borrowing the title of the classic Chess albums, I think this is the real folk blues.
Even the rock and doo wop songs on The Road I’m On tend toward the blues with Dion’s vocal shadings. Yet he also returns to the blues again and again. Here is Dion’s cover of the Lightnin’ Hopkins number “Katie Mae.” Listening to The Road I’m On in its entirety, I find this among the most striking tracks, but don’t miss “A Sunday Kind of Love” or “You Can’t Catch Me” or “You Can’t Judge a Book By the Cover.” It’s a revelatory collection.
Dion recorded Kickin’ Child with producer Tom Wilson at Columbia in 1965, but Columbia didn’t see fit to release it. It sat in the vault until 2017. It’s a great album, now with the tag The Lost Album 1965. I declared it the best album of 2017. He was depressed when Columbia locked it up. Columbia later released a few of the tracks on Wonder Where I’m Bound in 1969, after Dion had returned to the charts. Dion covered three Dylan songs on Kickin’ Child. The Dylan-influenced “Two Ton Feather” is one of many highlights.
“Abraham, Martin and John” marked the annus horribilis of 1968. The song was written by one Dick Holler. It wasn’t Dion’s idea to record the song, but it was Dion who put the song over in a big way.
Dion looked back on his addictions in “Your Own Back Yard,” written with Tony Fasce and included on Born To Be With You (1975). It’s a message song that has stood the test of time. Here’s his story, sad but true.
I returned to Dion with 2005’s Bronx in Blue. I love the disc from beginning to end. “You Better Watch Yourself” sounds like a follow-up to “Your Own Back Yard.” Dion personalized it with his own additions to the lyrics, but it goes back to Lightin’ Hopkins. Dion has recorded it several times, never better than this version with himself on guitar.
Dion has also recorded a variety of songs professing his faith and The Rock ‘n’ Roll Philosopher is full of similar reflections. The title track of 2007’s Son of Skip James comes at it from a different direction.
Dion paid tribute to the era in which he came of age in 2008’s Heroes: Giants of Early Guitar Rock. Bobby “Crow” Richardson helped out on the lead guitar. This is Dion’s cover of “Come On, Let’s Go” by Ritchie Valens (who was on the plane that went down with Buddy Holly).
Dion released Tank Full of Blues in 2011. I have lifted “Ride’s Blues (for Robert Johnson)” from that set. Dion backs himself on the haunting guitar parts. As I say, this is music for adults.
Blues With Friends was Dion’s 2020 disc. He sent the recording to Bob Dylan and invited him to write the liner notes. Dylan obliged. He commented, among other things: “Dion knows how to sing, and he knows just the right way to craft these songs, these blues songs. He’s got some friends here to help him out and they are true luminaries. But in the end, it’s Dion by himself alone, and that masterful voice of his that will keep you returning to share Blues song with him.” That’s what I’m saying.
Van Morrison and Joe Louis Walker are Dion’s friends on “I Got Nothin’.” Dion and Van trade lines and verses like Sam and Dave. If I have it right, this is a come on in the form of a blues lament.
“Song for Sam Cooke (Here in America)” is at the heart of the 2020 disc. Paul Simon joined him on this one. In one of the interviews for the album Dion observed that it is “a song of brotherhood and about Sam Cooke’s understanding and compassion for me when we did that tour in 1962 with Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland and Little Willie John.” In Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke, Peter Guralnick confirms Dion’s account of Cooke looking out for him on the tour. This is Dion.
Stomping Ground (2021) closely followed. As on Blues With Friends, Dion invited a number of prominent musicians to collaborate with him. I loved his work with Rickie Lee Jones and Wayne Hood on the closing number, Dion’s “I’ve Been Watching You” (written with Mike Aquilina). “I’ve seen miracles all around.”
Girl Friends (2024) is full of collaborations with blues artists such as Susan Tedeschi, Danielle Nicole, and Shemika Copeland. It puts an enormous amount of talent on display. It occurs to me that “Hey Suzy,” with Sue Foley, closes the circle that began with “Runaround Sue.” Dion’s duet with Carlene Carter — first released as a single in the fall of 2023 — stands out from the blues-oriented numbers. American Songwriter greeted the single as an event. In the video below, Robert Johnson is looking over Dion’s shoulder.
Dion is still alive, still married, still working. A companion to the coffee-table book I link to above, The Rock ‘n Roll Philosopher (2025) is his most recent recording. It ranges over his career and adds collaborations with luminaries such as Mark Knopfler. He calls the tracks “an ideal set list.”
Dion wrote “In a Heartbeat of Time” with the late Scott Kempner of the Del-Lords. Wayne Hood accompanies him on guitar in the video below. Dion comments: “Scott’s all-consuming passion for rock ‘n’ roll mixed with his keen sense of the daily struggles of an average guy gave the lyrics a fire that I just loved to sing when we performed….Two guys standing on a street corner, watching life pass them by, one beautiful girl at a time.”
