Paul Zollo

His rock and roll influence is so prominent that he and Bob Dylan were the only two pop artists chosen by The Beatles to be featured on the iconic cover of Sgt. Pepper. And like Dylan he’s both absorbed and shaped every facet of popular music, from folk and blues through rock, gospel and beyond. Had the pages of history turned slightly differently, he might not have been with us today. Invited by the Big Bopper to get on the doomed plane from Iowa to Chicago along with Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, he gave his seat instead to Ritchie Valens. All three were lost; Dion’s still with us.

“The price of splitting the cost of the plane was $36,” he said during a recent interview at his lower Manhattan apartment, directly across the street from the Stock Exchange. “Which back then, in 1959, was a lot of money. It was what my mother paid in rent in the Bronx. And Ritchie Valens-a good kid, from the L.A. barrio-couldn’t afford the ticket. So I gave him mine.” It was a tragedy memorialized as “the day that music died.” Yet Dion’s music prevailed, and extended from his early 1950s hits with Dion & The Belmonts such as “Teenager In Love” to solo hits “The Wanderer” and “Runaround Sue” to his 1968 singer/songwriter classic “Abraham, Martin & John” through a chain of gospel records and up to the present with a new album of rock standards (Heroes-Giants of Early Guitar Rock), which features many classics by his friends, and also a new rendition of “The Wanderer” that his wife insisted he include.

The son of a vaudeville star who grew up in the Bronx, Dion DiMucci often haunted the vast dark backstages of theaters where his dad would perform. He taught himself guitar at 10, absorbed every note and every word Hank Williams ever wrote, and was on Crotona Avenue daily, teaching his pals to harmonize doo-wop. He loved it all-country, blues, gospel, standards-and it all came together in the band he assembled. He chose the name Dion & The Belmonts for nearby Belmont Street, and because “it sounded better than Dion & The Crotonas.” Signed to Mohawk Records, it was Dion’s bluesy tenor tones piercing through the heart of his records which made them hits, as it did with “Teenager In Love,” written by Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman, which went to the top of the charts.

But Dion and the Belmonts soon disbanded, making him one of the first rock stars ever to go solo after jettisoning a famous band. His first No. 1 hit, “Runaround Sue,” written with Ernie Maresca, emerged from a street-corner jam. “We were partying in a schoolyard,” he recalled. “We were jamming, hitting tops of boxes. I gave everyone parts like the horn parts we’d hear in the Apollo Theater. It came from that, though the girl’s name wasn’t actually Sue. It was about a girl who loved to be worshipped but as soon as you want a commitment and express your love for her, she’s gone.” He also wrote “The Wanderer” with Maresca (although, unlike Elvis, who got his name on songs he didn’t write, Dion didn’t get writer’s credit on ones he did). It’s a song, similar to his friend Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The U.S.A.” that became a big hit despite the darkness of a message most people missed. “It’s a sad song,” Dion said. “Springsteen was the only guy who accurately expressed what it’s about. It’s ‘I’m as happy as a clown with my two fists of iron, but I’m going nowhere.’ In the ‘50s, you didn’t get that dark.”

Dion, who’d been to the depths of drug-addicted darkness himself, emerged whole with renewed faith in 1968, when he recorded the song “Abraham, Martin & John,” co-written with Dick Holler. Encapsulating so much of the unspoken heartbreak America was feeling then, in the wake of recent assassinations, it introduced yet another side of this artist to the mainstream public, many of whom never knew of his rock roots. But in time, all the Dions we knew merged into one, and unlike so many of his peers, he prevailed. His new album rocks with his distinctive fusion of streetwise soul and rebel spirit that has always infused his music. “You make me feel good,” he said humbly, when reminded of his enduring eminence, and the abiding influence his music has had on so many who came in his wake, from Simon and Springsteen through Bowie, Elvis Costello and Bono.

But perhaps the most eloquent of all in explaining the true significance of Dion’s songs and singing was Lou Reed, who, while inducting him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, said: “And then there was Dion…whose voice was unlike any other. Dion could do all the turns, stretch those syllables so effortlessly, soar so high he could reach the sky and dance there among the stars forever. What a voice that had absorbed and transmogrified all these influences into his own soul, as the wine turns into blood, a voice that stood on its own, remarkably and unmistakably from New York. Bronx Soul. It was the kind of voice you never forget. Over the years that voice has stayed with me, as it has, I’m sure, stayed with you. And whenever I hear it I’m flooded with memories of what once was and what could be.”