Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the music scene was inundated by teen idols and swoonable dreamboat singers. It was before the Beatles but after Elvis. And songs were finger-snapping pop hits that the kids could dance to at sock hops and play on little record players in bedrooms across the nation. It was the music of innocence, with a slight rumbling of adolescent angst. And Dion DiMucci was right there in the middle of it all: “The Wanderer,” “Runaround Sue” and “A Teenager In Love.” But ole Dion started infusing some bluesier notes into his songs. You hear it on “Ruby Baby” and “Drip Drop” among the doo-wop harmonies. In 1964, he even covered “Hoochie Coochie Man.” Dion was changing.
By 2020, Dion is now a staple amidst the blues community, releasing albums for many years focusing on blues, R&B, the moodier sides of music. This summer, he gave us a spectacular disc of fourteen songs called Blues With Friends. All originals, all written or co-written by the man himself and featuring some of the most well-respected musical artists in rock & roll: Jeff Beck, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Van Morrison, Billy Gibbons, Sonny Landreth, Brian Setzer, Steven Van Zandt and Joe Bonamassa; add in Patti Scialfa, Samantha Fish, Rory Block and John Hammond and you have one heck of a hootenanny going on.
It didn’t start out with all those stars. Dion had made a record he was really happy with. But then Joe Bonamassa wanted to add some guitar to “Blues Comin’ On.” Then Dion thought, well what if he can get Beck and Gibbons and maybe they could add a little something. And everything started falling into place. As Dion told me, “I couldn’t plan this if I tried.” Yet here it is. His songs go from a swampy “Told You Once In August” to a wiggling “My Baby Loves To Boogie;” “I Got Nothin’” slides through sorrowful blues alongside the perfect duo partner in Morrison while “Hymn To Him” edges into gospel and “Uptown Number 7” dances in rockabilly rhythms. At 81 years old, Dion has become a hot dude once again.
Born in the Bronx to a poor Italian family, Dion was street tough with an engaging voice and wide-open eyes and once he was turned onto the blues, it was like lightning struck him. I spoke to Dion recently about the blues, traveling with Sam Cooke in the Deep South, and being blown away by a little blonde guitarist named Samantha Fish.
You’ve been doing blues for a long time now. What about it turns you on the most?
Well, you know, it’s a natural form of music. It’s a living tradition, it’s a passing down, a passing on, a handing down of American roots music. I always say it’s like a God-given form, it’s the naked cry of the human heart longing to be in union with God; it’s like crying out. It’s a wonderful form of music because you could express any emotion – your joy, your longings, your frustration, your resentments, your hope, your dreams, your excitement – you could express anything within the blues. It’s almost like you don’t have to think because it’s so natural. It’s like in your DNA. And it’s absolutely honest.
Were you more attracted to the bare-bones sound of Robert Johnson and Son House or more the Chicago blues with horns?
Absolutely traditional blues. You know, Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Willie McTell, those guys did something to me. They just did something to me on my insides. Don’t get me wrong, I love Chicago blues. That’s powerful, it’s like traditional blues on steroids. But like I said, that traditional blues had an honesty that’s unbeatable. They weren’t trying to do anything, they just did it. They were right in the middle of it.
When I first heard “Preachin’ Blues” by Robert Johnson, I think it was in late 1961, and I was signed to Columbia Records. I was sitting on a piano bench with Aretha Franklin. She was signed to Columbia Records and I was singing some stuff to her, like “Drip Drop,” one of my earlier songs, which is blues actually, and after we finished sharing a few songs with each other, John Hammond Sr walked in the room, cause he was right across the hall, his office was on the other side of the hall. And he called me into his office, which was filled with albums, all four walls filled with albums. And he took a few out of the bin and he played me Robert Johnson, he played me Leroy Carr and he said, “Dion, you have a flair for the blues.” And I’d never heard this stuff!
I heard Jimmy Reed, yeah, and I heard Lloyd Price, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy.” I might have heard T-Bone Walker and some John Lee Hooker. I heard him do a boogie thing. In fact, that’s why I always was stomping on the floor. I had a hit record called “Ruby Baby” and we would stomp on the floor because that was my idea of copying John Lee Hooker (laughs). But I knew nothing of this rural blues sound until I heard Robert Johnson. So he just put a bunch of albums under my arm and I went home and I was hooked. I’ve never been the same, you know.
But I was never the same when I heard Jimmy Reed and Hank Williams as a kid. That got me on the road and then in the mid-sixties, I was recording a lot of blues with a lot of the guys from the Apollo Theatre, like Big Buddy Lucas, who played the sax solo on “The Wanderer.” And a lot of his buddies came down. They were natural blues players, these guys; they were jazz guys. And they would encourage me. I did songs like “Spoonful.” I did “Spoonful” way before Cream did it or Eric Clapton, you know. I would go down to Greenwich Village in the early sixties and hang out with John Hammond, we’ve been friends for years, and there we were with Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mississippi John Hurt and Fred McDowell. Those guys would play the Gaslight and after the shows they’d be telling stories and holding court, especially Lightnin’ Hopkins.
So I go way back with it. I just never knew, and I know this sounds crazy, but I never knew that this music was the center of my being, so to speak. It was like my DNA, like everything I did came out of this music, no matter what I did. I think it gave me a way to express myself and communicate any song I sang. I don’t know, maybe if I had played out when I was a kid, if I’d got a band, you know, but I was seventeen years old and I got a hit record and I got hooked on hit records. But if I had to get a band and play, I probably would have ended up where I am right now; I would have discovered the center of myself, you know what I’m saying.
You just took a longer route
Yeah, I took a good route in a lot of ways to support myself, which was important because my mother and father were always arguing about the $40 a month rent. So that was important to me and I had a drive to do something great. Like, I always wanted to do something really good, like put a good song together, take people on a trip. I just had that drive cause when I heard Jimmy Reed and he did “Baby What You Want Me To” and I heard Hank Williams sing “Honky Tonk Blues,” I went on a trip that transcended anything anybody could tell me. It went into my being and it made a left and a right and into my soul. I was like, I GOT to be part of this! It changed me and I’m still like that. I haven’t changed since that happened to me.
The other thing that was kind of like a fringe benefit, my parents were always arguing, because my father never had a real job, you know. He was one of those guys who grew old but he didn’t grow up. I lived in a home like that. So when I discovered songwriting, I could actually resolve conflict within a song. I could start out the song by saying, “Here I am girl, standing in the rain, going round inside a hurricane, you don’t know how a good man feels, I feel like my mind ain’t got no driving wheel, I looked here and I looked there, there’s no door to get out of here,” or whatever; and then at the end I could just turn it around and say, “Everybody’s got to make a change sometime, my heart is turned towards the sunshine.” [“Ride With You”] And I take a deep breath and go, “Aw, everything is alright.” (laughs) I could actually resolve conflict within a three-minute song and that was a little part of salvation for me.
You mentioned “Spoonful.” When you were singing that, did people get it?
I have no idea (laughs). Sometimes I didn’t even know what I was singing about. When I first heard Hank Williams sing “Honky Tonk Blues” or “Jambalaya,” I kid you not, Leslie, I did not know what honky tonk meant. I came from an Italian neighborhood in the Bronx and I had no idea what honky tonk meant, I had no idea what jambalaya meant. But when I bought the records and I sang, “Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh, me gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou,” I didn’t know what that meant. But I knew it felt good coming out of my mouth. It felt great. I just sang the words and I learned the song. In fact, I knew that song when I was eleven years old, twelve years old, and had no idea. I was in a contest at a Paul Whiteman show and I was twelve years old and I sang “Jambalaya.” I had no idea what it meant. Later on I found out that there’s a recipe and you could actually make it; it was something to eat! (laughs).
So what I’m saying is, some of that stuff just made me feel good. I kind of had an overall idea of what I was singing about. I’m sure I did. Like “Spoonful,” I don’t know, I never went asking people. It’s amazing cause I was up at Sirius Radio recently, I’d say within the last eight months, just before the shutdown, and Peter Townshend walked past the studio, I was doing an interview, and he barged in and he said, “Dion, I always wanted to tell you that Roger and I, we don’t know how you made that record, ‘Spoonful.’ We think that’s one of the greatest records we’ve ever heard. I want to know how you made that record.” So I wrote him an email and I told him I recorded it with my Byrdland Gibson guitar and I had tremolo on it. I’m not one of those guys who knows what kind of amp I used or anything but I know I had the Byrdland. It was a guitar I loved and I love tremolo and the guys from the Apollo Theatre said, “We’ll follow you, just do it.” I played it for them and that’s how we did it. They encouraged me to let it go and I did. They were all musicians from the Apollo Theatre – Sticks Evans on drums, I had two drummers, Panama Francis, Milt Hinton on bass, Teacho Wiltshire on piano, Mickey Baker on guitar; all those guys. I don’t know, I just liked the song and sang it. You kind of get the feel of it just singing about it.
I understand that you already had these songs written for Blues With Friends before all these superstar guys came in to play.
Oh yeah, Leslie, and to be honest with you, here’s the way it goes, here’s the story. I was telling my wife even at dinner last night, I couldn’t plan this if I tried. I was writing songs. I accumulated about twelve of them – there are two songs on there that I have recorded before and I never liked where they lived so I wanted to do them again – but I had these fourteen songs, I had a couple months off and I thought, let me go in and cut them. So I went into a studio down the street, Wayne Hood has a little studio, I went in and I knocked them out in three days. He said, “Do them like you sing them at home.” I have a little Martin guitar and it just bled all over the vocal mic but I sang all fourteen songs. Within three days, I had them. Then I had a drummer and bass player come in and we just made tracks, you know. We put them together the way I wanted them.
So Joe Bonamassa comes over to the house one day, cause his manager lives five houses away, and he’s a friend and he hears “Blues Comin’ On” and he says, “I want to play on that.” Well Leslie, I kid you not, when he played on it, what went through my head, I can’t even tell you. It was like I knew I could write a song, I knew I could sing a song, I knew I could make a great record. But I could not even dream, think or imagine what Joe Bonamassa was about to infuse the song with. I never thought of a slide guitar, I didn’t hear anything like that. So you get a great artist to infuse what he’s hearing on your song and it just shows you how limited you are. I thought, oh my God, this is really fun to get a great artist to contribute something to a song you wrote that is not even on your radar! So I started thinking like that.
I had a ballad and I thought, you know, this would be great if Jeff Beck would play on this because he’s the only guitar player that can make me cry. This ballad, he could do this. And when Jeff Beck said yes, he said, “I want to put it on my new album, Dion.” I said, “Be my guest.” And then he must have talked to Van Morrison cause Van Morrison called me and I said, “Why don’t you play sax on this song I have, ‘Way Down,’” but he said, “No, I’d rather sing something with you.” So we went in and did “I Got Nothin.’” I always say when you’ve got Van Morrison singing with you, I got nothing is more than enough (laughs).
But that’s how it went. Then I had this song, “Bam Bang Boom,” like it was a natural thing for me to think Billy Gibbons. This is a strike, right down his alley. This is like John Lee Hooker on steroids here and Billy knocked it out in a couple of days. Stevie Van Zandt, when I was in New York, we went into his studio and actually brought John Hammond in who played on a couple of things and it just went like that. I have this song, “I Got The Cure,” and I’m listening to it and my mind goes to one place: If I could get Sonny Landreth to play on this, I’d be in Heaven. And he says yes! It was incredible. I was like riding a wave. I had “Uptown Number 7” and I said, who could play on this? It’s a little bit rockabilly kind of blues, let me see if Brian Setzer could do something. It just went like that. It was crazy.
Samantha Fish kills it on “What If I Told You.” Compared to all the other guys on the record, she’s like the new kid on the block.
She is freaking awesome. She knocks me out. She just surprised me on that song. She calls me up and she says, “Dion, I’m putting a northern Mississippi rhythm track on it for you.” And I say okay, like I know what I’m talking about (laughs). And then she says, “I’m going to play on top of that.” When she sent it to me, because I couldn’t get to New Orleans so she went into the studio, and when she sent it to me, the only thing I could think of is, Oh my God, if I put that much emotion or passion into anything, I wouldn’t be able to walk for six weeks! (laughs) And the only thing I didn’t like about it is that it ended. I didn’t want the song to end. When it ends, I was like, why did I stop it! Why aren’t there like eight solos at the end! You know, in the heart of expressing something, she goes deeper and deeper into it and it’s just thrilling to hear it. I had a great track, I thought I wrote a great song, I loved the line, “I know you’re on fire but I believe I’m not your flame.” I thought, that’s a good line, I’m wondering why nobody ever thought of that. But she made it come alive. I just can’t believe that a little blonde like her could play like that.
“Song For Sam Cooke” has a special meaning for you
You know, when I came around, I was traveling with Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. The music had no color. It didn’t have an age. It was the songs you cared about. I learned that from Sam Cooke and that’s why I wanted to put that song on there. If race matters to you, you’re a racist. It didn’t matter to us. It was like eye color or a shoe color, it didn’t matter. I traveled with Sam Cooke for a couple of months and he was a very refined, intelligent guy, you know, well-educated, different, very stately. I was from the Bronx, I was rough around the edges. I quit high school, I was from the streets. He was a preacher’s kid. I saw him in the south. I wasn’t aware of all those Jim Crow laws so I saw him in some ugly situations and I’d say, “Sam, why don’t you punch that guy’s lights out.” And he’d say, “Dion, I wouldn’t lower myself to think like that.” When a guy called him a name or something, he’d say, “That’s a peculiar way to become a man.” I started listening to him cause he was different. I observed him up close for weeks on end and I saw the way he responded to these different situations. In fact, he brought me to a club to see James Brown & The Flames and he defended ME because there were people like, “What are you doing with this white kid?” (laughs)
And then it dawned on me why he never got ruffled and he never got ugly. It dawned on me after three weeks that this guy was the smartest guy in the room. He wasn’t afraid to talk about God and he wanted to change the world and the way he did it was through his music, through his writing, through his performing. But most of all, I can tell you as an eyewitness, the way he did it the most was through brotherhood and friendship and understanding. And that’s what Paul Simon and I agreed on when I gave the song to him. He said, “You know, this is not so much about racism as it is about brotherhood and friendship and understanding and compassion.” He was living the gospel, Sam was. And that’s what the song is about and Paul tried to capture some of that, give it that feel. And he’s great when it comes to like window dressing or just concept of sounds, making something sublime. He can do it.
You know, I had that song in the drawer and I forgot about it. But then I saw that movie Green Book last year, actually I saw it twice, and I told my wife, “Man, that’s almost like the song I wrote. I wish I had the song done, they could have used it maybe in some way.” So I took it out of the drawer and I dusted it off and I decided to do it. I went up the street, my friend David Niles has a soundstage up here, and he rolled the camera and I sang it live right to the camera. So we have a video of it. I did it in one take. But Sam Cooke, I miss him, he was quite a guy. I learned a lot from him.
Considering what “Told You Once In August” seems to be about, you kept your vocals more under control and I was wondering why you went in that direction instead of going all Howlin’ Wolf on it.
You know, I’m like that. To be honest, I don’t get all that. I think it’s enough to just say it like I’m hurt. I don’t have to like overdo it. I think I’m an expressionist. Like, when I was a kid, my father would bring me down to the Museum Of Modern Art and maybe he’d show me like a Dali thing. Then he would show me a Van Gogh where Van Gogh didn’t even want to use a brush, he would get the tubes of paint and squeeze them on the canvas. He would express it. My father would say, “One guy produces it and one guy expresses it.” Like the Bee Gees and Bob Dylan. So I feel like I’m an expressionist. My songs are produced but not slick. I want them to be honest with the feel and I don’t have to have false expression. I like to be honest and tell the story from my heart.
I did that in one take with a little Cordoba guitar that somebody gave me. It’s a six-string and I think it’s tuned in G, I’m not sure, but it’s tuned in a different key and I wrote that song, “Told You Once In August,” because it was inside that little Cordoba guitar. You know, when I picked it up I felt like I was in Appalachia. So I started playing it and that’s how the song came about, because of that guitar. When I sent that track to Rory Block, I can’t remember what she kept telling me but she said it was haunting, spooky. She tried to capture that in her singing and stuff. I sent it to her because I’ve always been a fan of Rory Block and there are a few CDs that I have where she has a song with no words. She just has sounds, like she howls through the song. So I sent it to her and said, “Rory, you don’t have to do any words or anything. I can’t remember the song but I heard you do some stuff where you just do sounds. I want you to do some of that on here. I hear your voice on it.” So that’s what she did. She did what she heard.
Again, Leslie, when you give a song to an artist, they’re going to do what they hear. I don’t know if you know this but she played a bass on that song. It’s hard to hear. I don’t hear it, maybe you don’t hear it, but if you take it out, you know it’s missing. Does that make sense? But I think you can hear the bass that she plays like later on in the song. I don’t know what she did but what I’m trying to say is if you give a song to a person like that, they don’t take it lightly. She kind of lived with it and got inside it and started doing stuff to it. Like, I was going to leave it alone. I thought it was so good just me and the Cordoba. But then I thought, you know you could have a few other people on the porch with you playing (laughs). So I asked John Hammond. I never asked Rory Block to play slide but she played slide on top of John Hammond. I put one on the left and one on the right. They are both playing slide and she is singing and playing bass also. It’s crazy but I love that song. It’s a little different, like you need a required taste for it (laughs). It’s like “Spoonful,” like that one chord. I always thought, to me, the beauty of rock & roll is repetition. So that is what that song is.
Did any of these people get to be in the studio with you or was it all digital files back and forth?
It was half and half. Some people couldn’t get away so I sent them a track and they did something in their home studio. A lot of them were in the studio with me. But I’ll tell you one thing, I really didn’t tell anybody to do anything. I might have given them an idea. I might have said, “Hey, I want you to sing on this.” But they gave me what they heard, not what I heard, and that to me is the beauty of the whole album. I’m like, every one of these songs I was surprised.
I’ll give you an example: I had this song “Hymn To Him” and I said, I’m going to give this to Amy Grant. I like her voice, she has like a sweet soulful voice, and it’s kind of a gospel tune. She could really make sense of this thing. But I couldn’t get it to her. I didn’t know where to find her. I had Vince Gill’s phone but he’s not that techy so I thought Patti Scialfa, there’s a Jersey soul girl, I’m going to send it to her. So I sent it to Patti and she heard it and she called me back and said, “Dion, I love this song. I’m so glad you asked me.” And I thought, you know, it happens the right way, always. And I’m thinking she’s going to do some harmonies with me, she’s going to maybe echo some lines that I sang, but she starts stacking all these vocals that she like captures like the wind of the Holy Spirit. Then she calls me one day and she says, “Dion, do you mind if Bruce plays a solo on it? He really likes it.” I said, “I don’t know, Patti, do I have to pay him?” (laughs) I was joking but he came in and it was a big surprise. Leslie, I can’t tell you that I arranged it all. I did not. I sent them finished tracks. It was wonderful cause I never experienced anything like that. Each track was so much fun. I mean, I wasn’t stressed at all. Every time I did a song, it was thrilling to me. It was like they took me on a trip and it’s my song (laughs).
How long of a time period are we talking about for all this to come together?
I kid you not, it had to be four months. Then when I finished, I didn’t have any tunes left to send out, and I thought, I should get somebody to write something about it and I thought of Dylan, cause a lot of people don’t know that Bob Dylan is a great blues singer. To me, he is a great blues singer. Just listen to “Someday Baby” and you can hear it. I know he won a Nobel Prize and he’s the greatest songwriter of the 20th century and beyond but a lot of people don’t know that he’s a great blues singer. They wouldn’t categorize him like that but I would.
In regards to “Hymn To Him,” you had recorded that for a gospel album. What, to you, makes gospel and blues connect?
Well, like I said, I would define it as the naked cry of the human heart longing to be in union with God. And to me, a lot of scripture, you read the psalms, you read scripture, people are always crying out to God to be whole, to be healed, to be at peace, some kind of purpose or be at home. And to me, when I play the blues, what attracts me to it, it’s almost like being home. Like, I’m right where I belong. Like BB King said, “It feels so good to sing about something so bad.”
You met Samantha Fish on a Blues Cruise. What are those like?
I used to go just for the fun of it, not as an artist booked on it. I’d just go on and I’d bring my guitar and I’d sit down in the auditorium with Debbie Davies and we’d do an hour and a half show. I’d tell stories and sing songs. It’s home and they didn’t even pay me. That’s where I saw Samantha Fish for the first time and that’s where I heard her and a lot of guys I met on that Cruise that I wasn’t even aware of, like Chris Cain. I didn’t know who he was. I was like, wow, this guy could be king of the world and then somebody told me doesn’t leave Bakersfield. I don’t know. But there are some great artists and it’s a lot of fun. And they did “Runaround Sue” and “The Wanderer” and “Ruby Baby” and all my hit records. They called them out, they wanted to hear them, so it’s totally compatible. Then on Sunday morning they have the gospel show and I’ll go there and I’ll sing some gospel blues stuff. It’s not mutually exclusive. It’s totally compatible with each other, like part of the mosaic.
I don’t know if you know this story but Roy Weisman lives down the street, Joe Bonamassa’s manager, and I called him just to get some direction. I said, “Roy, I have an album, I just finished it and Bob Dylan wrote the liner notes and I think it’s pretty good. I have Sonny Landreth on it and Billy Gibbons, Van Morrison and Joe Bonamassa played on a track.” And he said, “He did?” He didn’t even know it. So he says to bring it over. So I walk over to his house, I give him the album, and this is about a month before the pandemic, and he calls me back that night and he says to me, “Dion, I’m starting a blues label and you are going to be the first CD on it. What do you think of that? You want to do that with me?” I said sure, why not. The guy is a genius, he knows his stuff. I see how Joe and him work together and they do great work together. So he started a blues label and I’m the first CD on it. That’s the way it came about. It was just crazy. Like, I rode this wave right into a new blues label (laughs). Again, this album is a gift to me.
Portraits by David Godlis
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