Fine Art Magazine 44th Anniversary special feature on Dion

SUNSTORM/FINE ART MAGAZINE 44th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • DION’S BROADWAY PLAY • RUSSELL BANKS’ OPERA • ITA BULLARD’S MOVIE • RONNIE WOOD’S HANDS OF STONES • SALLINGER’S BRIDGE SONG

44th Anniversary Edition • 2019

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“If you told me as a young man that one day my journey from The Bronx to the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame would become a musical, I would not have believed you.

It’s only 12 miles from Belmont Avenue to Broadway.

It shouldn’t have taken this long!”

— DION

Dion with his Heroes of Rock and Roll guiltar, Story on Page 155.

Honeymoon in Da Bronx

Joe Artuso, so hospitable at his bakery in Belmont

The Excellents, of “Coney Island Baby” fame opened for the Belmonts at the Westchester Broadway Theater

Riggi entertains on a Saturday night at Pasquale’s Rigoletto on Arthur Avenue. A great evening of food, family and fun. As she always says, “You’re going to leave happier than when you came in.”

And she is so right about that.

The Honeymooners, Joe Artuso, sister Cathy Angelo D'Aleo, Warren Gradus and Dan Elliott (who recently passed away) headlined the show.

What a thrill to see and meet Angelo, who was an original member of Dion and The Belmonts.

That was then - this is now - the site of the original Woodstock has been revamped into a beautiful and bucolic place housing a concert hall, museum and arts and crafts tents

Dion and Ronnie Spector Concert at the site of the original Woodstock. Need we say more? An additonal treat was marveling at Liberty DeVitto’s stellar drumming in Ronnie’s great band.

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Jim Moran has been the guitar man for Richie Cannata’s Bitter End Monday Night Jam band for many years. He is truly a top notch player and one of the great talents along with Benny Harrison, George Panos, Kevin Brigande and Frosty Lawson who comproise the core of the group. Musicians and singers come from all over the world to perform with this band.

Bronxite Ace Frehley ushered the end of a very musical week with his band at the Upstate Concert Hall, Clifton Park

Live at Westbury with Arno Hecht

DION’S LIFE STORY HEADS TO BROADWAY

“I don’t know what the future holds, but I know I am in the hands of the one who holds the future.”

In Belmont, The Bronx’s Little Italy, things happen fast.

Really fast. I can tell you from personal experience. In the fall of 1970, for our Bronx Community College Journalism class, my collaborator, Freddie Bruce Martuscelli and I sat down in the office of the Valentine Theater to write the “Arthur Avenue Story” for Professor Bernard Weinraub, of late a distinguished playwright and former NY Times Hollywood editor. He gave us both A’s, praising our capture of the style of the “new journalism.” He said to send it off to “The Atlantic” or “Ramparts” or “The New Yorker” — “But leave out the part about Dion – it’s too hot.”

But can anything about Dion DiMucci be “too hot”? “ “If you told me as a young man that one day my journey from The Bronx to the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame would become a musical, I would not have believed you.

It’s only 12 miles from Belmont Avenue to Broadway.

It shouldn’t have taken this long!”

So it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise to see Dion heading to Broadway when you understand that he started out early on the boards. In elementary school he did the scenery for the cowboy play — horses, wagons, spliced the paper together for the backgrounds — but never really got into it seriously because he “Got the guitar and just wanted to learn Hank Williams songs.” His artistic proclivities remained intact over the years producing a nice collection of original paintings. “My father used to buy all these art books — Chagall, Renoir, Monet, Gauguin, Modigliani— big books with a lot of their paintings,” Dion recalls, adding, “When I found music — it was like a handle to life to me.”

He also started early as a writer, penning a composition in grade school in response to hearing that an Italian explorer on a Spanish ship discovered America. No he didn’t noted the lad. “Columbus did not discover this land. He did.” Years later, those words were the introduction to one of his greatest songs, “Golden Sun Silver

Moon” which is available on his “Seasons” collection and has one of the best guitar solos you are ever gonna hear, and a horn section! He continues, “Who do you think taught birds to fly? Painted rainbows on the sky? Who do you think made you and I? He did.”

That Bronx Soul that permeated Dion’s doo-wop and rock and roll hits reached a pinnacle with the gospel records. Those cuts kept rock and roll alive in the 80s, and featured some of the best players around to go with Dion’s anointed writing and melodies. Dion has to be the only one alive who would be equally comfortable headlining a Blues Cruise or a Malt Shop Cruise or a Gospel Cruise — and he would pull them in from all over because there’s redemption in his blues and harmony in his gospel. This is the attraction of Dion

Anthony Benedetto (Tony Bennett) who had just scored a big hit with Hank Williams “Cold, Cold Heart” with a young Dion whose early love for Hank (and the blues) was a primary force in his musical evolution and growth.

“The world was my appetizer.”

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“Center of My Life” from the Dion songbook

to his millions of fans. In the 50s he was a Teenage Idol as well as The King of The New York Streets. He sums it up in his “Son of Skip James” song. While professing that he “wants to be more like Jesus” at the onset, he concludes by telling his listeners, “I’m a lover not a fighter, but I’ll kick your ass.” A street preacher with street creds, that’s our man and it isn’t just me raving about him.

Read the Dylan quotes, and Springsteen’s.

For 60 plus years Dion has been selling out shows and except for a couple of issues with management in the early 60s who wanted to turn him into a supper club star a la Bobby Darin, he never compromised his rock and roll heart.

His success in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s and up to today is virtually unparalleled in show business. He is living the prophesy of Danny and The Juniors – “Rock and Roll will always be.”

Now there’s a Broadway play in the works about his life story and it is sure to be an important piece of American musical theater.

My wish is that Dion would play himself — even as a 12 year-old. How cool would that be? I mean, Tom Hanks wasn’t bad in “Big.” See the picture of the kid holding his own with Tony Bennett on the previous page? He wasn’t joking and while he can be hilarious on stage, he is a serious, deep-thinking fullgrown spiritual man. Full of compassion and love but with an attitude, best summed up in these two words — “YO! HALLELUJAH — from his “Bronx Poem” on the third album of his marvelous trilogy, “Tank Full of Blues.”

(Ed. note: The fourth album of that trilogy, “Heroes of Rock and Roll” is a must-have collection with DVD and features a guitarist called The Crow who complements Dion’s renditions of Carl Perkins, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Gene Vincent, Ricky Nelson et al with perfect guitar parts on the tube amps and vintage guitars of the 50s). Not to forget Buddy Holly.

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“You can get into rock and roll because you’re lonely, or angry. There are a lot of things that kick it off. But when you get over that, you can find that rock and roll at its best is a universal communications tool that can express your thoughts or perceptions world wide.”

Four young men in a room backstage, All with gold records, Their music was the rage.

Four young men in a backstage room, Only one would see tomorrow afternoon.

By now you all know the story of Dion not buying that $36 plane ticket because that was a month’s rent that always caused a quarrel between his parents growing up.

“Buddy Holly was 22, I was 19. He was learning how to fly, I was learning how to hail a cab. He was a legend, a pioneer, a friend.

He helped start all of this,” (as in Rock n Roll). “They didn’t have grief counseling in the Bronx in those days. I tried to avoid the pain, confusion and frustration in so many ways — drink, drugs. I think I did those guys

proud,” he adds. “Sometimes writing gives your heart a little bit of peace.”

After that flurry of success with “The Wanderer” and “Run Around Sue” and being told by Little Richard’s mother that his version of “Ruby Baby” was alright in her book and by Howling Wolf that his guitar playing was admirable, Dion took a hiatus from the pop music world to focus on his love of the blues.

At the Newport Jazz Festival in 1964 he met Sun House, Mississippi John Hurt and the aforementioned Skip James, who had a profound influence on him. “Skip was awesome — like he was from outer space the way he sang. They used to pay him to stop singing because his music was so depressing. His guitar was tuned to an E minor and his melodies were so haunting. I think sometimes the blues makes you sing about things so that some call it the ‘devil’s music.’ But I think it’s redemptive. It’s kind

Steven Van Zant, Dion, 92nd Street Y

Dion’s painting of Robert Johnson

of an insanity going through life without knowing God. You’re sputtering along on six cylinders with a fourth dimension missing.

Robert Johnson did not sell his soul to the devil. I come against that folk lore myth. I explored the spiritual side of ‘Crossroads.’ He went down there, got on his knees and asked God to ‘Save me please.’

“Blues,” continues Dion, “is the naked cry of the human heart apart from God, like somebody longing to be home. It’s really hard to put into words what the real blues is and what it isn’t … you’re not studiously trying to cop something, you’re not listening to a Robert Johnson record and trying to sound like it, you are merely playing the most natural music for you. You get inside a song and capture the passion.

The blues could be retitled ‘The Psalms.’ It’s all about brokenness, so I ask myself, ‘Why am I singing the blues? I’m not depressed,’ but there’s a place in all of us longing continuously to be closer to God.” For Dion, it reached an early culmination in “The Wanderer.” A pure ladies man with two fists of iron, he was a far cry from the lonely teenager of only a year or two before.

“We’re all wanderers in a sense, we’re all looking for home, whether we know it or not. Life works itself out in relationships.

Steven met Dion while he was on tour in Las Vegas as guitarist with the Dovels (“Bristol Stomp”) in 1973 and heard Dion finger-picking Robert Johnson at soundcheck. while he was up in the rafters getting a tour of the arena. They have been friends ever since.

In that sense, I’m the Wanderer. I was barreling my way through, trying to make sense of it. There were guys and girls in my neighborhood who were a little bit bigger than life. I was a troubled kid, a delinquent kicked out of seven high schools, but I really wasn’t like that inside. You had to do that in my neighborhood. When you’re born in the Bronx and you walk down the street, you had to know everything.”

But when he heard Hank Williams singing “Honky Tonk Blues” and “Jambalaya” something was awakened in the young lad.

“I didn’t know what it was about that music.

Sausage bread — I knew what that was. I fell in love with Hank, started collecting his records. The more my parents argued, the more I would go to my room and get better on the guitar. With a three minute song, I found I could solve a lot of problems.”

The Bronx’s Little Italy, where Dion grew up and where he regularly returns, is a place right out of a movie. I was fortunate to have experienced it up close and personal, hence my special affinity for Dion. He still is that street poet with an attitude who wakes up hungry every day. It will be great to see the heart and soul of a real Bronx voice up there on the Great White Way. Dion, with

the chops and the attitude, filtered black music through an Italian neighborhood and invented something. Nobody sings like Dion.

Nobody tells it like it is like Dion. Nobody has a gift like Dion and is so willing to share it with the world. He is loved and respected everywhere. His greatest admirers are the biggest stars in their fields. On The Beatles Sergeant Pepper’s album, only two American singers were featured in the collage that served as the artwork for the front cover: Dion and Dylan. He could have stopped right there with a position secure in the annals of music history, but Dion still wakes up hungry. And not just for sausage bread.

At Steven Van Zandt produced “Once Upon A Dream” Young Rascals stage show, Portchester, NY, 2012, with a young Dion on the cover of Bronx Fine Art. Fine Art Magazine • Autumn 2019 • 159

Photo January 24: Eagles Ballroom, Kenosha, Wisconsin; In 1959, at the start of the Winter Dance Party Tour, the three headliners – Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and Dion all bought Leo Fender’s new Stratocsters and before shows would turn the amps up to 11 and see who could rock the loudest. Waylon Jennings is on the left playing bass guitar, Carlo and Freddie singing with Dion. Carlo played drums for Buddy Holly who had a pick up band for this tour. The Crickets sat this one out..

Dion and The Belmonts outside Dion’s house on E. 183rd Street, The Bronx

Outside the 92nd Y, a damp and cold spring night in New York City I was waiting for my young, guitar-slinging friend Alex Marklund to meet me. I wanted to keep the cultural continuum going, so I bought him a ticket to see a two man show with Dion and Little Steven. A passerby asked me who was performing and I said Dion and she responded, “Oh yeah, Dion and the Belmonts.” No getting around it. Dion and the Belmonts are inextricably linked in musical history and Bronx lore. When they broke up, it wasn’t quite the shock of the Dodgers and Giants leaving New York, but it was up there with the Martin and Lewis split and the DiMaggio/Monroe divorce. They both landed on their feet with the Belmonts scoring a couple of hits with “Come On Little Angel” and “Tell Me Why” with the great Carlo Mastrangelo (who could sing “with one lip tied behind his back,” according to Dion) switching from bass to lead vocals ably backed with the operatic voice of Angelo D’Aleo and the harmonic genius of Freddie Milano. Dion hit with “Runaround Sue”, “The Wanderer”, “Ruby Baby” and “Love Came To Me” with the Del Satins led by Stan Zizka handling the backing vocals, signing a $500,000 guaranteed recording contract from CBS, giving it up after two years to play the blues with up and comers John Hammond and Bonnie Raitt. Drugaddled, he hit the club and festival circuit where he met some of the greats, like Skip James. But for about five or six years, Dion wandered in obscurity, saved by the Lord and “Abraham, Martin and John” in 1968. This brought him a major hit record, yet you could still catch him at small clubs like the Bitter End and even smaller ones like Kenny’s Castaways where there could be ten or fifteen people drinking and semi-watching. Then in 1972, Dion finally 160 • Fine Art Magazine • Autumn 2019

“It humbled me to sing with these guys,” Dion.

gave in to Richard Nader’s pleas and joined the Belmonts for a one-off show at Madison Square Garden. The very next weekend, Elvis came to town. I was at both shows and can honestly tell you that the din of the crowd for Dion and the Belmonts, on an audible level to these ears, far surpassed that of Elvis’s fans. After that great triumph, Dion teamed up with Phil Spector for his next recording, even released a single with Cher and they both went nowhere. He put a trio of albums out in the 70s – “Streetheart” (1976), “Return of the Wanderer” (1978) and “Fire in the Night” (1979) and continued to play live shows, sometimes solo, sometimes with a band. A memorable jam with the great Mike Bloomfield on guitar and Mark Naftalin on piano (both Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band) is worth searching out on youtube. Seemingly fading out of the scene, Dion turned to gospel and came out of the box with a Grammy-nominated LP called “Inside Job” which sold more than his previous seven albums combined. His message, steeped in his own life story along with scriptural quotes and references launched him on a run which culminated in 1987 when he returned to his roots, headlining WCBS Radio’s 15th Anniversary concert at Radio City Music Hall.

Released as “Dion and Friends,” a double CD featuring Carlo, Jimmy Vivino, Little Steven, Felix Cavaliere and the Del Satins, it was peppered with Dion’s good-natured banter and interplay with former Belmont Mastrangelo. Just the other day, I had sone musical folks visiting to check out my studio. Somehow the name “Dion” came up as we were tuning. “Oh yeah,” said one of the guests, a respected folksinger in the Joan Baez mold – “Dion and the Belmonts.”

–VICTOR FORBES

DION QU0TE – If you told me as a young man that one day my journey from The Bronx to the Rock ’n’ Rock Hall of Fame would become a musical, I would

Waiting for the downtown train that runs from the Bronx to Manhattan

“What a treasure, a legendary musical landmark!!!!”

Hottest couple in the neighborhood

Album cover in 1970

I

By KEVIN FREST

was standing on a corner in Gary, Indiana waiting for the school bus to take me to my eighth grade class when I heard “The Wanderer” on my transistor radio…I immediately loved the beat but the lyrics made a deep impression. I vowed to my teen age self that I was getting out of dirty gray Gary Indiana and become a wander too.

That is one of my earliest memories of Dion and the power of music to inspire I was brought back to that youthful time again watching the life story of DION in “The Wanderer” the new Musical based on the Life of Dion DiMucci in workshop at the Baryshnikov Art Center in Manhattan.

Written by Charles Messina and masterfully directed by Kenneth Ferrone this story takes us on a ride to The Bronx of the 50’s. The music, clothes, hair and staging create a magical feel of the era. With cameos by The Big Bopper, Richie Valens and Buddy Holly, we are treated to a lively recreation of the wonderful innocence and sweetness in the music of the era. But also the real world of 1950’s Bronx.

King of the New York Streets at the Bronx Zoo, 1957. “I did my best pose.”photo by Susan.

Pasquale DiMucci: “My Father was my Hero.”

“The Wanderer” is also a story of redemption. We learn about the years of drugs and struggle making a life in the music world. We also experience the transcendent love he shared with Susan Butterfield. It was through love, talent and persistence that he conquered those demons to become a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

The cast that performed at the reading was excellent. The Dion character did a masterful job, crackling with raw energy, bringing Dion’s youthful talent to life. His voice powered the show. Dion’s “father”, channeled that classic Italian patron to life, overbearingly driving his son with his attempt to fulfill his dreams through him. and “Sue” brought a soft beauty and sweetness… like Dion, we all fall in love with her.

The talented ensemble brought the house down. The cast for Paper Mill hasn’t been announced yet.

If you remember this time you will be transported to the past. If you’re too young to have been there, this show will give you a glimpse into a magic era in the development of Rock & Roll.

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