DION
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Main genre |
Music sample |
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1957–2021 |
Pop rock |
A Teenager In Love
(1959) |
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Album
released: October 1959 |
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Tracks: 1) I Wonder Why; 2) Where Or When;
3) You Better Not Do That; 4) Just You; 5) I Got The Blues; 6) Don’t Pity Me;
7) A Teenager In Love; 8) Wonderful Girl; 9) A Funny Feeling; 10) I’ve Cried
Before; 11) That’s My Desire; 12) No One Knows. |
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REVIEW
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It does go
without saying, I suppose, that without Dion & The Belmonts, there would
have been no Beach Boys — or, more accurately, that this here is the
no-longer-missing link between the sweet vocal wonders of old school
crooners, barbershop quartets, and doo-wop squads, on one hand, and the
soon-to-appear vocal-oriented American pop bands of the rock’n’roll
generation, everybody from the Beach Boys to the Mamas & Papas and beyond.
Dion DiMucci did not invent any new styles of music, but he was among the
first and best white boys from the late 1950s / early 1960s to realize how to
squeeze those old values — sentimentality, romance, chirpiness, and, above
all, technical bravado — inside a contemporary musical wrapping. For sure,
there were plenty of young white rock’n’rollers to whom good old-fashioned
crooning was actually a second nature, all the way from Gene Vincent and
Eddie Cochran (whose internal wild beasts had a surprisingly tender side to
them) to Elvis himself. But most of them, one way or another, still valued
energy, spontaneity, and a certain degree of rawness over immaculate
perfectionism — the one thing true rock’n’roll was never about. Dion DiMucci
did like rock’n’roll, but unlike all those guys, Dion DiMucci didn’t much
care about its aggressive, rebellious, DIY side that took such a lenient
stance towards occasionally flubbed vocal notes or out-of-tune instruments.
It is hardly accidental that his family (as well as most of the families in
his particular Bronx neighborhood from which he culled the rest of the
Belmonts) was of Italian origins — the music Dion would go on to perform
would rarely be connected to Italian pop as such, but it is certainly
influenced by the classic Italian attitude: open-hearted, in-yer-face
emotional, and chiseled to the utmost technical perfection. I don’t know if
anybody ever called Dion «the Puccini of teen-pop», but it would seem like a
fairly accurate moniker to me in any case. As a respectful
admirer, but not really a heartfelt lover of Puccini (I’m more of a Wagnerian
when it comes to opera), I think that I extend more or less the same feelings
to Dion and his boys. They did not write their own songs — the earliest ones
came from their producers on the Mohawk and Laurie labels, then from
contemporary songwriters like Ernie Maresca — and the songs they did perform
hardly ever broke any serious musical ground, by and large being variations
on existing doo-wop, country, and rock’n’roll formulae (although props must
be given to Dion’s readiness to experiment with such multiple genres, rather
than decisively locking himself into just one pattern). The instrumental
backings on those records all but define cold-hearted professionalism,
usually impeccable from a tonal perspective but rarely surprising or
inspiring from an emotional angle. The only thing that makes them truly
special are the vocals — and here, it all depends on whether you’re willing
to lend your support to a Dion-ruled universe. At least back
in 1958, it was a fresh, moderately exciting universe. You can clearly feel
the difference if you start the journey with Dion’s very first single (not
included on this record, since it was still recorded for Mohawk, Dion’s first
label) where he does not even have the Belmonts yet — rather, he is paired by
his record label bosses with a bunch of people he’d never met as «the
Timberlanes». There’s a syncopated romantic doo-wop ballad, ‘The Chosen Few’,
on one of the sides, and a sort of vaudeville-Western number, ‘Out In
Colorado’, on the other — everything smothered in cheap Vegasy brass and
wrapped in a quasi-big-band «epic» feel which all but eliminates Dion’s main
advantage, that of sounding like the quintessential «teenager in love». Then, a few
months later, Dion recruits his young Italian buddies Carlo, Fred, and Angelo
as the Belmonts, and with their very first single, in October 1957, the
classic Belmonts sound is born. Crystal-clear doo-wop guitar that dominates
the instrumental background and keeps it so quiet as to never ever overshadow
the vocals; perfect separation between lead vocal and the harmonies; and no
attempts whatsoever on Dion’s part to sound any older than he is (18 at the
time). That’s ‘We Went Away’, a song that went unnoticed upon release but
already has all the trademarks; and the B-side, ‘Tag Along’, for sheer
contrast is a fast-paced pop-rock number that could be good enough for Ricky
Nelson, except that Dion, with his explosive Italian heart, always jumps out
at you from the speakers, whereas shy little Ricky always keeps to corners. With the switch
to Bob and Gene Schwartz’s newly-founded Laurie Records label comes ‘I Wonder
Why’, starting off Dion’s short-lived, but well-remembered rule as one of the
kings of the early teen idol era. The perfect combination of catchiness,
hard-working professionalism, old-school doo-wop values and new-school
rock’n’roll bounciness, for me it works like a museum piece worthy of
admiration, an impressive achievement of human creativity without the
slightest trace of God-granted genius, so to speak; but then again, maybe you
really have to live on Belmont Avenue in order to have a different
perspective on this kind of thing. The best I can say on this matter is that
the song is significantly less cringeworthy than, say, the likes of Sha Na Na
and other such «revivalists» who were bent on recreating the spirit of a
deceased era in a completely different environment. For the tempora and mores of 1959, ‘I Wonder Why’ was just perfect. Somewhat more
human-sounding is the band’s second single, ‘No One Knows’, on which the
Belmonts take a small step back, relegated to strictly backing vocals, and
Dion sings in a slightly gloomier and more melancholic mode; there is also a
cute little minimalistic piano riff engaged in an active dialog with the
singer rather than just providing a steady foundation, which might be the
single most memorable «purely musical» moment on the entire record. However,
its follow-up, the completely ballad-oriented A-and-B-side combination of
‘Don’t Pity Me’ and ‘Just You’, is a step back from «human values», both
songs being seriously more maudlin than ‘No One Knows’ and also spoiled by
completely unnecessary brass backing — each time these saxes come in, it’s
like somebody stepped into the wrong studio for a few seconds. Then, of
course, in comes ‘A Teenager In Love’, one of Dion’s best-remembered hits
whose title itself perfectly captures the essence of the Dion vibe. With just
a few chord changes, it could easily pass for one of those classic Hank
Williams laments, except that the overall vibe here is decidedly urban rather
than country. The chorus, of course, is its main selling point: the lines
"Each night I ask the stars up above / Why must I be a teenager in
love?" probably spoke volumes to the average American kid back in 1959,
almost explicitly stating that painfully obvious problem of the onset of
one’s sexual urges prior to emotional maturity and financial stability. It
doesn’t hurt, either, that the song was commissioned from the songwriting
team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, who had only just begun to achieve
notoriety. You can definitely feel that pop-era Elvis vibe in the "I
cried a tear... for nobody but you..." middle section, which would later
be reworked into the «manly tears» feel of ‘His Latest Flame’ and some other
songs the Pomus-Shuman team wrote for the King. The Belmonts’
first LP, in addition to all those singles, threw on some album-only tracks
as well, which help form a better perspective on Dion’s genre-hopping. Thus,
‘You Better Not Do That’ is a playful country hop, not unlike something like
Hank Williams’ ‘Pan-American’, but musically reworked as a teen-pop number;
and ‘I Got The Blues’ hardly constitutes any serious competition to the
Chicago masters, yet it is still a relatively original take on the genre,
exploiting its comedic potential above all else. A little later, this
endeavor would be taken to its pinnacle with ‘The Wanderer’, which would
complete the transformation of somber Chicago blues into uplifting teen-pop;
‘I Got The Blues’ is not quite there yet, but it’s still more fun — if
nowhere near as «authentic» — than the average Jimmy Reed number. On the down
side, ‘That’s My Desire’ has always been an awful song no matter who sang it,
and the Belmonts’ falsetto harmonies can only worsen the deal, as the final effort
is so corny, you could probably slip it unnoticed into the middle of Zappa’s Cruising With Ruben & The Jets or
something of that level of parody. In the end, I
am still surprised at myself for giving the album such a high rating — but it
does have an impressive level of
variety and originality, cannot be accused of a lack of emotion, is perfectly
listenable and catchy, and could,
with certain reservations, be called «adequate» in that Dion and his pals
never really try to bite off more than they can chew. In a song-by-song album
battle with, say, the Beach Boys’ debut of Surfin’ Safari it would have won hands down (admittedly, it
wouldn’t be a fair competition, since the Belmonts’ album is mostly a
compilation of their hit singles, whereas the Beach Boys’ debut was a handful
of filler thrown around one hit
single, and far from their best at that). And yet, from a certain point of
view, I still think there’s more «life» and «fun» on Surfin’ Safari than on any of the Belmonts’ records. The odd
difference is that the Beach Boys reached their own brand of perfection
through experimenting with various brands of imperfections over a period of
several years; Dion & The Belmonts, on the other hand, did away with
imperfections as soon as possible, which makes this collection as utterly
sterile as it is formally immaculate. |
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Album
released: June 1960 |
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Tracks: 1) When You Wish Upon A Star; 2)
In The Still Of The Night; 3) A Lover’s Prayer; 4) My
Private Joy; 5) My Day; 6) Swinging On A Star; 7) All The Things You
Are; 8) It’s Only A Paper Moon; 9) In Other Words; 10) I’m Through With Love;
11) When The Red Red Robbin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin’ Along; 12) September Song. |
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REVIEW As much as I would like to mellow
out and say something nice about this album, I have a lingering suspicion
that it is really a subtly laid out infernal trap — say something nice about
Dion & The Belmonts covering sentimental American standards in 1960, and
the next day you wake up with a craving to buy up every single Christmas
album released from 1950 to 2020, selling off your entire record collection
to raise the appropriate funds. Were I twenty years younger, this entire review
would probably consist of nothing but a mix of sarcasm with expletives; these
days, my writing (like everybody else’s) tends to be more polite — but at
least I am happy to say that my gut reaction toward an LP like this has not
changed at all. (The gut reaction being: "If I ever catch myself
becoming a fan of this kind of music, please put me out of my misery".) |
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Admittedly,
Dion himself does not seem to recall the record with much fondness, insisting
that he was under pressure from both the record label and The Belmonts themselves — which is easily understood, because
it is precisely on sappy romantic ballads like these that the boys could
really showcase the strength of their vocal harmonies; meanwhile, Dion wanted
to do more upbeat, more modern-sounding material which left them in a
somewhat diminished role. Given that he was beset by his own personal
problems in early 1960 (including the need to check into a hospital to battle
his heroin addiction), he was probably in no position to fight at the time, which
explains the existence of Wish Upon A
Star; but as soon as he was properly back on his feet, the situation
changed drastically and we went from ‘When The Red Red Robbin Comes Bob Bob
Bobbin’ Along’ to ‘Runaround Sue’ and ‘The Wanderer’ pretty quickly, thank
God (and the struggling, but at least partially efficient American medical
system) for that. There is
exactly one song on this album that
I wouldn’t mind hearing again in the future: ‘My Private Joy’, a fairly fresh
composition by the famous duo of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, which sounds just
like all those fun pop-rock numbers they wrote for Elvis — catchy,
life-asserting, New Orleanian all over, with an ecstatic sax solo and a
relatively raucous performance from Mr. DiMuccio himself. That said, the earlier version of the
song, recorded by the 13-year old Bobby Pedrick Jr. (later to be known as
Robert John of 1979’s ‘Sad Eyes’ fame), actually rocks even harder and has a
lot more grit to the singing and the arrangement (check it out to hear a
really cool growl on a 13-year old, and while you’re at it, might as well
check out ‘White Bucks
And Saddle Shoes’, Bobby’s first hit recorded when he was just 12... what
the hell am I doing reviewing a Grandma-oriented Belmonts record instead,
anyway?). As for
everything else, well, we have Sinatra for that. Sure, ‘In The Still Of The
Night’ sounds way different with the Belmonts’ harmonies from when Frank did
it — but the true challenge for a clever interpreter of an American standard
is to make it sound less rather
than more corny, and the Belmonts’
harmonies here, while not exactly emulating the crooning and cooing
stylistics of the 1930s, are their precise equivalents for 1960. The only
saving grace is that at least the arrangements are not overtly saturated
with strings; instead, the preferred romantic instruments of choice are
chimes, ringing electric guitars, saxes, and an occasional harpsichord or
two. But the basic intent behind the songs consistently remains the same, and
there is no depth whatsoever to the performances. Well, at least no original depth, if you happen to love
those old rusty ballads by themselves, or the way they were sung by the likes
of Bing or Frank. I suppose that
Dion must have had a bit of fun doing the upbeat, danceable, modernized
version of ‘Swinging On A Star’, which has an actual bass-heavy electric
guitar riff egging it on (at least he sort
of looked happy on
the Dick Clark show while mugging along to it with the other boys); but,
along with ‘My Private Joy’, it is the only non-ballad on the album, and the
rest is strictly for a poor man’s Romeo to sing under the balcony of a poor
woman’s Juliet. Naturally, we cannot impeach the record on grounds of
technical quality — all of the harmonizing here is a vocal teacher’s absolute
delight, and regardless of what Dion himself thought about his ability to leave
a mark on these standards, he invests enough professionalism in his delivery
to show his utmost respect for them. But nothing can obscure the fact that,
with a few minor reservations, Wish
Upon A Star is a case of the past extending its iron grip over the
present, rather than the present recasting the past in a new light — and just
one more example of how the record industry was trying to subvert the musical
revolution of the youth by subtly seducing said youth with the benefits of
«maturity», «adulthood», and «seriousness». You know — if that sort of life is what you wish, you may grow up to be a fish
and all that. The sad news, in the end, is that this record just ain’t no
bunch of moonbeams carried home in a jar. |
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Album
released: March 1961 |
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Tracks: 1) Lonely
Teenager; 2) After The Dance; 3) P.S. I Love You; 4) Save The Last Dance
For Me; 5) Little Miss Blue; 6) Havin’ Fun; 7) Close Your Eyes; 8) Fools Rush
In; 9) My One And Only Love; 10) North East End Of The Corner; 11) One For My
Baby; 12) Then I’ll Be Tired Of You. |
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REVIEW
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Which is kind
of funny, really, given the usual reasoning behind Dion splitting from The
Belmonts, a decision officially announced on October 16, 1960, and confirmed
by the release of his first solo single, ‘Lonely Teenager’, within the same
month. Both Dion himself and his former bandmates went on record saying that
the split was due to musical differences: Dion allegedly wanted to get into
grittier rock’n’roll, blues, and country, which left less legroom for the
doo-wop harmonies of Carlo, Fred, and Angelo. Yet the real picture is a
little more complicated, because neither ‘Lonely Teenager’ nor, in fact, much
of anything else on Alone With Dion
could seriously qualify as «gritty rock’n’roll» — nor does it make a lot of
sense for the proverbially angelic voices of the backing ladies to replace
the trusty support of the Belmonts. Honestly, it feels more like a typical
struggle-for-power conflict, in which the frontman feels himself constricted
by the very fact of having the name of his band always attached to him like a
ball and a chain. Besides, when you have a choice to be depicted on the front
sleeve of your next album with two or three more attractive guys that look
like you, or with a pair of lady
arms reaching out for your bosom, which one would you prefer? Anyway, for his
solo debut the producers decided to split Dion’s artistic personality in two
halves, dedicating the entirety of Side A to contemporary pop and Side B to
old-fashioned Tin Pan Alley. Because of that decision, my summary of Alone With Dion will be shorter than
it could have been — in light of the fact that all of Side B sucks Harold
Arlen’s and Johnny Mercer’s asses, big
time. It’s basically Dion trying to be the next Frank Sinatra, and I have a
hard enough time lodging the first
Frank Sinatra in the spare backrooms of my brain. Pretty much the only thing
Dion DiMucci could have on Frank in 1960-61 is his younger age, but even that
works against him when he tries ‘One For My Baby’ on for size — a song that,
in order to be sung efficiently, requires at least a couple of decades of
trials and tribulations. There is simply no use anywhere in the universe for
those six covers, with their unimaginative orchestral arrangements and
flowery vocal performances that do not even try to add depth or subtlety.
Technically, of course, it’s all quite impeccable, but «semantically» — throw
this crap on the pile, please. The first side
of the album is a bit more acceptable: featuring comparatively more sparse
arrangements, usually based on acoustic guitar rhythms accompanied by
occasional pianos, horns, and/or backup vocals, and showcasing contemporary
professional songwriting, it does a better job of conveying Dion’s
«humanity». ‘Lonely Teenager’ is the standout track, of course, though mostly
because of its lyrical subject — with a title like that, you’d think it would
be another broken-hearted ballad about the inability to find true love, but
in reality it’s a tune that questions the consequences of adolescent
rebellion: "Now I’m seventeen,
still alone / Wondering if I should go home / Or maybe stay out on my own /
I’m a lonely teenager". Written by three little-known Italian
songwriters from Brooklyn who may well have known what they were talking
about, it’s a good vehicle for demonstrating the more vulnerable side of
Dion’s voice, culminating in the almost «cowardly» inflection on the bridge:
"I know I’ll be alright / If I
stay out of sight". Add to this the delicate frailty of the acoustic
rhythm, and the song becomes a shy little puppy of a tune which I could
easily envisage as, say, a Paul Simon acoustic ballad. Now this is something for which Dion most
certainly had the advantage on Frank Sinatra. Of the two Doc Pomus – Mort Shuman numbers, ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’
is the more expendable one, simply because it does not improve on the classic
Drifters version; but ‘Havin’ Fun’, written specifically for Dion and once
again putting him into «my life is so wretched» mode, works better, and I
particularly appreciate those little trombone overlays emphasizing the song’s
melancholy — the use of brass here follows essentially the same purposes as
it would in some of the classic Kinks tracks. Together with ‘Lonely Teenager’,
these two songs make Dion into a viable alternative for Ricky Nelson to those
who would like their broken-heartedness a little more lively and a little
less icy: the difference is that Dion, as befits a proper red-blooded
Italian, still wants to shout about his pain in the market square, while
Ricky always seems more comfortable quietly picking his sores in the darkest
corner of his bedroom. Personally, I prefer Ricky’s modesty, but I also
appreciate that Dion is at least not pulling an all-out «teenage Pavarotti»
on us, either. The happier songs are also pretty much OK: ‘After The Dance’ (from the
songwriting team of Joseph Meyer and Robert Allen) is spoiled a little by
overloud and over-annoying backing vocals, but it’s difficult not to tap your
foot to the infectious beat — and Ronnie Isle’s ‘Little Miss Blue’ is just
pretty, bouncy pop fluff, hard to remember but equally hard to despise while
it’s on. Which leaves space for but one slow-burning ballad, the old chestnut
of ‘P.S. I Love You’ (not the Beatles
song, of course, which had not even been written yet — the slow "dear, I thought I’d drop a line..."
ballad previously covered by just about every vocal jazz artist of note).
This one should probably have made it onto Side B, but since it does not feature
any orchestration, instead placing its trust into jazzy guitar arpeggios,
midnight piano tinkling, and haunting faraway backing vocals, it’s a bit more
preferable. I don’t have much use for it, but I can easily see people who
would — there’s a definite charm to Dion’s shaky, near-crying vibrato as he
desperately tries to get into the right mood. On the whole, after all, it’s easy to understand why Alone With Dion is pretty much forgotten next to Runaround Sue — the album cover alone
is something that each of us would probably want to unsee — but if Dion is a
hero of yours in the first place, Side A should definitely not be ignored.
Its few songs do provide a better opportunity to evaluate the man’s capacity
as a solo performer, and they also form a stark contrast with the
soon-to-come image of the man as a macho womanizer (‘The Wanderer’, etc.);
here, he is as sensitive, romantic, and even downright shy as they come, even
belying that piercing "I-know-what-you-really-need-darling" stare on
the album cover. Admittedly, this is not a whole lot of material to be
overjoyed about, but then there’s no denying, either, that Dion was and would
always be a singles artist rather than a «long-playing» one. On the other
hand, most of the standard compilations only include ‘Lonely Teenager’, when
‘Havin’ Fun’ is at least almost as good, and those happy-poppy dance tunes do
not lag too far behind. Do stay away from all that awful lounge jazz on Side
B, though, unless you’ve already got your top hat out and polished. |
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Album
released: November 1961 |
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Tracks: 1) Runaround
Sue; 2) Somebody Nobody Wants; 3) Dreamlover; 4) Life Is But A Dream;
5) The Wanderer; 6) Runaway Girl; 7) The Majestic; 8) Little Star; 9) Lonely
World; 10) In The Still Of The Night; 11) Kansas City; 12) Take Good Care Of
My Baby; 13*) Could Somebody Take My Place Tonight; 14*) I’m Gonna Make It
Somehow. |
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REVIEW
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Well, we seem
to finally be in luck because this here LP got two such songs — both ‘Runaround Sue’ and ‘The Wanderer’,
inarguably the most recognizable stars inside Dion’s relatively obscure
constellation, are here, and each of them represents one of Dion’s
quintessentially-controversial sides. One thing they have in common is that,
aesthetically, they fall somewhere in between rock’n’roll and doo-wop,
borrowing vocal stylistics from the latter and rhythmic energy from the
former: Dion had no intention whatsoever to properly keep up the flame of a
genre that, by 1961, seemed to no longer offer viability in its «wildest»
forms, but neither did he want to completely dissolve in the crowd of teen
idols, which his previous album had actually put him in serious danger of. In
short, just the kind of stuff to get him into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame
without riling up the parents too much back in 1961 — that is, provided they
don’t pay too much attention to the lyrics. ‘Runaround Sue’, co-written by Dion with his pal Ernie Maresca and
released in September 1961, became Dion’s first #1 hit, so it must have
apparently struck some subtle gold vein — and, honestly, I don’t think that
this was even due so much to Dion himself as to the Del-Satins, an obscure
doo-wop group whose general reputation would remain forever based on their
providing backing vocals to most of Dion’s hit singles. Let’s be frank, the one thing that is sure to stay in your
head after even one solitary playthrough of ‘Runaround Sue’ is "hep-hep bum-da-hey-di-hey-di hep-hep",
which the Del-Satins somehow manage to feel joyful and melancholic at the
same time — then again, the same goes for Dion’s wordless vocalizing, weaving
in and out of the backing vocals in a state caught somewhere between
depression and euphoria. If the intention of the song was to capture and convey the protagonist’s
desperate Don José-like state of mind in light of the permanently
defiant unfaithfulness of modern day Carmen «Runaround Sue», then that
intention fails completely and utterly: Dion is no Del Shannon when it comes
to parading one’s broken heart, and the average listener, particularly in the
context of plunking a nickel down the jukebox, will be far more inclined to
just dance his or her head off to all the hey-di
hep-heps than shedding a tear of empathy for the unfortunate protagonist
whose girl "ran around with every
single guy in town". The lyrics of the song, on their own, might
seem almost disgustingly male-chauvinistic, particularly from the 21st
century point of view — who is this
guy to pronounce moral judgement on whatever a girl desires to do with her
own body? — but if we put ourselves into a 1961 frame of view, there’s
clearly a touch of admiration for «runaround Sue», who ultimately comes out
as the alpha figure while her ex-lover admits to being the defeated underdog.
I can imagine quite a few potential «runaround Sues» dancing their own heads
off to this celebration of freedom from the masculine yoke in those
pre-Beatles days. And that wild sax playing from Buddy Lucas, echoing the
ecstasy in Dion’s vocals all through the song, sure must have been a big
help. Interestingly, the forgotten B-side to the single, a soft, piano-driven
rhythmic pop ballad commissioned from a bunch of outside songwriters, is
‘Runaway Girl’, hardly coincidentally sharing its first root with ‘Runaround
Sue’ while also dropping a friendly nod to Del Shannon’s ‘Runaway’ — as one
can see, long before the Beatles came along to assist the league of parents’
daughters with their liberation issues, the idea of running, running away, running around was all over the air
back in 1961. The funny thing is that ‘Runaway Girl’ literally tackles the
exact same subject as ‘Runaround Sue’, only slower and more sentimentally
this time, as well as with a little actual hope for the future: "each night and day I’ll pray that someday
maybe she’ll come through and then... I’ll be more than just a toy for my
runaway girl" — ooh, that must really hurt. But here even more so
than in ‘Runaround Sue’, the entire atmosphere of the song is never about
moral judgement or misogyny, but only about smooth tenderness, expressed
perfectly in the classy combination of sax, piano, backing vocals, and Dion’s
gorgeous lead. Actually, if you listen real closely, you’ll find the melody of the
opening part of the verse — "I
fell in love with a runaway, a little runaway girl / Each night she’s all
that I dream about, my little runaway girl" — almost identical to
Bowie and Iggy Pop’s ‘China Girl’, a connection hardly ever mentioned but so
obvious to me that it must have been at least a subconscious influence (unless
there is another missing link I am unaware of). Apparently, there is
something in that particular construction of the chords and the repetitive
vocal phrasing that helps reinforce this idea of a strongly obsessive mental
connection with an ideal out of one’s reach... or something to that effect,
anyway. Whatever be the truth, ‘Runaway Girl’ is one of those little
overlooked, unassuming gems that, every once in a while, rewards the true
completist. For Dion’s next single, Laurie Records decided to concentrate more
heavily on the sing-and-dance aspect of their new star’s identity rather than
any emotional traumas, so they gave him ‘The Majestic’, a bit of a novelty
tune that promises to introduce "the
greatest dance you ever saw" but clearly fails to deliver upon the
promise with its fairly generic beat and slow tempo. The Del-Satins do a good
job as usual, and Dion tries to deliver a get-up-on-your-seat-and-dance
message as hard as he can, but the overall effect of the song is in the range
of passable (if you don’t give it any thought) to awful, if you compare it
with something like ‘Twistin’ The Night Away’ or ‘Rock Around The Clock’. Speaking
of those, Dion
presented the song "quasi-live" with his appearance in the aptly
titled movie Twist Around The Clock,
and, honestly, watching the audience react is the farthest thing from an
impression of "the greatest dance you ever saw". Also, what’s up
with that squeaky falsetto whine on the "people get in a big boss line" bit? No, that’s definitely not how you introduce a brand new
dance that’s supposed to make the kids in Philly forget the slop because "there’s no more shimmy and no more bop". No surprise, then, that the infuriated DJs simply dumped the A-side and
turned all of their attention instead to the B-side, ‘The Wanderer’, which
was another Dion / Maresca collaboration and certainly more meaningful to the
writers. If you only listened to the opening bars, you might have thought it
was Dion’s brave take on Elvis’ ‘Stuck On You’ — same swaggery, steady,
rhythmic mid-tempo — but while both songs share a level of cocky
self-assertion, ‘Stuck On You’ propagates concentrating on one goal ("a team of wild horses couldn’t tear us
apart" and so on) where ‘The Wanderer’ offers a, let’s say, more dissipated approach to fulfilling one’s
purpose in life. Somewhat ironically, when, more than 50 years later, Bethesda licensed ‘The
Wanderer’ for one of the trailers of Fallout
4, the next chapter in their sprawling post-apocalyptic survival saga, Dion
filed a suit against the company, indignant that his music was accompanying "repugnant and morally indefensible images
designed to appeal to young consumers". Had I been a Bethesda
representative, I would certainly suggest retorting that there are few songs out
there presenting a more repugnant and morally indefensible set of images
designed to appeal to young consumers than ‘The Wanderer’ — one must admit
that "I kiss ’em and I love ’em cause
to me they’re all the same" is a difficult line to morally defend,
as are most other lines in the song. Later in his life, Dion would cling on to the line "with my two fists of iron, but I’m going
nowhere" as his defense (implying that the protagonist is really a
tragic character whose attitude toward women is determined by the overall
aimlessness and bleakness of his life, etc. etc.) but the really amusing
thing is that Maresca’s original
demo from 1957 has "my two
fists of iron and a bottle of beer" which was changed at the request
of the record label because, apparently, they thought that singing about beer
could be perceived as immoral (and nothing else in the song would), so it’s a
bit of an odd cop-out. If there really is any «darkness» to the song, or even
any irony, then all of it is strictly implied, or, rather, just depends on
what you want to read into it. To
some people, it will be a shameless glorification of the ultimate
objectifying womanizer; to others, it might be a mocking-condescending,
tongue-in-cheek portrait of one. It does feel hilarious — and quite a bit hypocritical — to have ‘Runaround
Sue’, condemning the proverbial slut, and ‘The Wanderer’, praising the
proverbial man-whore, on the same record, but whaddaya know, it all comes from
that time when men were men and... oh, never mind. There was, after all, a
good reason, that when The Beach Boys later covered the song live in concert,
they gave it to Dennis Wilson to sing — easily the most appropriate
candidature among the Wilson brothers for this tune, who was able to put even
more passion into the vocals than Dion himself, singing it all from such a
deep bottom of his heart as even his most loyal fans at the time probably
wouldn’t have guessed. Yet in the song’s defense, in addition to it coming from a time-honored
tradition of «ramblin-man’» ballads that place more emphasis on the freedom
of moving around than Don Juan-style womanizing, it is not even particularly «sexy».
It’s really all about that relentless beat and about filling each bar of the
verse with that never-ending stream of cocky-but-nervous singing and about
the swirling wander ’round and ’round
and ’round and ’round and ’round refrain that does, if I may say so, add
a little drop of that caught-up-in-the-whirlwind-of-fate attitude. (That round and round bit, by the way, was
the result of Dion expanding on Maresca’s original conception; Ernie just sang
"I’m the wanderer, yeah I’m the
wanderer, I wander round", leaving the last line of the chorus exposed
and hanging — Dion gave it some actual meaning). Not that I’m a huge fan or anything: I actually prefer ‘Runaround Sue’ as
the more melodically interesting of the two hits, and The Del-Satins make
their presence more justified there than on ‘The Wanderer’, whose vibe can
get annoying by the time the second verse gets around. But for at least one
verse and one chorus, the song is cool as heck, and it is not at all
difficult to understand how it smashed both the US and UK charts (though it
still failed to hit the #1 spot like ‘Runaround Sue’ did). The double-punch
of these two bulls-eyes was enough to make Dion into a major force on the pop
scene, ensuring at least two more years of steady success before the British Invasion
put a dent in his fortunes; for now, though, the most important task was to
secure his newfound popularity with a brand new LP — called Runaround Sue for the bigger of the
two hits, though certainly The Wanderer
would have been a more fitting title. About half of the LP consisted of A- and B-sides that we have already
discussed, but the rest of material is quite worth hearing; well, at least some of the rest — I do not imagine my
typical reader as a potential fan of this cuddly version of ‘Little Star’ (hmm...
are there even any non-cuddly
versions of ‘Little Star’?), nor of generic mid-Fifties doo-wop like ‘In The Still
Of The Night’ (confused note: this is not
the Cole Porter song of the same title that appears on Dion & The Belmonts’
Wish Upon A Star — this is Fred Parris’
song that was originally recorded by The Five Satins in 1956). But one more
original Dion / Maresca collaboration, the romantic pop-rocker ‘Lonely World’,
is a great showcase for Dion’s sliding vocal rainbows on which he comes
across as a slightly burlier version of Roy Orbison; and his cover of Bobby Darin’s
‘Dream Lover’ is far superior to the original — more rock’n’rollish, with a
denser bass, deeper and darker vocal harmonies, and a wilder, much more
desperate lead delivery that shows you exactly how much the poor guy needs someone beside him at night. Unfortunately, our guy was unable to «tighten up» Bobby Vee’s ‘Take Good Care
Of My Baby’ in the same way he did it with ‘Dream Lover’ — maybe it’s the
debilitating influence of all those strings, but overall it’s comparable in
meekness to the original. It’s still a Goffin-King song, which precludes total
melodic rot, but back in 1961 this was kinda symbolic of rock attitudes
giving way to the teen idol stuff, and in this particular case, Dion does nothing
to shatter that symbolism. Instead, he tries to remind us in a different way
of his passion for rock’n’roll — by covering ‘Kansas City’ in a version that
is fairly close to Wanda Jackson’s. It’s okay, I guess, but it’s ‘Kansas City’.
Do you really need to add Dion, specifically, to the list of all those people
that went to Kansas City to get themselves a pretty little woman? I’m not so
certain, what with Kansas City already most likely suffering from a serious
demographic problem. Overall, Runaround Sue is a
significant improvement over Alone With
Dion, and not just because of its highest points, but because it’s a
record that tries to be a little more honest with its listener, and to carve
its own path rather than humbly conform to the contemporary stereotype of the
quintessential «teen idol». But its problem is that it still fails to give Dion
his own distinct identity — unlike Roy Orbison or Del Shannon, he is happy
enough to act out these songs in whatever manner seems more fit. The Dion of ‘Runaround
Sue’ is not at all the same Dion as the Dion of ‘The Wanderer’, and in
between the philandering, the broken-hearted, and the starry-eyed avatars you
have a hard time discerning the individual. In the end, all he does is just
wander ’round and ’round and ’round and ’round in a hit-and-miss fashion,
which makes me wonder just how many people in this world have the sounds of ‘Runaround
Sue’ and ‘The Wanderer’ ingrained in their memories without properly
recalling who sang them in the first place. Ironically, a big part of those
songs’ magic, too, is due to The Del-Satins — no matter how much effort Dion
took to establish himself as a solo artist, he still sounded best with a
well-tailored doo-wop entourage rather than completely on his own. |
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