TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Today, we conclude our archive series, R&B, Rockabilly and Early Rock 'n' Roll, with Allen Toussaint, who we'll hear from later and Dion. If you've ever dismissed Dion as a former teen idol whose talent or relevance didn't survive the oldies era, what you hear today is likely to change your mind. He's a great singer, deeply influenced by the blues and country music. I interviewed him in 2000. He brought his guitar, and we're going to hear him perform some of his own songs and some of the blues and country songs that influenced him.
Dion had his first hit, "I Wonder Why," in 1958, with the doo-wop group the Belmonts, named after Belmont Avenue in the Bronx neighborhood in which they lived. Dion's other hits included "A Teenager In Love," "Where Or When," "Donna The Prima Donna," "Runaround Sue," "The Wanderer" and, later, "Abraham, Martin and John." His fan Bruce Springsteen gave the introduction when Dion was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Dion recorded a couple of Springsteen songs on his album "Deja Nu," which was released in 2000 and was the occasion for our interview. We started with a track from that album, Dion singing Springsteen's "If I Should Fall Behind."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IF I SHOULD FALL BEHIND")
DION: (Singing) We said we'd walk together, baby, come what may, that come the twilight, should we lose our way, if as we're walking a hand should slip free, I'll wait for you, and should I fall behind, wait for me. We swore we'd travel, darlin', side by side and we'd help each other stay in stride. But each lover's steps fall so differently. Girl, I'll wait for you. If I should fall behind, wait for me. Now, everyone dreams of a love lasting and true.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: Dion, welcome to FRESH AIR.
DION: Good to be here.
GROSS: What's it been like for you finding new material? I think a lot of people, when they think of your songs, they think of the songs you did when you were very young that were some of them very explicitly teenage songs like "Teenager In Love" or even...
DION: Right.
GROSS: ..."The Wanderer." It's a song about - it's a song of a young man who in some ways is real hot stuff. So, I mean, you're not a teenager anymore, and the song that we just heard is a real adult song. Are you - has it been difficult for you to find songs that reach your audience that you like and that are adult songs?
DION: I don't know. Songs, to me, have always been kind of like a diary, you know. Say, when I did "Teenager In Love," maybe I was 16. Those questions in that song, even though it's a very simple song and it seems like kind of claptrap or something, but it's not. To the unknowing ear, it would seem, you know, if you just listen to the surface of it, but it had a lot of heart. It had a lot of soul, and it asks some relevant questions that you could ask today, you know, and songs like "I Wonder Why." It was the first hit record I had. You know, we were - we didn't know how to write lyrics too good, so we invented this kind of percussive rhythmic sound. You know, we'd make up these sounds. We'd go down to the Apollo Theater and hear the horn players, and we'd come back to the neighborhood and give the vocal group - I'd conjure - you know, I'd recruit guys and say, do this, do that, you know. And I'd try to get them to sound like the horn section down at the Apollo Theater.
Like, a song like "Ruby Baby." I would, you know, (strumming guitar, singing ) I got a girl and Ruby is her name. I have to go (singing) Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, baby. It was like (scatting). They were like horns, you know? And all that stuff was arranged, you know - I - the group was a poor man's horn section on the street corners. That's what it was.
Even when I did "Runaround Sue" and they would - (strumming guitar, vocalizing). That was a horn section that I heard at the Apollo Theater. I just brought it back to the streets and gave it to the guys to sing.
GROSS: Let me go back to the beginning with you when you were first listening to music. You wrote in your autobiography that Hank Williams really influenced you early on. When you were a kid growing up in the Bronx, what did you hear in Hank Williams?
DION: Well, Hank Williams seemed, like, so total to me, so committed to the lyric. He would actually rip the ends of the words off at the, you know - the end of the sentence. It sounded like he'd bite into the word and rip it off. You know, he would do like - well, I can't sing like him, but the kind of idea like - the first song I heard him do was like, (strumming guitar, singing) and I let my home down on the rural route, told my pa I was going stepping out and get the honky-tonk blues. Yeah, the honky-tonk blues. Well, oh, I got them. I got the honky-tonk blues.
You know, he'd say (singing) I stopped into every place in town.
And he'd rip the word right off. Like I got it, and there it goes, you know. And he was totally committed physically, lyrically, musically, spiritually just - I just said what's this guy talking about? You know, just - and, see, I had a guy on the streets that really helped me out a lot, too. There was a guy in Bronx, New York City. His name was Willie Green, and he was the superintendent of a tenement building in my neighborhood.
And, you know, basically what I ever - what I do is like Black music filtered through an Italian neighborhood comes out with an attitude - yo. So Willie Green would be playing me all this John Lee Hooker stuff and, you know, Sonny Boy Williamson. And he'd be playing like (strumming guitar, singing) going down to Rosie's stop at Fannie Mae's. Tell my baby what I heard her boyfriend say. Don't start me talking. Oh, lord. Tell everything I know. I'm going break up with signifying. Whoa, lord, Jack. Some people have got to go. Jack gave his wife $5 to go downtown get some.
You know, he'd do stuff like that or (strumming guitar, singing) and I woke up this morning, looking around for my shoes. Some telling me, child, got those walking blues. Yeah. Woke up this morning looking around for my shoes, child. You know, and I'm leaving this morning, child, now, with these walking blues. Some people tell me that they wear blues in bed (ph), [inaudible]. Some people tell me that they wear blues in bed, child, no. [inaudible]. I'm walking, walking blues [inaudible] walking.
You know, he'd do stuff like that. So I'd go into the studio and do the white version of that.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: No, really, but it sounds like what I'm hearing from you is that you heard country music through Hank Williams. You heard all these blues recordings.
DION: Right.
GROSS: And what you found was this kind of Bronx version...
DION: And a little doo-wop.
GROSS: Yeah. That - well, that doo-wop was out for you, this really, like, for you, native version of all the music that you were loving.
DION: Right. It kind of...
GROSS: But it was authentic 'cause it was your music. You weren't just doing stuff in the manner of somebody else.
DION: Well, Willie Green, again, the guy who was doing this, he told me - he said, Dion - he said, write about the people in the neighborhood, write about the things you know. And to me, when I looked around my neighborhood, we had characters like Frankie Yunk-Yunk, Joe BB Eyes, Ralphie Mooch. There was a guy in my neighborhood - they called him Shakespeare. He used to say, like, 2B or not to 2B? Which is my apartment?
(LAUGHTER)
DION: I thought I'd get you at that, Terry.
GROSS: (Laughter).
DION: But we had a lot of characters, you know? So - and they seemed bigger than life, like "The Wanderer" - his name was Jackie Burns (ph). He was a sailor who got tattoos all over him, you know? And every time he'd date a girl, he'd get her name tattooed on his body. You know, this guy was like, you know, (singing, playing guitar) Flo on my left arm, Mary on my right. Janie is the girl I'll be with tonight. Little girl asks me which one I love the best. I tear open my shirt. I show her Rosie on my chest. I'm a wanderer. Yeah, I'm the wanderer. I roam around, around, around, around, around. Lay that thing over your neck.
GROSS: (Laughter).
DION: But this guy would walk around with his tank top on with all these names all over. You know, he was like...
GROSS: What did you think of him? Did you like him or...
DION: He was a - he was kind of a loner. He would like - I didn't know him that well, but he just seemed bigger than life 'cause he was older than me and he was in the Navy.
GROSS: Right.
DION: And he would come back and he'd have this kind of - you know, and I kind of featured myself, you know, kind of, like a street corner poet, you know, burnt to the bone with the fire of this new rock 'n' roll music. So I was like, you know, over there saying, what could this guy - you know, like, how can we put this guy to music, you know? And I don't think he ever knew the song was about him. He took off for - I don't even know if he's alive today, but "The Wanderer" is a sad song. It says, I roam from town to town. I go through life without a care. I'm as happy as a clown with my two fists of iron, but I'm going nowhere. It's about a real - a guy who just is stuck in a very kind of shallow lifestyle, you know?
GROSS: Before you started listening to rhythm and blues and blues music and stuff like that, I know when you were 11, you used to sing in a bar in your neighborhood, and it sounded like you were a real local attraction. What did you sing when you were 11?
DION: Ah, yeah. I would do - I knew 70 Hank Williams songs.
GROSS: (Laughter).
DION: Would you believe that? I would even sing his Luke the Drifter series, you know? (Singing, playing guitar) In the world's mighty gallery of pictures hang the scenes that are painted from life.
I was, like, 13 years old.
GROSS: (Laughter).
DION: I thought I was a philosopher. I didn't even know what I was singing about. I sang "Honky Tonk Blues." I sang "Jambalaya." If you - an Italian from the Bronx - I had no idea what jambalaya meant, but it sounded so good and felt so good coming out of my mouth, you know? (Singing, playing guitar) Goodbye, Joe. Me got to go. Me oh my oh.
You know - (singing, playing guitar) Jambalaya, crawfish pie and a file gumbo.
I didn't know what gumbo was.
GROSS: (Laughter).
DION: I knew what rigatoni was.
GROSS: (Laughter).
DION: But gumbo, I had no idea. And, you know, it - I got caught up in this music. And it - I guess it's like anybody else when you get caught up into something, it just took me away.
GROSS: Why don't we pause here and listen to the first Dion and The Belmonts recording, which is "I Wonder Why" with those great harmonies?
DION: That's a good attitude song.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: Yeah. Let's hear it. And what year is this, Dion?
DION: This is '57 - beginning.
GROSS: And you were how old?
DION: I was 17.
GROSS: OK, let's hear it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WONDER WHY")
DION AND THE BELMONTS: (Singing) Don't know why I love you like I do. Don't know why I do. Don't know why I love you. Don't know why I care. I just want your love to share. I wonder why I love you like I do. Is it because I think you love me, too? I wonder why I love you like I do, like I do. I told my friends that we would never part. They often said that you would break my heart. I wonder why they think that we will part, we will part. (Vocalizing). When you're with me, I'm sure you're always true.
GROSS: We're listening to my interview with Dion, recorded in 2000. We'll be back with more music and conversation after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Dion in 2000. He brought his guitar and sang some songs.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: There's a song that you wrote on the new CD that I really want to play 'cause I think your singing now is really similar to what it's always been. I don't think - I think some of the material has changed, but I think your singing still has everything in it that you've been talking about - all those influences, the urgency that you've been talking about. So, let me play a song from the new CD. But before I do, I want you to introduce it for us. And this is called "Every Day (That I'm With You)." Tell us about writing this. What inspired it?
DION: Well, this is a story, but I'm going to tell it. The CD is called Deja Nu. And the song that you're about to play - in fact, the whole CD, the whole - all the songs in it are a movie soundtrack for a movie called "The Wanderer" that Chaz Palmernteri wrote a screenplay for. And I was writing these songs for different scenes in the movie. And the movie got bogged down this year, so I just released a CD. But anyway, every song on the CD is written for a certain, you know, piece of the movie. This song was written for a montage scene in the middle of it. I traveled with Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens on that tour. We were co-headlining a tour. And we were on this little yellow school bus, not one of these luxury line custom-made coaches today. It was just a yellow school bus. We were riding through the Midwest in 1959, February of 1959, and it was cold. It was like 30 below zero. We were freezing. But we really kind of bonded on this tour, Ritchie, Buddy and myself, because we had the first Fender guitars that were issued, these new Stratocasters, and we were in a kind of a competition to see who would make them ring the longest. And two weeks into the tour, Buddy got kind of fed up with the bus breaking down, and he recruit - he was trying to recruit people. He chartered a plane. And he said - 'cause the more people he'd get aboard, the less it would cost. So he said, you know, it'll be $36, he tells me. And he hit the magic number for me.
I grew up with my parents screaming and yelling at each other for the rent in Bronx, New York City, at the time was $36. So my mind hadn't stretched out to that place where I could spend the whole month's rent on a 45-minute plane flight to Fargo, North Dakota. So I said no. So he gives me his guitar. He says, here, he says, you know, take care of my guitar. He says, you better take care of it, you know? So he took his laundry. That's what he wanted to do. He wanted to get a haircut. He wanted to do his laundry. Gives me the guitar to take care of.
So now I'm wondering, I wonder how his guitar sounds compared to mine. So I go in the dressing room, and I take the guitar, I'll plug it in, and I'm saying - I was telling Chaz Palmernteri as he's writing this story around this book, "The Wanderer" that I wrote. And the movie was called "The Wanderer." So he said, you know, we could do a Buddy Holly song here in the movie. Like, it doesn't matter anymore. I said, let me write something. To go through me sitting in the dressing room, playing his guitar and singing with - and while this scene takes place of them leaving us driving to Fargo, arriving the next morning. So this song was written for that scene because I thought I could capture this thing 'cause in my heart, I've always wanted to express this relationship that - you know, that I pondered at times or reflected on at times that I had with Buddy Holly, and it came out in this song.
GROSS: And I just want to say for our listeners who don't know the end of the story that Buddy Holly took this plane that you decided not to take, the plane crashed, killing Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper.
DION: Right.
GROSS: So - and the other thing is so Chaz Palmernteri's movie is your biography? That's what he's trying...
DION: Yeah. He wrote a screenplay around this - around...
GROSS: Around your biography - autobiography "The Wanderer."
DION: Right.
GROSS: Alright.
DION: So that's what the - this whole album is. It's actually a soundtrack. In fact, I don't think...
GROSS: Soundtrack of your life.
DION: I don't think it would have came out as good if I tried to write songs and put out an album. I kind of did it inadvertently. I kind of backed into it...
GROSS: Right.
DION: ...You know? And it's interesting the way it came out, you know?
GROSS: So, let's hear "Every Day (That I'm With You)." This song that's, I guess, inspired by Buddy Holly and...
DION: Yes.
GROSS: ...About that...
DION: Absolutely.
GROSS: ...Chapter of your life. This is a song written and performed by Dion from his new CD, Deja Nu.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EVERY DAY (THAT I'M WITH YOU)")
DION: (Singing) Every day, I stare down trouble. Heaven knows it's what I do. Every day, I raise my fist for the struggle. Every day that I'm with you. Every day, I wake up hungry. Yeah, and I try to get my fill. Anyway, it's great big country. Now I've got time to kill.
GROSS: My interview with Dion was recorded in 2000. He turned 86 in July. Last year, he released the album "Girl Friends," featuring duets with female singers. This year, he released the single "New York Minute" and had a new book called "The Rock And Roll Philosopher," a collection of conversations with a friend. After a break, we'll conclude our archive series, R&B, Rockabilly and Early Rock 'n' Roll with Allen Toussaint, the great New Orleans pianist, singer, songwriter and producer. And jazz historian Kevin Whitehead will remember alto saxophonist Art Pepper, who was born 100 years ago today. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF DION'S "EVERY DAY (THAT I'M WITH YOU)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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