When
Dion DiMucci, one of the early great rock & roll stars, knocked out
Bronx in Blue in 2005, it caused a rumbling stir among critics, if no one else. To be honest, no one expected much -- not even
Dion, who hadn't made music for the masses since 1968 with his last big hit, "Abraham, Martin and John." He nailed down a few hip records in the early '70s and has made plenty since, but American audiences don't get to hear them for all the usual reasons. If the biz wasn't itself, his turn of the century classic,
Déjà Nu, would have sold a million or two.
Bronx in Blue was a killer blues record. Yeah, a blues record. It was on this tiny little label with inadequate distribution, and whatever...you know the story. But if you were lucky enough to hear that disc, you could hear the same
Dion who issued those hip blues records for Columbia in the mid-'60s, produced by
Tom Wilson. The years melted away and
Dion's unique take on the blues via the street corners, record shops, and alleyways of the Bronx came pouring through the speakers like some message from another world. For anyone cynical enough to think it improper for
Dion to title this record
Son of Skip James, quit reading right now; you won't get it at all.
DiMucci played the Newport festivals and was as deeply under the sway of
James,
John Hurt,
Fred McDowell,
Lightnin' Hopkins, and
Muddy Waters as
Dylan,
the Band,
Fred Neil,
John Fahey,
Tom Rush, and the like. And he could sing that music with the same open, unselfconscious freedom and abandon as the masters.
Dion knew the blues, and a trip through his autobiography would convince almost anyone.