Album review: Dion, Blues With Friends
If you know a man by the company he keeps, then Dion DiMucci can produce Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Van Morrison, who are among those on his new album, Blues With Friends.
One of very few first-generation rock ‘n’ rollers still standing, he first found success as lead singer of New York City doo-wop group Dion and The Belmonts before solo hits like Runaround Sue and The Wanderer and the cult 1975 Phil Spector-produced album Born To Be With You.
Now 80, with his voice as strong as ever, Dion releases 14 original songs on Joe Bonamassa’s label KTBA, which stands for Keeping The Blues Alive, with liner notes by Bob Dylan.
First track Blues Coming On starts in classic fashion – “I’m at the station, you take a train, standing waiting in the rain” – with Bonamassa providing raucous guitar.
Uptown Number 7 featuring Brian Setzer of Stray Cats is a gospel song set on a train while Can’t Start Over Again slows it right down, Dion’s world-weary lament accompanied by Jeff Beck.
John Hammond Jr provides harmonica on My Baby Loves To Boogie, Morrison adds vocals to I Got Nothing and when Patti Scialfa sang on Hymn To Her, the album closer, Springsteen, her husband, showed up and asked to play a solo.
It covers all types of blues but the standout is Song For Sam Cooke (Here in America), inspired by playing in Memphis with the King of Soul in 1962 at the height of the civil rights movement.
The lyrics about segregation and discrimination “here in America” hit hard in a song released as America burns again over injustice.
