Meet Dion, one of the last living links to the earliest days of rock ’n’ roll

Only two of the Beatles’ pop contemporaries are depicted on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. One is Bob Dylan. The other is Dion DiMucci. In a pleasing third-act twist, Dylan contributes the liner notes to Dion’s new album Blues With Friends — an act of deference that the recipient is still processing. ‘I asked him, I didn’t know if he had the time, but he sent me back those paragraphs and said that I knew how to write a song.’ He whistles. ‘That’s from a Nobel Prize winner. I thought, I’ll take it, I’ll take it!’

So he should. Dion — like Kylie, a single moniker suffices — is one of the last living links to the early days of street-corner rock ’n’ roll. A rough-around-the-edges Italian–American from the Bronx, he headed the first wave of smart-assed tough–talking urban singers. As the front man of vocal quartet Dion and the Belmonts, he enjoyed huge success in the late 1950s with doo-wop perennials ‘Teenager in Love’ and ‘Where or When’. After going solo, he recorded ‘The Wanderer’, ‘Runaround Sue’ and ‘Ruby Baby’. Later, he made the shift to socially conscious singer-songwriter (Dion recorded the original version of ‘Abraham, Martin and John’ in 1968, quickly picked up by Marvin Gaye), negotiated heroin addiction and converted to evangelical Christianity.

Bruce Springsteen, one of numerous A-list guests on Blues With Friends, describes Dion as the link between Frank Sinatra and rock ’n’ roll. Lou Reed inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Simon & Garfunkel performed ‘Teenager in Love’ at their farewell concert in 1970. He’s well connected. A made guy.