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Dion: The Movie Soundtrack that Couldn't Wait

(this comes from http://www.pagesix.com Jess Nashe Column 15 sep 2000)

In a manner of speaking, rock legend Dion DiMucci is all dressed up with practically nowhere to go. At least, on the radio.

The 61-year old former lead singer of Dion and The Belmonts, who sang his way into the Rock VN' Roll Hall of Fame with such doo-wop finger­poppers as "I Wonder Why", "The Wanderer" and "Donna, the Prima Donna", is sporting his first new album in eight years.

"I did the CD inadvertently," Dion maintains.

"Chazz Palmanteri wrote a screenplay around my autobiography, 'The Wanderer'. He also wants to direct and produce the film.

"These songs were designed and tailored to be in some really special, specific scenes in the movie," he adds. "So, it's really a movie soundtrack."

MGM was originally attached to the project, but has since dropped out. No explanation has been offered as to why, and to date no new studio has come on-board.

Undaunted, Dion and his management team came up with a new plan to get the music out. Theoretically, you don't need a movie to release a movie soundtrack -- just radio stations that are willing to play it, and that's exactly what happened.

Dion says he was pressured by friends and even critics to release the music in advance of the film. Long-time manager Dick Foxx was among them. "These cuts were just too good to wait for a movie," he says.

"I put it out," Dion adds. "It's been overwhelming to me, the response has been so good."

The "Deja Nu" CD has reportedly enjoyed a groundswell of support from hundreds of oldies stations around the country. One of them, New York City's WCBS-FM, has blended the "newie" single "Shu Bop" into its daily musical admixture of oldies. 3oe McCoy, the station's Vice President/Program Director, explains: "We're playing it back-to-back with the oldies -- a yesterday and today type thing. So if we play ­Dion's 'The Wanderer', we'll follow it with the 'Shu Bop' song."

McCoy says CBS-FM "kind of debuted the song about a year-and-a-half or two years ago"-- when one of the station's disc jockeys, Bruce "Cousin Brucie" Morrow, celebrated his 40th anniversary in New York Radio. McCoy picks up the story from there: "Dion had written this song and he sent us up a copy. We played it, and people liked it.

"I think we were the only ones who had it [at the time]," McCoy adds, "because I think Dion just gave it to us for Brucie."

A much-loved musical icon, Dion wrote a book about his amazing journey through life. Entitled "The Wanderer," it told of his rise to fame in the late '5 Os, his battle against heroin addiction, and his eventual recovery.

"Heroin nearly killed me," DiMucci says. In his own words, by the mid-'60s he was "really strung out. I was lost."

During his teenage years wandering along Belmont Avenue in the Bronx, Dion began experimenting with heroin; experimentation grew into an addiction, and he suffered his first overdose in 1956 at the age of 17. Dion proudly states now that he has been drug-free for thirty years.

In the more than 40 years that have passed since he achieved mega stardom, Dion DiMucci has fallen into the abyss of depression, found God, and cheated death on more than one occasion.

Aside from his drug overdoses, he says he narrowly missed dying with fellow rockers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper in a 1959 plane crash.

"I was asked to go on [the planej," lie recalls, adding: "It was 36 dollars and my parents were paying 36 dollars a month in rent at the time. My head hadn't stretched... to the place where I could spend a whole month's rent for a 45 minute plane ride, so I refused it." One cut on "Deja Nu" --"Everyday That I'm With You" -- is based on his friendship with Holly, DiMucci says.

The favorable response to "Deja Nu" among stations that routinely play Dion's hits from the 'SOs and '60s is not unexpected. But the crossover potential [its ability to find acceptance by stations with other formats] is in question.

Because of the death of the kind of Top 40 radio that dominated the airwaves in the 1950s and '60s -- and which launched the original Dion hits; and, due to the fragmentation of radio -- the targeting of narrow niche audiences, this resurfacing of a former music sensation is being somewhat stonewalled beyond the oldies market.

For example, grey-haired bobby-soxers won't find it played on their favorite metro-area "light" music station. "We don't play songs from the 'SOs, and it sounds like a song from the '50," comments Jim Ryan, Program Director of WLTW, which is classified as an adult contemporary station.

Asked about Billy Joel's early-'80s hit "For The Longest Time", which was done in a doo-wop style, Ryan said WLTW does play it. "Billy Joel is one of our biggest testing artists," he explains. "We play 20 different Billy Joel songs.

"Whereas Dion is not an artist that tests particularly well with our audience."

Even rock hold-outs like WPLJ, an adult Top 40 radio station in Manhattan, are reluctant to stray too far from its accepted "current hits" playlist. "Sound wise, even though it's a current record, it just doesn't fit our format," says Tony Mascaro, the station's music director. "It's Qut of our niche. We appeal to adult females between 25 and 34. [The new Dion record] fits more into an oldies niche."

McCoy, however, believes that "Shu Bop" may be finding airplay on some adult contemporary radio stations in other markets.

No matter, the fragmented radio marketplace doesn't bother Dion. He notes that everyone who has heard the music on "Deja Nu" has been excited about it. In effect, good music is good music. "This is NOT an oldie," he asserts. "It's a hit record."

He offers one light-hearted concession: the CD might well be thought of as "the first oldie of the new millennium."

Whether it finds a home beyond oldies radio stations or not, Dion is back on stage and being well received by young and old. "We're packing places," he says, "and you see three generations in the audience. You see people my age, and their kids, and their kids. It's really a lot of fun."

CBS-FM disc jockey Bobby Jay began his show business career as a doo-wop singer at about the same time Dion began his. Today, he sings with The Teenagers, the group originally fronted by the late Frankie Lymon. Jay finds the same multi­generational audiences when he performs in concerts -- both as a singer and an emcee.

Asked why doo-wop is enjoying so much support in the year 2000--SO years after it came to the musical forefront, Jay points to Public Television for both an indication of the music's popularity, and a contributing factor.

look at the success of 'Doo wop 50’s ran on PBS last december he 1 ~ explains. "This program, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of the genre, was the greatest fund-raiser in the history of public television. It raised like 23 million dollars, far exceeding expectations"

As a result of "Doo-W0~ 50," Jay says, many of the performers are working again. "I do all the doo-wop shows at Westbury Music Fair [Dick Foxx, Dion's manager, is the Promoter]," he says. "In the past, the first show was most always a sellout, but the second didn't generally fare as well.

"Since 'Doo-Wop 50', our second shows are now selling out," he notes.

"Rhino Records released videos of 'Doo-W0~ 50'," Bobby Jay adds. "I think it went gold." The same has happened with various doo-wop compilation CDs, he says.

In early November, Capital Records is releasing an anthology of Dion's greatest doo-wop hits. To be called "King Of The New York Streets", Dion says it will cover 40 years of his music.> The album will feature liner notes from Some of the singer's most famous admirers, the likes of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon. "My friends like Lou Reed, Waylon Jennings, they wrote Some notes for it, too," he adds.

Despite Don McLean's "American Pie" lament that the music of the '5Os -- that of rock legends like Dion -- was snuffed out with the death of Buddy Holly, the doo-wop dittys that sprang to life during an innocent time and along rough and tumble New York streets, lives on.

Its harmonies are again sweet, as are the memories they evoke. And they are being enjoyed by a new generation, while an older one savors the music like a fine vine: vintage 1957.

- with George Flowers

9/15/00