“Dion comes from a time when so-so singers couldn’t cut it—they either never got heard or got exposed quick and got out of the way. To have it, you really had to have it, no smoke and mirrors then—not a minute to spare—rough and ready—glorious and grand—grieving with heartache and feeling too much but still with the always “better not try it” attitude. If you want to hear a great singer, listen to Dion. His voice takes its color from all palettes —he’s never lost it—his genius has never deserted him.”
                —Bob Dylan

“They didn’t sign Chuck Berry or Little Richard or Jerry Lee Lewis. Those guys were from outer space! No, they signed a good-looking Italian kid from the Bronx, and threw their plans, hopes and dollar dreams behind that!” 

—Dion, reflecting on his tenure at Columbia Records

In 1962, Dion became the first rock artist signed to Columbia Records, one of the biggest record companies in the world. It was a very lucrative five-year deal, during which he recorded a slew of great tracks — some of the very best music, in fact, of his entire career. Columbia had lured Dion in on something of a bait-and-switch basis. Their thinking rested on a bit of music-industry “conventional wisdom,” which was that the rock’n’roll audience, with an age range of nine to fourteen years old, would outgrow their taste for that music when they came of age. The suits figured that with the arrival of adulthood, attentions would shift to marriage, family, a house in the suburbs and other such concerns, with tastes and purchasing habits changing accordingly. Industry execs figured that the former rock’n’roll audience would naturally turn to “adult music” — Sinatra-style saloon songs, pop standards, show tunes and the like — to satisfy their listening needs. With that in mind the Columbia execs enacted a plan to remake the full-bore rock’n’roll animal that Dion was into a bow-tied lounge singer. It had worked for his pal and fellow Bronxite Bobby Darin over at Atlantic, but for Dion it was gonna be a tough fit. 

Dion DiMucci made his first two records for the diminutive NYC label Mohawk in 1957, followed by a stash of smash hits for a new diskery called Laurie Records, where his star shone, first with the great Belmonts and then, as a solo artist. Columbia, aware of other suitors, snatched him up quickly in the fall of  ’62 when his three year Laurie contract was up. Mitch Miller, Columbia’s director of A&R, hated rock’n’roll and made no secret of it, but by now it was evident that the greasy kid stuff could not be wished into the cornfield. The label had little choice but to hold their collective nose and get with the program. Bob Mersey, who had arranged some of his Laurie sides, would become his first producer at Columbia. Mersey had already helmed a long string of successes for the company, working with such major artists as Andy Williams, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme (each as solos), Bobby Vinton, Barbra Streisand and a pre-Atlantic Aretha Franklin. None of these artists was anything close to a rock’n’roller.

Still not comfortable with the rock sound, Columbia set Mersey up with their new star, counting on him to tone Dion down. The first Mersey session resulted in an irresistible version of Leiber & Stoller’s “Ruby Baby,” originally recorded by The Drifters. Released in December 1962,
it rocketed up the charts to #2. Despite this out-of-the-box success with a rocker, Mersey returned to the original plan, ordering up a small orchestra of 18 musicians for the next session and handing them charts to such chestnuts as “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You,” “You Made Me Love You” and, believe it or not, Al Jolson’s “My Mammy”! The label’s long-range plan to turn Dion into a sophisticated crooner was in the works. In silent response, Dion felt his heels start to dig in, but not before giving the plan a shot. Shelling out 25 G’s of his own dough, he ordered up professional charts and a snappy nightclub act, replete with scripted repartee. He would take the show on the road. It would include some of his old hits, along with a few folk tunes built around a focal point of non-rockin’ legit-music. The act was to be called “The Last Of The One-Name Singers.”

Dion rehearsed, and rehearsed and rehearsed some more. At the early gigs he sang the hell out of every song in the repertoire, even the old standards. The audiences ate it up, the reviews were positive, Columbia Records was happy. Everyone was happy. Everyone except Dion, who was miserable. But he held it back, sucked it up, played the good soldier. No kid from the Bronx, however, is likely to hold it back forever, and one night after a show a downbeat and depressed Dion returned home to his new Manhattan digs, took the elevator to his floor, and as he passed the incinerator chute, flung $25,000 worth of new act down the hatch.
Arrivederci, baby, and viva la revolucion!

The success of “Ruby Baby” validated Columbia’s signing of Dion, and their assignment of Bob Mersey as his producer. A year-long succession of hits followed:  the highly infectious “Sandy” and Goffin & King’s “This Little Girl,” both which went to #21 in the Billboard charts; a
version of—this I find amazing—the Hank Williams (as Luke the Drifter) hit “Be Careful Of Stones That You Throw,” to #31; “Donna The Prima Donna” and another Leiber & Stoller/Drifters number, “Drip Drop,” both which rose to #6. 

This was all during Dion’s first year at Columbia, yet the label remained committed to its makeover plan. In light of the big coin he was ringing up for them, Dion and Mersey worked out a compromise, by which for each standard that he recorded, he was given time to cut a Hank song, a folk song, a blues number, some folk-blues-jazz or whatever the hell he pleased. For the quo half of this quid pro quo, he was given the freedom to go into the studio whenever he wanted, and record whatever he wanted. The problem was that Columbia would release only a fraction of the stuff. Dion was making some of the most exciting new music of his career—music that was pointing the way to his own future—yet it was all but ignored by his label. The situation was quickly becoming untenable for both Dion and, most likely, Columbia. 

1963 would bring a new producer in to Columbia named Tom Wilson. A Texas native with a magna cum laude economics degree from Harvard, he had begun his music career in 1955, founding the Transition label where he produced innovative new-jazz artists including Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra. A&R stints with Savoy, United Artists and Audio Fidelity followed. His first assignment at Columbia was to complete production on Bob Dylan’s Freewheelin’ album, from which John Hammond had been cut loose, after working on it for almost a year. Wilson would go on to produce the next three Dylan albums. His last production for him would be the breakthrough single “Like A Rolling Stone” in 1965, which would elevate Dylan from well-known composer of popular protest songs to rock’n’roll superstar. But let’s back up.

Tom Wilson and Dion had become friends at the label before they worked together, and often spoke about what was happening in music, what records were hot, and so on. Both Dion and Wilson talked a lot about how much they both were inspired by the Animals’ superb blues-rock version of the traditional folk song “House Of The Rising Sun,” which had come roaring into the American airwaves in late summer 1964. Dion asked Wilson to try giving Dylan the Animals-type rocked up treatment. Dion had checked out Dylan’s studio sessions from the time they had cut their respective recordings at the label in 1963, and he knew what he was working with as an acoustic folk artist. He could easily imagine adding electric guitar, bass, drums, maybe some keyboards, to the basic tracks.  Remember that Dylan as a teenager had been at the Winter Dance Party shows in 1959, and had seen Dion perform with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. 

Some weeks after that conversation, Wilson informed Dion that he had booked a session for just such a purpose, and asked Dion if he would like to come into to the studio with him.
 By this time, the end of 1964, Tom Wilson had produced the last session of Freewheelin’, all of The Times They Are A-Changin’, and most recently Another Side Of
Bob Dylan.

It was on December 8, 1964, with Dylan on tour in California, that Tom Wilson and Dion took a cab down to Studio C, with the express purpose of hearing what Bob Dylan would sound like with a full-electric backing band, as opposed to the simple guitar/voice arrangements that had characterized Dylan’s records to this point. Wilson cued up his acoustic “House Of The Rising Sun” and a couple of other tracks, and the session guys, including drummer Bobby Gregg, played along to the tracks. Wilson presented the electrified musical playback to Dylan on his return from the Coast. 

Says Dion, “I truly thought Dylan was a purist and would never go for it but the next thing I know, I walk into the control room at Studio A and Bob Dylan’s doing a session, and Tom Wilson and John Hammond are sitting there looking out over a sea of musicians ready to rock. At that point it became, ‘Hold on to your ass everybody!’ and that was that.”

The January 14, 1965 session resulted in the tracks on the electric side of Bringing It All Back Home, issued in mid-March. Three weeks earlier, Dion cut his heart bustin’ “So Much Younger”, so flawless in music and message-—quintessential, definitive folk-rock. Dylan would cut “Like A Rolling Stone” five months later with Tom Wilson. 

At the same time, and working on a hunch, Wilson decided to give the plugged-in idea a shot with Simon & Garfunkel, whose acoustic debut album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. had flopped on release. Drafting session guys from “Like A Rolling Stone,” he proceeded to turn a rather traditional acoustic song from the album called “The Sound Of Silence” into a folk-rock masterpiece that hit #1 in the charts and set off the duo’s phenomenally successful career. Wilson had some kind of magic and vision going there at Columbia, the plug-in kind, with plenty kilowatts. Rock’n’roll hating Mitch Miller exiting into retirement to the tune of electric-folk marked the start of a new era that welcomed innovation, experimentation, and new directions. The times were, as they say,
a-changin’.

For Tom Wilson, his next dose of hi-volt folk would be directed at Dion & the Wanderers, who had cut their first recordings as a band in the spring, with Bob Mersey at the wheel. 

Dion formed the group he dubbed the Wanderers out of a need to have his own combo that would back him in the studio as well as on live dates, as well. Lead guitarist Johnny Falbo hailed, like Dion himself, from the Fordham section of the Bronx. He had already been Dion’s music director during his show biz trials, and he provided especially intuitive playing, selecting the right spots in the songs, lending melodic and rhythmic embellishments with imagination and flair. Pete Falsciglia was from the Morris Park section of the Bronx. He hadn’t played bass prior to joining up with Dion, but you wouldn’t know it from his performances on these tracks. Carlo Mastrangelo had been the bass singer in the Belmonts, who had backed Dion at Laurie. Despite rarely working at it, he was also, in Dion’s opinion “the best drummer I ever heard. Multi-talented Al Kooper was Tom Wilson’s secret weapon at the time, and he was tapped into the group as a de facto Wanderer. 

Kickin’ Child represents the first true album Dion ever made—the first one with a continuity of music, lyrical style and overall sense of purpose, as opposed to the “two hits plus filler” model that had characterized most album programming to this point. Although the LP format was not yet the currency-of-choice in the pop-music marketplace, this spate of recording sessions was intended for release as an album. The songs were designed to be heard together, with intentional segues, intros and outros, and sequencing.

Beginning in the spring of 1965 and peaking with intensive sessions on September 20 and October 4, Dion and Wilson, together with the Wanderers, knocked out fifteen folk-rock tracks that were a culmination of everything Dion felt he had experienced both professionally and personally. The tracks bring together soaring and melancholy melodies, spot-on harmonies, and jangling guitars, with keyboards and drums forging what could now be defined as a signature folk-rock sound.

The soul-searching thoughts, feelings and dreams present in many of Dion’s earlier songs were finally brought to fruition by his own progress as an artist and as a man. Stories of love, loss, self-examination, self-doubt and determination abound here. 

Since the early ’60s Dion had been spending time in the Greenwich Village folk-music scene. Inspired by what he heard there, he began
developing a new musical vocabulary for reporting his own personal
excavations of the soul. The songs on this album are the first results of that exploration.

Although intended as a proper album, Columbia would issue only a few of these tracks, and only as 45 sides. Our title song “Kickin’ Child” was recorded in April 1965 and issued in May. Also recorded in the Spring before Tom Wilson came aboard (Bob Mersey would remain designated hitter for Dion through June)  was one of the first-ever covers of  Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” cut by Dion in June, shortly before Dion put together the Wanderers. Dion had learned the song while visiting Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home recording session.

“Tomorrow Won’t Bring The Rain” and “You Move Me, Babe” were paired for release in October, with an attractive picture sleeve and a Spotlight review in Billboard. “Time In My Heart For You” and “Wake Up Baby,” the latter featuring guest singer Navita, were cut in September and October, respectively, and were released in February 1966. “Two Ton Feather” and “So Much Younger,” both Dion originals,  were also paired as a single. Tom Wilson had by then departed to an A&R job with MGM/Verve (where he would usher the likes of the Velvet Underground and The Mothers Of Invention into the world). Before he left Columbia, he produced the first version of “Two Ton Feather.” The Wilson version, included here, went unreleased at the time.

Dion split with the Wanderers and Columbia in 1966, reuniting with the Belmonts for one album at ABC, Together Again. When it failed to make waves, he returned to Laurie, where he hit gold at the end of 1968, shooting to the top of the charts internationally with “Abraham, Martin And John.” A few months later, in April 1969, Columbia tried to cash in on Laurie’s success with the quickly compiled Wonder Where I’m Bound LP. It was an awkwardly programmed miscellany of old and unissued Dion recordings, with four year old Wanderers tracks unceremoniously sandwiched between other material on the album. The title track was a 1965 cover of Tom Paxton’s lovely “I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound,” which Columbia, in a poorly-veiled attempt to mimic the sound of “Abraham, Martin And John,” layered with string overdubs. Dion was livid at the adulterated string edit of the track, and was in disbelief that he was not consulted before it was done. The album, despite its effort to piggyback on another record’s stringy success, did not dent the charts or garner press. For Dion, it was a double blow to see his stellar 1965 material mishandled. It would return to the vaults for forty-eight years.

The significant recordings comprising Dion’s ultimate folk-rock album are presented now as they were originally intended. Here at last is Dion’s original, undubbed, no-strings-attached version of “I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound,” topping off fifteen tracks that have been unavailable for decades. Words cannot express how happy I am that these songs are finally seeing the light of day, all in one place. Kickin’ Child delivers the Great Lost Dion Album to you fifty-odd years late, but not too late. If this album had never come out, that would have been a shame, a crime, a tragedy. But it’s here today in all its original glory, for you to hear in full, start to finish, as Dion intended it to be heard. I believe it is well worth the wait. I think of this collection, together with the blues music Dion made in 1964, as the missing link in his career.

Scott Kempner is a songwriter and musician, who collaborated with his friend Dion as members of the band Little Kings. He was born in 1954 in the South Bronx, in the shadow of Yankee Stadium.

I want to thank Sony Legacy for finding this album, in its entirety, in the vaults of Columbia Records. The songs had been there for more than fifty years, unreleased, and that was a source of frustration for me. When Rob Santos sent me the songs, remastered from the 1965 originals, I listened straight through while driving across Alligator Alley to a gig. My old emotions disappeared like vapor and gave way to peace, resolve, and an overwhelming sense of gratitude and joy. To have these songs come to light is amazing. They were produced by the legendary Tom Wilson, who encouraged me and the band to perform live in Studio A at Columbia.
I hope you enjoy the surprise as much as I do. 

I also want to thank Miriam Linna and Billy Miller of Norton Records whose passion, vision and dedication to this project and to rock’n’roll itself. We are all very much touched by the presence of the spirit of the late Billy Miller, whose enthusiasm started the ball rolling. 

Thank you to Scott Kempner, whose passion, tireless dedication and love for the music, helped guide this project—thank you as well for writing the liner notes. From the time we first heard the recovered original recordings a few years back, you helped ensure this was all
gonna happen. 

Special thanks to Dick Fox, my manager, mentor and overseer on this project, for his direction, heavy lifting and vision in my career—whose talent, knowledge, wisdom and insight I could not do without. You’re
the Greatest.

A note of thanks from Norton to the Phil Milstein gang
(Frank van den Elzen, Judah Warsky, Richie Unterberger)

Don Hunstein photos courtesy
Sony Music Archives; all other photos courtesy Dion

Mastered by Vic Anesini at
Battery Studios, New York, NY

Design by Pat Broderick/Rotodesign

Personal Manager: Dick Fox,
Fox Entertainment Company, Inc.

diondimucci.com

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Also available on Norton:

CED-411 Dion - Kickin’ Child
(compact disc)

45-196 Dion - Kickin’ Child/Too Much Monkey Business (45 RPM)