DION

Coming up on the Bronx’s mean streets as the poster boy of 50s doo-wop was just the start for Dion DiMucci. Spared from the 1959 plane crash that killed tour-mate Buddy Holly, then seduced by the blues, his six-decade path has led through treacherous Southern juke joints, crippling addiction, rebirth and his late-period status as a rock ’n’ roll founding father. Now, with the release of new solo album, Blues With Friends – its all-star tracklisting featuring guitar luminaries from Jeff Beck to Joe Bonamassa – the 81-year-old New Yorker’s influence and legacy are beyond doubt.

- Henry Yates

Love At First Strum

“My uncle got me a Gibson L-1, that’s what I learned on. I have a picture of myself holding that guitar at 12 years old. My God, I wish I still had it today. Once I’d learned that first song – Hank Williams’ Honky Tonk Blues – you couldn’t get me away from it. My mother tried to get me out of the house, but I just wanted to learn another Hank Williams or Jimmy Reed song. Then, when I started getting a little better, I saw the J-200 and saved up the $350 for that. Man, that was the guitar. I just had to have one. So I was a pretty weird kid. I was reading Saint Thomas Aquinas, listening to Jimmy Reed. How freakin’ weird could you get for a Bronx Italian neighborhood kid, y’know?”

Wrong Side Of The Tracks

“The Bronx was a tough neighbourhood. You learned to defend yourself real early on. I wouldn’t consider myself a tough guy. I’m a poet, I’m a singer, I’m an artist. But I had an attitude. You had to. I belonged to a gang. But inside me, I wasn’t that guy. I grew up across the street from George’s Bar and Grill, and in summer they had all these gangster guys hanging out, with tank tops, tattoos and gold chains. So those characters deserved a song written about them, which ended up being The Wanderer [1961]. “Did I have any run-ins? Well, once they heard the kind of music I was making, they left me alone, because they didn’t think anything of it. They wanted to hear Italian music, like Jimmy Roselli or Al Martino. They thought I sounded like a wet dishrag.”

Have Guitar, Will Travel