Search - Dion :: Road I'm On: A Retrospective

Mostly Redundant

Tony Picc | Old Greenwich, CT USA | 09/20/2005

(2 out of 5 stars)

"If you buy this and wonder where you've heard this collection before, check out Bronx Blues. Most of that CD is duplicated here. You really gotta love Dion to have both :). Beyond the fact that this seems like a record company rip off, I never really felt that Dion's transition from doowop artist to solo rocker to lounge star to folk singer really worked that well at all. If you add folk singer to blues artist to gospel singer to rocker to oldies artist, I guess the circle is somewhat complete. This one just wasn't necessary."

As A Restrospective Of His Columbia Days It Misses The Mark

08/20/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Dion DiMucci spent the first years of his career with the Laurie label where, with The Belmonts from 1958 to 1960, he put nine of the most memorable tunes of that era into the Billboard Pop Top/Hot 100, two of which crossed over to the R&B charts. In 1960 he went solo and added another four to the Pop list, including three R&B cross-overs, before hooking up in 1961 with a group sounding very similar to The Belmonts - The Del Satins.



Together, beginning with Runaround Sue, they scored another ten for Laurie [two of which came after they moved over to Columbia in 1963], and added four more for their new label, with the best of those being the old Drifters' hit, Ruby Baby [# 2 Hot 100/# 6 R&B], Donna The Prima Donna [# 6 Hot 100/# 17 R&B] and Drip Drop [also # 6 Hot 100], the latter two billing him as Dion Di Mucci.



The only Columbia hits done without the Del Satins were Be Careful Of Stones That You Throw, an old Hank Williams recording from 1952 that he took to # 13 Adult Contemporary (AC)/# 31 Hot 100, and Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode, which reached # 71 Hot 100 in 1964 and was his last hit for that label. In 1968 he was back with Laurie and added three more hits there, one more in 1970 for Warner, and his last in 1989 with Dave Edmonds and Patty Smyth for Arista.



Unfortunately, Be Careful of Stones That You Throw is not included here, and this, coupled with the fact that just one of his Columbia hit B-sides is included, is where the volume misses the mark. The one included is Chicago Blues, which backed Johnny B. Goode, and is presented here in stereo for the first time.



Missing B-sides are: He'll Only Hurt You [b/o Ruby Baby]; The Loneliest Man In The World [b/o This Little Girl]; I Can't Believe (That You Don't Love Me Anymore) b/o Be Careful Of Stones; You're Mine [b/o Donna The Prima Donna]; No One's Waiting For Me [b/o Drip Drop].



Two pages of introductory notes by Mitchell Cohen are followed by five more pages by David Hinckley, and there is a partial discography of the contents [no chart details]. The sound quality is excellent, and while I normally would have deducted 2 stars for the missing hit and B-sides, what they do include is worthy of an extra star. Especially tracks 1, 4, and 7 on Disc 2.

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Dion's Columbia years

Laurence Upton | Wilts, UK | 07/25/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Most of Dion's recorded output is available on CD, including a lot of material not released at the time, but a lot of it is in the form of compilations and it is impossible to collect without ending up with a lot of duplications. The Road I'm On is an overview of Dion's time with the Columbia label, between 1962 and 1966, during which time he producing two albums and a dozen singles. Both albums were named after huge hit singles, Ruby Baby and Donna The Prima Donna. A third album of outtakes, Wonder Where I'm Bound, was released in 1968, long after Dion had left the label.



Of the 35 tracks on this 2CD, a dozen are previously unreleased and a few more are first-time stereo re-issues. Seven tracks are duplicated from an earlier compilation, Bronx Blues, which had twelve tracks not included here, though some are merely alternate versions or mixes.



Dion was in the process of breaking away from his doo-wop roots during this period, and exploring the burgeoning folk-rock scene as well as discovering a deep love for the blues, long before the British invasion of the blues and beat groups that introduced the form to the US mainstream. A few of these came out on singles, such as Hoochie Coochie Man (the only mono mix on this 2CD) and Spoonful, but mostly they stayed in the vaults. His folk-rock leanings were sometimes quite derivative of Bob Dylan. As well as covering It's All Over Now Baby Blue some of his own songs were blatant pastiches of Dylan songs, as Dion struggled for direction. The unreleased My Love, for example, owes a lot to Love Minus Zero Equals No Limit. On top of this, during 1965 Dion was working with Dylan's producer Tom Wilson, and they put together a session band called the Wanderers that featured Al Kooper, who famously played on Like A Rolling Stone, and Carlo Mastrangelo from the Belmonts. One unfortunate reason for the lack of appearance of many of these sides is Dion's descent into heroin addiction, which began in 1964, but from which thankfully he later recovered.



Each disc ends with a couple of special tracks. Disc One has an early version of Ruby Baby, flourishing a fabulous sax solo, and an Italian language version of Donna The Prima Donna. Disc Two has two tracks newly recorded at the time the album was being compiled, in 1996, with his new band the Little Kings: a version of Born To Cry, and a song written by the band's guitarist Scott Kempner, You Move Me. Oddly, this isn't mentioned in the sleeve notes, which are rather reticent about what was and wasn't released or when tracks were cut (in fact nothing else here was recorded more recently than October 1965)."