Blues With Friends, Dion (KTBA Records): Album Review

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My first serious musical addiction was Doo-Wop around age seven. Only You and The Great Pretender by the Platters. Runaround Sue by Dion and the Belmonts. One of the very greatest, most soulful artists I have heard. Voice as natural and clear as Sinatra, with just that right amount of grit in the velvet.

With many of those early songs he could soar into the stratosphere as effortlessy as the newly developed U2 spy plane.

Had a heroin habit from an early age and this let his demons in around the mid-sixties. Always a fan of Blues music, he added this to his repertoire. Bad move as far as the record company was concerned. Gained comfort from listening to Robert Johnson.

1968 was a year of America in Meltdown. Martin Luther King assassinated. Democrat Convention police riots. Black America burns. Dion had a religious conversion and a road back again.

The songs on this album are all written by Dion and stretch back to the early sixties. Most have been fine-tuned and completed with co-writer Mike Aquilina.

Producer is Wayne Head, and Dion states they hit it off like brothers. He understood the idea behind how Dion wanted to present these songs, along with the most appropriate and stellar group of accompanying artists.

Song For Sam Cooke (Here In America). The tone here is Springsteen. Wistful and sad and resigned. Partners with Paul Simon on vocal harmony. Sam Cooke first incarnation of Obama, Dion pays tribute to his transformational spirit although he had his demons too which ultimately cost him his life. It is presciently resonant of the current times, but was actually written in the early sixties.

“Cowards thought they could call you names. You sang You Send Me,I sang I Wonder Why”.

Hymn To Him does have Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa. Openly Christian in lyrics, and uplifting and comforting in music. Was originally intended for his Gospel album Velvet and Steel. He visualised Patti as the perfect harmony partner to complete the song. Bruce asked for, and got a guitar spot.

Can’t Start Over Again is Country Soul and could be George Jones. Jeff Beck on guitar is superb, a melodic surf guitar tone.

The majority of the songs are blues in nature and that reflects the choice of guests on this project. The contributions are generally restrained, and add texture. The showcase all the way through is Dion and his Voice.

I Got Nothin’ could be a buried classic from Albert King in the seventies. Joe Louis Walker provides that guitar tone. Then Van Morrison comes in on twin lead vocals. A dream pairing. Van sounding like a younger self, Dion sound slightly rougher in comparison.

Bam Bang Boom is a blues boogie shuffle and appropriately is partnered with Texan Billy Gibbons.

I Got the Cure has Sonny Landreth take a more prominent role with guitar. Dion addresses his past battles and triumphs over his pharmaceutical and recreational drug issues.

Told You Once in August is white country blues with slide guitars from John Hammond and Rory Block. A story of a man who gradually realises he is being cheated on, a “she done me wrong” song.

https://youtu.be/k9-7tvS0_nc

Blues Comin’On has Joe Bonnamassa taking on a more prominent aggressive guitar. A simple song which Joe helped fashion into a monster, as Dion comments.

Uptown No 7 takes it back to classic Gospel of the forties and fifties. A train metaphor. Brian Setzer stands out with Rockabilly/Sister Rosetta Tharpe style rhythm guitar riffs.

I have not got a physical artifact of this in my hands yet, but it is appropriate that Bob Dylan writes the tribute liner notes.

This arrives as a deeply soulful and ultimately uplifting work of art from an artist who has been possessed by the demons of the land, but who also breathes the air of the highest peaks of that land.

Rev Orange Peel

 

Rev Orange Peel
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