Blues With Friends

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Bruce Springsteen summed up Dion DiMucci perfectly: the link between Frank Sinatra and rock'n'roll. From the 50s and 60s with the Belmonts - the true Rolls of doo-wop - to his solo career, the singer from the Bronx has always been inseparable from New York, and his 2016 album, the aptly named New York Is My Home, reminded us of that. The Big Apple, yes, but also the blues, a genre he has often approached in a very personal way. Blues is at the heart of Blues With Friends, another apt title. And oh what friends! The Boss and his wife Patti Scialfa, Jeff Beck, Paul Simon, Billy Gibbons, Brian Setzer, Van Morrison, Joe Louis Walker, Joe Bonamassa, John Hammond, Sonny Landreth, Rory Block, Stevie Van Zandt... It's hard to put together a more impressive list. It’s also proof that Dion's aura is still intact after 80 years... "I wanted an album of songs that were strong and memorable and told stories that were worth telling. Blues has been at the heart of my music since the early 1960s. I was covering Willie Dixon and Jimmy Reed in my early years at Columbia—much to the dismay of my corporate masters—and my own ‘The Wanderer’ is a twelve-bar blues song." Despite the eclectic guest cast, Dion stays true to himself throughout this 2020 vintage, released by Keeping The Blues Alive Records, Bonamassa's label, and it's his sidemen who are more in tune with his vision. The years have slightly tinged his magical voice, which now goes even better with blues, a genre to be handled with care, as Bob Dylan writes in the record’s cover notes. It’s a blues that’s never disconnected from everyday life, like Song for Sam Cooke (Here in America), a powerful duet with Paul Simon about segregation in the southern states in the early 60's, which takes on even greater meaning as America catches fire with the release of this elegant Blues With Friends. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Notes for Blues with Friends by Bob Dylan: With a Vaudevillian Father and the Doo-wop street corners of the Bronx as teachers, Dion learned early on that the way to be heard and reach hearts was to sing in his own rhythmic voice. And when you have a voice as deep and wide as Dion’s, that voice can take you all the way around the world and then all the way back home to the blues. You have to be careful with the blues. They’re strong with lust and you can overpay for them, but they quote the law. It’s a shame more people don’t follow that law. Guy Mitchell sang that he never felt more like singing the blues and we know what he meant. It is an honor for honor’s sake. Dion knows how to sing and he knows just the right way to craft these songs, these blues songs. He’s got some friends here to help him out, some true luminaries. But in the end it’s Dion by himself alone, and that masterful voice of his that will keep you returning to share these blues songs with him. – Bob Dylan