By Ed DeBlasio.
Article from: MODERN SCREEN, August 1959.
(Thanx to Juan for forwarding it .)
" Dion lay on his cot and listened. On the other side of the dressing room sat his buddies, the Belmont’s, the guys he sang with. But none of them spoke. And the room was quiet, unusually quiet. "It's like they should be there, next door", Dion said, finally, "and like they're just not joking around tonight".
The others nodded.
Dion's eyes closed. It was two days ago, he thought. The four of us sat talking together, - me, The Bopper, Ritchie, Buddy. We talked about the future. "Yeah boy" we said, "this tour's the biggest and the people are flocking like birds at one of those California missions. So why don't we stick together as a package, at least for a couple of years? We can travel together, laugh it up together, learn together - one from the other. Okay? Okay... great boy great!" Dion reached to his side now. His hand rested on a guitar.
"If you don't mind" he remembered The Bopper saying to him yesterday, in the lobby of the little hotel, that big friendly grin crossing his face, "would you take thi here git-fiddle with you in the bus? the pilot says he don't want to weigh down the plane with any musical instruments, especially a crate like this". "Sure" Dion had said, taking the guitar and putting it with his own baggage.
Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly had come up to him then.
"Come on Dion" Buddy had said. "Why don't you fly with the three of us 'stead of taking the bus?"
"I'd rather not" Dion had said.
"Come on man" Ritchie had said, "lot's of people charter planes nowadays... and this way we can get to our next stop early. We can get a good night's sleep for a change. We can do some laundry. And we can eat on a real-live restaurant, too, instead of one of those roadside places again". "I'd like to fellows" Dion had said, "but thirty six dollars just to go by plane - gee, I can't afford that. Not if I'm gonna save for that car I'm saving for". The others had shrugged, said okay, shaken hands with him and left.
Dion remembered how he'd waved good bye to them as the cab that was taking them to the airport pulled away from the Clear Lakes, Iowa, hotel. And he remembered now how, just a few hours ago, the woman behind the desk of the Moorehead, Minnesota, hotel had looked at him when signing in, he'd asked "are the other fellows up in their rooms now?". "Other fellows?" the woman had said.
Dion had pointed to a theater poster behind her. "The fellows in the show" he said, "My pals. They checked in here last night".
The woman lowered her eyes for a moment.
And then, looking back up at Dion, she'd said, "you haven't heard yet on the radio?".
"Heard what?" Dion had asked.
"The airplane the boys were in" the woman had said "it went down, in a storm. There was this lightning and... your friends were... killed".
Killed and dead, Dion thought now, lying on the cot in the quiet dressing room, trying hard not to believe it, but knowing that it was true.
Killed and dead... and dead... and dead. There was a knock on the door. "Ten minutes boys", somebody called out. Dion didn't move.
Normally ten minutes before show time was the most hectic part of the day. But Dion simply continued to lie there now. "Ten minutes - and what?" he thought. "A stage... a lot of colored lights... a couple of songs... people sitting there watching you...". He closed his eyes again. "Who wants it?" he thought to himself. All his life, this was exactly what Dion had wanted - show business, the fun of it, the excitement, the hard work that might pay off someday, the rough grind of the one night stands, the singing, the improving, the learning... but always the fun of it.
And now the fun had turned to tragedy, just like that. Just because of one little airplane, one bolt of lightning. And again Dion asked himself, "who wants it - this life, this business?".
His father had wanted it for him even before he was born. "My wife was about seven months pregnant when it came to me", recalls Pat Dimucci. "I'd been in the entertainment business all my life, as a dancer and a puppeteer, and it came to me this certain night that my son would grow up to be in the same business as I was". When I told my wife, Frances, she said to me, Really?" Well, first of all how do you know it's going to be a son we'll have?, I know it is, that's all, I told her. And then I said - And you know what we're going to name him?" "What?" my wife said. "Dion" I told her. "But I never heard of that name" she said.
"That's just the point" I told her, "It's different, it's distinctive, it's flashy. People will remember it.
"Pat" she said, "we're Catholics. We have to name our baby after a Catholic saint. And there's no Saint Dion". "The middle name can be Catholic" I told her, "so we'll call him Dion Francis - after you, his mother, and after San Francesco, who loved the flowers and the birds, and nature so much. Okay?". "My wife had always loved San Francesco. She began to smile".
"Okay" she said.
"Dion, I said, kind of to myself. I could see it in lights even then. DION I said louder now, wanting to shout it out. DION..."
"And that's the way my son got his start in show business, two months before his birth... He got a good head start...".
It wasn't till Dion was five however, that it was decided just which phase of show business he would go into. The decision was made the night his dad took him to the opera at a little theater near their Bronx, New York, apartment.
The bill that night was that favorite Italian doubled header, Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci.
During Cavalleria, Dion was the model of what a good boy at the opera should be, quiet, attentive, seated back on his chair. But towards the end of the first act of Pagliacci, when the tenor sobbingly began the great aria of the evening (Vesti la Giubba) something happened to Dion. Suddenly, he jumped up from his seat. threw his arms into the air and he began to sing too. The tenor insulted stopped.
The conductor turned from the podium to throw a mean look in the direction of the DiMuccis.
Shouts of "shut that kid up!" came floating indelicately from the rafters. Everybody, in fact, was annoyed, except Dion's father.
"Now I know" he said proudly looking at his embarrassed wife, "the boy will be a singer".
"A little while after that" says Dion's no longer embarrassed mother, "we bought him a guitar. Pop said a good singer should also know how to play the piano, so he could accompany himself. But things weren't financially very good for us at the time, so we had to settle for a guitar we bought for nine dollars in one of those pawn shops in the neighborhood. "When we gave it to Dion he was very happy", "but a girlfriend of ours said - what did you gave him a guitar for? That's only what the hillbillies use. And you can't be a hillbilly from the Bronx". "I didn't know how to answer her then, but I had to laugh that summer when the family - including two little girls by this time, my daughters Donna and Joan, went to the country to visit some relatives for a week. It was the first time Dion had ever seen the country. And as soon as we stopped the car at the farm where we were staying Dion got so excited with this new kind of world around him that he jumped out of the car, pulled up some grass from the earth and kissed it. And then he began to sing one of those country songs he'd been listening to on the radio on the ride up. He sang it with so much feeling, and just like that singer on the radio. And I thought to myself, - Oh yes, you can be a hillbilly from the Bronx! And a good one too!". Dion began to sing professionally when he was about nine. Every Saturday night - equipped with his guitar, a little straw hat and a repertoire of some twenty numbers, mostly hillbilly - he would saunter over to a cabaret down the block from where he lived, pass the front door and walk over to an entrance on the side of the building.
The routine that followed was always the same. Dion would rap on the door three times, hard and loud. The proprietor of the cabaret would open it. "Can I sing a few songs tonight?" Dion would ask. "Yeah, sure Sonny - the customers like you" the proprietor would say. "but first let me see if there's any cop noseying around". "Why" Dion would ask. "How many times do I have to tell you" the proprietor would say "you're under age. It's illegal for a kid to sing in a joint that sells booze. That's why". The proprietor would then rush out to the sidewalk, give a quick look around, nod, and a few minutes later, Dion would be in the cabaret singing. "Sometimes I was able to sing long enough so that I could make four or five dollars from the customers" he recalls today. "But other times the proprietor would think he saw a cop standing outside and I'd get the signal to go home. The worst night of all was the night I got there and started to sing my first song - Jambalaya. I got as far as -Jamb... and then came the signal. I didn’t make twenty five cents that night. Boy I felt bad". But nothing could quell Dion's spirit for long.
Not even when four years later at the age of thirteen, he got what could have been his first big break by appearing on the Paul Whiterman Teen Tops Show. "Win first prize on this show - he'd been told - and you're good for bookings around the country for six months". As it turned out, Dion didn't win.
Neither, in fact, did a pretty dark haired girl singer who'd appeared on the same show with him. "I thought you were wonderful" the girl said to Dion backstage when it was all over. "I'm awfully sorry you didn’t get the price". Dion thanked her for the compliment and told her he thought she was pretty terrific herself.
"What did you say your name was?" he asked.
"Constance Franconero is my real name" the girl said. "But I call myself Connie Francis".
"My name's Dion" the boy said.
"I know" Connie said, "that's an awful pretty name". She smiled.
"Wouldn't it be nice" she said, "if both our names were famous names someday...".
Dion smiled back, "they will be" he said.
"How do you know" Connie asked.
"I'm like my father" Dion said. "He gets feelings about how things are going to happen sometimes. And so do I. Like with me, for instance - I just feel that in the next year or two something big is going to happen, something really big ... you know what I mean?". "Yes" Connie said, nodding. "And I hope so...".
Dion's last hunch about himself turned out to be a little premature. He sang a lot, worked hard those next few years. But the jump to the big-time was not to be so easy. In fact, it wasn't until he was eighteen, early last year, when things really started moving for him.
Dion likes to think it was his grandmother, his mother's mother, who had something to do with his sudden success.
The old woman was visiting with her daughter late one Saturday afternoon, sitting in the kitchen, having coffee, when Dion walked in. "Hi Nonna" he said. He walked over to her, kissed her, and then he started to walk away.
"Wey" the grandmother said, stopping him "-where you go in such a hurry?".
"I've got a show to do tonight, in New Jersey" Dion said. "I've got to get ready".
"Before you go" his grandmother said "let me tell you something I been wanting to tell you a long time. About this rock and rolls you sing. Dion couldn't help laughing. It was the first time he'd heard her use the expression.
"You're pretty hip Nonna" he said.
"Never mind my hip" his grandmother said. Very seriously she went on: "Now you and this rock and rolls. The other night on television I see some boy sing the same thing like you. And you know what's a-happen, Dion? All the girls, they scream like crazy when he sing". She told how she had seen him, Dion, in a show not too long ago. She reminded him that while there had been lots of applause, there hadn't been much screaming. You got a better voice than all of the other sing' together" she said. "But sometimes you a little shy, carino. Why you a little shy on the stage sometimes, a good looking boy like you?". She didn't wait for an answer.
"Now here's a what you gotta do", she said standing up. "First when you sing, in the middle of the song, you close your eyes, so the girls don't see who you looking at and think you in love with each of them...Then a little while after you do this-" she began to wiggle her shoulders. "E non-ridere, don't laugh at me" his grandmother said, looking down at the chair into which Dion had fallen. "This is part of the art of the rock and rolls. You try it carino. You try it tonight and you see!!". Dion did try it that night-
In a phrase he loosened up.
And the screams that came tumbling up at him from the audience were deafening.
Says a musician that was there, who knew nothing about Dion's talk with his grandmother that afternoon, "He threw a little extra something into the act that night, something that embellished his native talent and that made him, suddenly, a very special performer". It was only a short time after that when Dion was approached by Gene Schwartz of Laurie Records, a then new outfit.
"I'd like you to cut a record for us" said Mr. Schwartz. "Pick any number and trio you like".
"Trio?" Dion asked.
"A vocal group to back you up" said Mr. Schwartz, "you must know of some outfit" .
"Oh sure" Dion said, "I've got just the boys".
Actually he was fibbing. He didn't know of any outfit that was available at the moment. But that wasn't going to stop him. Not at a time like this. Within a few days he rounded up three neighborhood friends of him - Freddie Milano, Carlo Mastrangelo and Angelo D'Aleo, good singers all, though not professionals.For a week after that they rehearsed around the clock. By the end of the week, Dion and the trio - who called themselves The Belmonts , after the avenue on which Angelo and Freddie lived - reported to Mr. Schwartz. That afternoon they made their first record. And then they waited.
"We thought we were all automatically great stars, now that we had a record" says Dion today, "and that it was just a matter of a little while before fame and fortune came hitting us with a bang. I had the house I was going to buy my folks all picked up. Carlo, who'd been working on a liquor truck, quit his job. Angelo a waiter, got so nervous he started spilling soup and coffee all over the place. Freddie just bit his nails". For a few days after the record was released, the boys all joined Freddie in biting their nails.
Mr. Schwartz finally phoned Dion. "I'm sorry" he said, "But frankly, we've got a bomb. I like it, You boys like it. I'm afraid however that the popularity club ends there". Mr. Schwartz' faith in the boys didn't end there, however.
Because less than two months later he signed them up for "I wonder why".
"There's something in the air when you've got a hit, even before the record is released" Dion was to say later. "People around the studio begin to hum it right after it's been cut, disk jockeys get to hear about it, people from the newspapers start calling you and asking you when you were born and what are your plans for the future... That's the way it would happen later with No one knows, Don't pity me and Teenager in love. And that's the way it happened that second time around with I wonder why. "That time we knew we had a hit. That's when the fun began"
Who wants it?
But now, a little over a year later, the fun was over for Dion. A few hours earlier, he'd heard the news - that Buddy, Ritchie and the Bopper were dead. Still in just a few minutes time, he would be expected to go on stage anyway.
"How am I going to be able to?" he asked himself over and over, lying on his cot in the little dressing room- "And why should I want to, now or ever again?. My friends are dead, the guys I joked with, worked with, lived with, was going to keep touring with. So why should I want to go on out there without them?".
In the distance Dion heard the music. A band was playing the overture - the same happy music they'd played two nights before, in Iowa, the last time the entire troupe had appeared together.
The show must go on! just as if nothing had happened, he said to himself, angrily.
Again there was a knock on the door.
"Five minutes!" The voice came this time.
Dion looked over at the door. He wanted to fling something at it.
He picked up the guitar at his side. He held it up.
He was just about to throw it when he saw the name, printed on the strap - The Bopper's name. The tears came rushing to his eyes.
This guitar, he realized suddenly - this was all that was left to him from his friends.
Destroy this, he knew, and he would be destroying their last link with show business, the business they had loved with all their souls. And they did love it, he thought. Just the same as I.
He got up from the cot.
He hung the guitar around his neck.
He knew now what he had to do. He would go on stage and he would sing - just the way he had always been meant to sing, and he would accompany himself on this guitar and this would mean that the boys would be out there too, in a way, that they had not been completely destroyed, that a part of them still lived. And so he opened the door, walked out of the dressing room, through the wings and onto the stage.
And he smiled as he sang that night, even through his tears.