- I Wonder Why "session talk"
Dion & The Belmonts
- I Wonder Why
Dion & The Belmonts (Anderson - Weeks)
I put this group together called Dion & The Belmonts. Carlo was a jazz drummer and we both had a love for the horn player down at the Apollo Theater. We weren't that good at writing Iyrics, but we kind of developed this percussive sound like horns. We had one problem...we couldn't move! We tried to move like the Cadillacs, ya know, do some steps, but we couldn't. Instead, we decided to just be cool and stand there and sing like horns. When I go back and listen to that record now, in my humble opinion, I go 'What an attitude!' It's really riveting! It sounds like "Those kids meant it!"
- Don't Pity Me
Dion & The Belmonts (Stallman - Jacobson)
It's got dangerous, smooth harmonies. . .it's not nice. You know, when we sang, we kind of sound like punks.
- A Teenager In Love
Dion & The Belmonts (Pomus - Shuman)
There's more than meets the eye on this. First of all, a teenager would never write this song. Doc Pomus wrote it and he was an old guy and I was seventeen years old when I sang it. Today when I listen to it, I can hear that it's not as surface or wimpy as you might think it would be. It expresses a lot. It's like a teenager looking up to heaven and asking for answers on fear, rejection, those kinds of frustrations in a relationship.
- Where Or When
Dion & The Belmonts (Rodgers - Hart)
This is a song that we put together for a guy I looked up to as a kid, the president of Laurie Records. It was his favorite song and he was kind of like a father-figure to me. It was totally out of my backyard, a song I wouldn't really want to do. But we did it for him. A friend of mine, who was a little bit of a jazz guitarist, helped us go outside of the block harmony when he helped us with the
voicings.
- Wonderful Girl
Dion & The Belmonts (Parris)
This is a song that I listened to when I was sneaking into the pool rooms at 14 years old and I found it on the other side of a Five Satins record. It's just an old chestnut and I adopted it. It kind of came into my head when I met (my wife) Susan, so it's kind of a song for her.
- That's My Desire (Live)
Dion & The Belmonts (Kresa - Loveday)
P 1973 Salt Productions, Inc. Under license from Salt Productions, Inc.
To me, what I really liked about it was that it was like three punks trying to fly. I mean, we got these three guys nailing the harmony with such attitude and this bed of harmony for Angelo, our tenor, like an angel to soar on.
It was right after this song that I was on my own without the Belmonts. They wanted to continue in the tradition of the Four Aces, like "Where Or When," and I decided I couldn't do that anymore. We just had a difference of opinion. So we split. After that, I recorded with a group that I found in Brooklyn called the Del-Satins. They were five guys from the streets and I used them.
- Lonely Teenager
(DiPaolo - Faraci - Pippa)
It speaks for itself. It's an expression of loneliness and frustration, like an honest cry of desperation.
- Runaround Sue
(Maresca - DiMucci)
It came about by partying in a schoolyard. We were jamming, hitting tops of boxes. I gave everyone parts like the horn parts we'd hear in the Apollo Theater and it became a jam that we kept up for 45 minutes. I came up with all kinds of stuff. But when I actually wrote the song and brought it into the studio to record it, well, her name wasn't actually Sue. It was about, you know, some girl who loved to be worshiped but as soon as you want a commitment and express your love for her, she's gone. So the song was a reaction to that kind of woman.
- The Wanderer
(Maresca)
At its roots, it's more than meets the eye. "The Wanderer" is black music filtered through an Italian neighborhood that comes out with an attitude. It's my perception of a lot of songs like "I'm A Man" by Bo Diddley or "Hoochie-Coochie Man" by Muddy Waters. But you know, "The Wanderer" is really a sad song. A lot of guys don't understand that. Bruce Springsteen was the only guy who accurately expressed what that song was about. It's "I roam from town to town and go through life without a care, I'm as happy as a clown with my two fists of iron, but I'm going nowhere." In the fifties, you didn't get that dark. It sounds like a lot of fun but it's about going nowhere.
- The Majestic
(Jones - Young)
It's a song that Laurie Records wanted me to do.
- Life Is But A Dream (a cappella remix)
(Cita - Weiss)
- Little Star (a cappella remix)
(Picone - Venosa)
Both of these songs are great street corner songs. Back then, with some really great harmony, you could impress the girls. They'd say "Hey, they really can sing" and we'd show off and stuff.
You know, I was in a gang called The Fordham Baldies, but I always had this sense that I was doing it for that time only, that there was something else. I knew there was a bigger world out there. I notice on TV these days they interview gang members. They just have no vision, they have no future when you talk to them and I always had this love for life, this passion. I still have it.
[Producer's Note: these two tracks were remixed from the original 3-track session tapes by acclaimed engineer Tom Moulton specifically for this anthology.]
- Lovers Who Wander
(DiMucci - Maresca)
It's about a guy who's kind of stuck in denial. There was a song that came out later called "She Thinks I Still Care" with the same kind of message. It's like "Nah, I don't miss her," but you do and you're like in this limbo.
- (I Was) Born To Cry
(DiMucci)
There are a couple of things about this song: I met a Jewish Kantor and he played me songs that his father Kantor Rosenblat sang. His father was in the original Jazz Singer. I heard him sing a different kind of scale than what I was used to. So I went home and wrote this song in a minor key 'cause I felt it could express a lot of the stuff I was feeling. Also, it was kind of prophetic. I must have been sixteen when I wrote that.
- Little Diane
(DiMucci)
I grew up in this macho Italian neighborhood where you didn't show your feelings. But I found the key...you can express your feelings in a song. It wasn't threatening. So "Little Diane" is like saying way down deep inside I cry. It's about a guy who's hurting but he's also angry. In a macho neighborhood, "bad" looks good on a guy. "Hurt" doesn't. You walk up to the corner and say "I'm feeling sad" they'd say "Get the fuck out of here" and slap him upside his head!
- Love Came To Me
(DiMucci - Fablo)
It's an interesting song. "I live in dreams, strange as it seems, love came to me." When I wrote that, Chuck Berry was writing about cars and schools and girls. It's so introspective for a young guy.
- Sandy
(DiMucci - Brandt)
This was about a girl I knew. She said, "Why don't you write a song for me! No one writes about a girl named Sandy, so I wrote it.
- Will Love Ever Come My Way
(DiMucci - Farrell)
Originally Released 1963 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
Under License from Sony Music Special Products, A Division of Sony Music, A Group of Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
I was sitting around with a bunch of guys and we came up with some ideas and that's the song that came out of it. I really like this song.
- Ruby Baby
(Leiber - Stoller)
Originally Released 1963 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
Under License from Sony Music Special Products, A Division of Sony Music, A Group of Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
This was an old Drifters song that I sang to Susan when she got off the bus from school. "Ruby" was like a gem, so to speak, so I used to follow her down the street and sing it to her with a bunch of guys behind me to impress her. I decided to record it for her when I was at Columbia (Records), and I started going back to the stuff I heard when I was a kid like John Lee Hooker's "Walking Boogie." So "Ruby" is my interpretation of those kind of records. There was a lot of natural stomping on it, so I orchestrated a lot of guys stomping on a platform. That's why it's very percussive - there's not a lot of drums on it.
- Gonna Make It Alone
(DiMucci - Feldman - Goldstein - Gottehrer)
Originally Released 1963 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
Under License from Sony Music Special Products, A Division of Sony Music, A Group of Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
It was just a statement. It's just one of those songs that I wrote when Dion & The Belmonts split up about overcoming fear. At the time, I didn't know it was fear, but sometimes, that's how things come out.
- This Little Girl
(King - Goffin)
Originally Released 1963 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
Under License from Sony Music Special Products, A Division of Sony Music, A Group of Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
I was hanging out with Carole King one afternoon and I always loved listening to her. Her sitting down at the piano and singing, anything she wrote. She was so good that even when people ruined her songs, they'd still be hits. So I was just sitting down with her at the piano one day and I said "You've got to write something for me, Carole." Then, she started writing this song and I learned it right there.
- Can't We Be Sweethearts
(Cox - Levy)
This was a song I was singing before I started recording. It was a Cleftones song. I loved the Cleftones.
- Donna The Prima Donna
(DiMucci - Maresca)
Originally Released 1963 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
Under License from Sony Music Special Products, A Division of Sony Music, A Group of Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
It was about snob appeal. There was a swanky place called the Harwin Club on Park Avenue in Manhattan where girls like her used to hang out. "Donna" is this girl who's very involved in herself and thinks she's something she's not.
- Drip Drop
(Leiber - Stoller)
Originally Released 1963 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
Under License from Sony Music Special Products, A Division of Sony Music, A Group of Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
I used to sing this song on the stoop on hot August nights when fire hydrants sprayed the streets. At block parties, I used to sing this song with one of the building supers, this black guy who used to play guitar.
- Spoonful
(Dixon)
Originally Released 1965 Sony Music Entertainment Inc. 
Under License from Sony Music Special Products, A Division of Sony Music, A Group of Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
I'm not sure exactly when I first heard this song, but I knew it was certainly expressing what I was going through in the mid-sixties. That was the most emotionally bleak period of my life. There was a lot of darkness and I was using a lot of drugs. You can hear how it's so intense, it just came out of me that way.
- Baby, I'm In The Mood For You
Dion & The Wanderers (Dylan)
P 1991 Sony Music Entertainment Inc. Under License from Sony Music Special Products, A Division of Sony Music, A
Group of Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
I was the first rock and roll artist signed to Columbia and Bob Dylan came to the label when I was there. This is one of those songs that was an out-take of his and he just didn't do it. I said I liked the song and I'd do it.
- I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound
Dion & The Wanderers (Paxton)
Originally Released 1965 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
Under License from Sony Music Special Products, A Division of Sony Music, A Group of Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
Well this was written by a guy both Dylan and I know, Tom Paxton. I was hanging out in the Village at that time with John Sebastian, Richie Havens, John Hammond, guys like that. I grabbed myself a bunch of finger picks because I watched a bunch of guys like Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee doing it. So I adopted this song because I was basically frustrated, confused and you know, wondering where I was bound.
- My Girl The Month Of May
(DiMucci)
This is about Susan who I married March 25th, 1963.
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