Tank Full of Blues Archives

With Tank Full of Blues (2012), Dion completes a trilogy of outstanding blues albums along with Bronx in Blue (2006) and Son of Skip James (2007). While Bronx in Blues focused on covering traditional blues standards from Robert Johnson and others, and Son of Skip James followed that formula with a few more originals, in Tank Full of Blues Dion wrote or co-wrote all but two of the songs, taking his blues to another level. The new album adds more percussion and electric guitar into the mix without overdoing it on these new classics.

Dion worked to build his blues cred with the previous two albums, paying homage to the kings with a little bit of Bronx street swagger thrown in. I have previously written about the two earlier CDs and how when Bronx in Blues came out it was a great discovery for me. On Tank Full of Blues, though, Dion uses his blues credibility to show a little more of his own wings, as Dion’s originals on this album transition smoothly next to ones by Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. Just as the album makes you wonder what else Dion can do, he closes with a spoken word rap on “Bronx Poem.” While he is not a hip-hop artist, one might root for him to try a rap album next as he shows here that his rhyming skills and bravado dating back to “Runaround Sue” are still there.

Dion Dimucci is one of the great rock n’ rollers, and these albums have shown he is also a great blues man. These albums are not an artist’s self-absorbed dabbling in another genre, but music that has the great Dion’s heart. As AllMusic wrote about Tank Full of Blues, “it is the album he’s been waiting an entire career to make.” For the artist behind such hits as “I Wonder Why,” “The Wanderer,” “A Teenager in Love,” “Donna the Prima Donna,” and “Abraham, Martin, and John,” that is high praise. Check out this great album by a music legend.

What do you think of Dion’s blues? Should he write a new song called “Runaround Blues”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

Dion Has the Blues

Lou Reed Inducting Dion Into Rock Hall

Song of the Day: Dion’s “Sanctuary”

Dion’s Lost “Kickin’ Child” (Album Review)

Valentine’s Day and Two Love Lessons

Dion: “New York Is My Home”

(Some Related Chimesfreedom Posts)

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Dion Dimucci has made some wonderful music since the dawn of the rock and roll era. His song “Runaround Sue” is one of my favorite all-time songs, and I love other songs he made with the Belmonts and solo.

For a long time through the late 1980s and 1990s, though, I assumed he was not around anymore because I had not heard anything about him since those days. And then one night at a Bruce Springsteen concert, Springsteen told how he reworked his own “If I Fall Behind” from his Tunnel of Love album after hearing Dion cover it. It is a beautiful song that Springsteen has played in a variety of ways, including an excellent Irish music version with the Seeger Session band. But his Dion doo wop version of “If I Fall Behind” was a revelation because it made me realize Dion was still around. Being a Springsteen fan and loving old Dion music, I had to track down Dion’s recording, which Dion later put on the album Deja Nu (2000). I liked the album a lot, and I’ve been keeping up with Dion’s new releases ever since.

Some of his most amazing recent work is on two blues CD’s of classic covers with a few originals: Bronx in Blue (2006) and Son of Skip James (2007). I bought the first one because I had read good reviews of it and saw it on sale at a store. It might first seem odd that Dion is singing blues songs, but he grew up listening to blues music in the Bronx. The albums are excellent. There are not videos for most of the songs, but I did find this one of “Worried Blues”:

Below is Dion’s take on Howlin’ Wolf’s “Built for Comfort,” which appears on Bronx in Blue:

His third blues CD, Tank Full of Blues, is due out January 24. This week Rolling Stone premiered one of the songs off the CD, “I Read It (in the Rolling Stone).” Finally, one other thing I love about Dion is that he seems to write his own updates on his Facebook page. And he still writes using 1950s slang. The cat is cool. Give him a “Like.” For crying out loud, he is a legend and has been making music for seven decades. You can at least press a button for the guy.

Dion’s Tank Full of Blues (CD Review)