Review: Dion - Runaround Sue (1961)

Tracks: 1) Runaround Sue; 2) Somebody Nobody Wants; 3) Dreamlover; 4) Life Is But A Dream; 5) The Wanderer; 6) Runaway Girl; 7) The Majestic; 8) Little Star; 9) Lonely World; 10) In The Still Of The Night; 11) Kansas City; 12) Take Good Care Of My Baby; 13*) Could Somebody Take My Place Tonight; 14*) I’m Gonna Make It Somehow.

REVIEW

After the relative success of ‘Lonely Teenager’ came just as relative a lull in Dion’s career: his next three singles all charted, but progressively lower and lower until the third one, ‘Somebody Nobody Wants’, did not even manage to crack the top 100. (Then again, what exactly does one expect to get from the public with a single bearing that kind of title?) And I can sort of understand why — a song like ‘Kissin’ Game’ does not emphasize any particular aspect of itself, sounding close to the contemporary Latin-flavored material by Ben E. King but not outstanding in terms of hooks, arrangements, or vocal effort. As good a singer as Dion is, he was unable to get by on the strength of vocal charisma alone; to let the world know his worth, the song had to make some kind of point, or else get ready to dissipate as soon as it hit the ground.

Well, we seem to finally be in luck because this here LP got two such songs — both ‘Runaround Sue’ and ‘The Wanderer’, inarguably the most recognizable stars inside Dion’s relatively obscure constellation, are here, and each of them represents one of Dion’s quintessentially-controversial sides. One thing they have in common is that, aesthetically, they fall somewhere in between rock’n’roll and doo-wop, borrowing vocal stylistics from the latter and rhythmic energy from the former: Dion had no intention whatsoever to properly keep up the flame of a genre that, by 1961, seemed to no longer offer viability in its «wildest» forms, but neither did he want to completely dissolve in the crowd of teen idols, which his previous album had actually put him in serious danger of. In short, just the kind of stuff to get him into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame without riling up the parents too much back in 1961 — that is, provided they don’t pay too much attention to the lyrics.

‘Runaround Sue’, co-written by Dion with his pal Ernie Maresca and released in September 1961, became Dion’s first #1 hit, so it must have apparently struck some subtle gold vein — and, honestly, I don’t think that this was even due so much to Dion himself as to the Del-Satins, an obscure doo-wop group whose general reputation would remain forever based on their providing backing vocals to most of Dion’s hit singles. Let’s be frank, the one thing that is sure to stay in your head after even one solitary playthrough of ‘Runaround Sue’ is "hep-hep bum-da-hey-di-hey-di hep-hep", which the Del-Satins some­how manage to feel joyful and melancholic at the same time — then again, the same goes for Dion’s wordless vocalizing, weaving in and out of the backing vocals in a state caught somewhere between depression and euphoria.

If the intention of the song was to capture and convey the protagonist’s desperate Don José-like state of mind in light of the permanently defiant unfaithfulness of modern day Carmen «Runaround Sue», then that intention fails completely and utterly: Dion is no Del Shannon when it comes to parading one’s broken heart, and the average listener, particularly in the context of plunking a nickel down the jukebox, will be far more inclined to just dance his or her head off to all the hey-di hep-heps than shedding a tear of empathy for the unfortunate protagonist whose girl "ran around with every single guy in town". The lyrics of the song, on their own, might seem almost disgustingly male-chauvinistic, particularly from the 21st century point of view — who is this guy to pronounce moral judgement on whatever a girl desires to do with her own body? — but if we put ourselves into a 1961 frame of view, there’s clearly a touch of admiration for «runaround Sue», who ultimately comes out as the alpha figure while her ex-lover admits to being the defeated underdog. I can imagine quite a few potential «runaround Sues» dancing their own heads off to this celebration of freedom from the masculine yoke in those pre-Beatles days. And that wild sax playing from Buddy Lucas, echoing the ecstasy in Dion’s vocals all through the song, sure must have been a big help.

Interestingly, the forgotten B-side to the single, a soft, piano-driven rhythmic pop ballad commissioned from a bunch of outside songwriters, is ‘Runaway Girl’, hardly coincidentally sharing its first root with ‘Runaround Sue’ while also dropping a friendly nod to Del Shannon’s ‘Runaway’ — as one can see, long before the Beatles came along to assist the league of parents’ daughters with their liberation issues, the idea of running, running away, running around was all over the air back in 1961. The funny thing is that ‘Runaway Girl’ literally tackles the exact same subject as ‘Runaround Sue’, only slower and more sentimentally this time, as well as with a little actual hope for the future: "each night and day I’ll pray that someday maybe she’ll come through and then... I’ll be more than just a toy for my runaway girl" — ooh, that must really hurt. But here even more so than in ‘Runaround Sue’, the entire atmosphere of the song is never about moral judgement or misogyny, but only about smooth tenderness, expressed perfectly in the classy combination of sax, piano, backing vocals, and Dion’s gorgeous lead.

Actually, if you listen real closely, you’ll find the melody of the opening part of the verse — "I fell in love with a runaway, a little runaway girl / Each night she’s all that I dream about, my little runaway girl" — almost identical to Bowie and Iggy Pop’s ‘China Girl’, a connection hardly ever mentioned but so obvious to me that it must have been at least a subconscious influence (unless there is another missing link I am unaware of). Apparently, there is something in that particular construc­tion of the chords and the repetitive vocal phrasing that helps reinforce this idea of a strongly obsessive mental connection with an ideal out of one’s reach... or something to that effect, anyway. Whatever be the truth, ‘Runaway Girl’ is one of those little overlooked, unassuming gems that, every once in a while, rewards the true completist.

For Dion’s next single, Laurie Records decided to concentrate more heavily on the sing-and-dance aspect of their new star’s identity rather than any emotional traumas, so they gave him ‘The Majestic’, a bit of a novelty tune that promises to intro­duce "the greatest dance you ever saw" but clearly fails to deliver upon the promise with its fairly generic beat and slow tempo. The Del-Satins do a good job as usual, and Dion tries to deliver a get-up-on-your-seat-and-dance message as hard as he can, but the overall effect of the song is in the range of passable (if you don’t give it any thought) to awful, if you compare it with something like ‘Twistin’ The Night Away’ or ‘Rock Around The Clock’. Speaking of those, Dion presented the song "quasi-live" with his appearance in the aptly titled movie Twist Around The Clock, and, honestly, watching the audience react is the farthest thing from an impression of "the greatest dance you ever saw". Also, what’s up with that squeaky falsetto whine on the "people get in a big boss line" bit? No, that’s definitely not how you introduce a brand new dance that’s supposed to make the kids in Philly forget the slop because "there’s no more shimmy and no more bop".

No surprise, then, that the infuriated DJs simply dumped the A-side and turned all of their attention instead to the B-side, ‘The Wanderer’, which was another Dion / Maresca collaboration and certainly more meaningful to the writers. If you only listened to the opening bars, you might have thought it was Dion’s brave take on Elvis’ ‘Stuck On You’ — same swaggery, steady, rhythmic mid-tempo — but while both songs share a level of cocky self-assertion, ‘Stuck On You’ propagates concentrating on one goal ("a team of wild horses couldn’t tear us apart" and so on) where ‘The Wanderer’ offers a, let’s say, more dissipated approach to fulfilling one’s purpose in life.

Somewhat ironically, when, more than 50 years later, Bethesda licensed ‘The Wanderer’ for one of the trailers of Fallout 4, the next chapter in their sprawling post-apocalyptic survival saga, Dion filed a suit against the company, indignant that his music was accompanying "repugnant and morally indefensible images designed to appeal to young consumers". Had I been a Bethesda representative, I would certainly suggest retorting that there are few songs out there presenting a more repugnant and morally indefensible set of images designed to appeal to young consumers than ‘The Wanderer’ — one must admit that "I kiss ’em and I love ’em cause to me they’re all the same" is a difficult line to morally defend, as are most other lines in the song.

Later in his life, Dion would cling on to the line "with my two fists of iron, but I’m going nowhere" as his defense (implying that the protagonist is really a tragic character whose attitude toward women is determined by the overall aimlessness and bleakness of his life, etc. etc.) but the really amusing thing is that Maresca’s original demo from 1957 has "my two fists of iron and a bottle of beer" which was changed at the request of the record label because, apparently, they thought that singing about beer could be perceived as immoral (and nothing else in the song would), so it’s a bit of an odd cop-out. If there really is any «darkness» to the song, or even any irony, then all of it is strictly implied, or, rather, just depends on what you want to read into it. To some people, it will be a shameless glorification of the ultimate objectifying womanizer; to others, it might be a mocking-condescending, tongue-in-cheek portrait of one.

It does feel hilarious — and quite a bit hypocritical — to have ‘Runaround Sue’, condemning the proverbial slut, and ‘The Wanderer’, praising the proverbial man-whore, on the same record, but whaddaya know, it all comes from that time when men were men and... oh, never mind. There was, after all, a good reason, that when The Beach Boys later covered the song live in concert, they gave it to Dennis Wilson to sing — easily the most appropriate candidature among the Wilson brothers for this tune, who was able to put even more passion into the vocals than Dion himself, singing it all from such a deep bottom of his heart as even his most loyal fans at the time probably wouldn’t have guessed.

Yet in the song’s defense, in addition to it coming from a time-honored tradition of «ramblin-man’» ballads that place more emphasis on the freedom of moving around than Don Juan-style womanizing, it is not even particularly «sexy». It’s really all about that relentless beat and about filling each bar of the verse with that never-ending stream of cocky-but-nervous singing and about the swirling wander ’round and ’round and ’round and ’round and ’round refrain that does, if I may say so, add a little drop of that caught-up-in-the-whirlwind-of-fate attitude. (That round and round bit, by the way, was the result of Dion expanding on Maresca’s original conception; Ernie just sang "I’m the wanderer, yeah I’m the wanderer, I wander round", leaving the last line of the chorus exposed and hanging — Dion gave it some actual meaning).

Not that I’m a huge fan or anything: I actually prefer ‘Runaround Sue’ as the more melodically interesting of the two hits, and The Del-Satins make their presence more justified there than on ‘The Wanderer’, whose vibe can get annoying by the time the second verse gets around. But for at least one verse and one chorus, the song is cool as heck, and it is not at all difficult to understand how it smashed both the US and UK charts (though it still failed to hit the #1 spot like ‘Runaround Sue’ did). The double-punch of these two bulls-eyes was enough to make Dion into a major force on the pop scene, ensuring at least two more years of steady success before the British Invasion put a dent in his fortunes; for now, though, the most important task was to secure his newfound popularity with a brand new LP — called Runaround Sue for the bigger of the two hits, though certainly The Wanderer would have been a more fitting title.

About half of the LP consisted of A- and B-sides that we have already discussed, but the rest of material is quite worth hearing; well, at least some of the rest — I do not imagine my typical reader as a potential fan of this cuddly version of ‘Little Star’ (hmm... are there even any non-cuddly versions of ‘Little Star’?), nor of generic mid-Fifties doo-wop like ‘In The Still Of The Night’ (confused note: this is not the Cole Porter song of the same title that appears on Dion & The Belmonts’ Wish Upon A Star — this is Fred Parris’ song that was originally recorded by The Five Satins in 1956). But one more original Dion / Maresca collaboration, the romantic pop-rocker ‘Lonely World’, is a great showcase for Dion’s sliding vocal rainbows on which he comes across as a slightly burlier version of Roy Orbison; and his cover of Bobby Darin’s ‘Dream Lover’ is far superior to the original — more rock’n’rollish, with a denser bass, deeper and darker vocal harmonies, and a wilder, much more desperate lead delivery that shows you exactly how much the poor guy needs someone beside him at night.

Unfortunately, our guy was unable to «tighten up» Bobby Vee’s ‘Take Good Care Of My Baby’ in the same way he did it with ‘Dream Lover’ — maybe it’s the debilitating influence of all those strings, but overall it’s comparable in meekness to the original. It’s still a Goffin-King song, which precludes total melodic rot, but back in 1961 this was kinda symbolic of rock attitudes giving way to the teen idol stuff, and in this particular case, Dion does nothing to shatter that symbolism. Instead, he tries to remind us in a different way of his passion for rock’n’roll — by covering ‘Kansas City’ in a version that is fairly close to Wanda Jackson’s. It’s okay, I guess, but it’s ‘Kansas City’. Do you really need to add Dion, specifically, to the list of all those people that went to Kansas City to get themselves a pretty little woman? I’m not so certain, what with Kansas City already most likely suffering from a serious demographic problem.

Overall, Runaround Sue is a significant improvement over Alone With Dion, and not just because of its highest points, but because it’s a record that tries to be a little more honest with its listener, and to carve its own path rather than humbly conform to the contemporary stereotype of the quintessential «teen idol». But its problem is that it still fails to give Dion his own distinct identity — unlike Roy Orbison or Del Shannon, he is happy enough to act out these songs in whatever manner seems more fit. The Dion of ‘Runaround Sue’ is not at all the same Dion as the Dion of ‘The Wanderer’, and in between the philandering, the broken-hearted, and the starry-eyed avatars you have a hard time discerning the individual. In the end, all he does is just wander ’round and ’round and ’round and ’round in a hit-and-miss fashion, which makes me wonder just how many people in this world have the sounds of ‘Runaround Sue’ and ‘The Wanderer’ ingrained in their memories without properly recalling who sang them in the first place. Ironically, a big part of those songs’ magic, too, is due to The Del-Satins — no matter how much effort Dion took to establish himself as a solo artist, he still sounded best with a well-tailored doo-wop entourage rather than completely on his own.

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