Dion - The Road I'm On: A Retrospective (1997)

Dion's mid-'60s Columbia period was a strange and rather mysterious one. After notching up some solid hits that were more or less in his early '60s rock style ("Ruby Baby," "Donna the Prima Donna"), he dove into blues, folk, and folk-rock with varying degrees of success. Although the results were usually pretty interesting, commercially he seemed to have disappeared (a situation not helped by either his heroin problems or the failure of some of the material to get released). This is a good, if imperfect, two-CD overview of the Columbia years, moving from the expected early hits to quite a few tasty surprises, including covers of Woody Guthrie, Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon, "Work Song" (penned by Nat Adderley and Oscar Brown), Tom Paxton, and Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." There are also a number of pretty fair self-penned originals in a folk-rock, slightly Dylanish style, unsurprising considering that Dion was recording with one-time Dylan producer Tom Wilson in late '65. It doesn't make a 100% convincing argument that Dion would have matured into a top-rank blues-folk-rocker if not for his drug problems, but it has integrity, and the material is usually well-sung, whether pop or not. About half a dozen of the tracks were previously unreleased; there are also a couple of new recordings from 1996. This does not, by the way, make the 1991 Bronx Blues: The Columbia Recordings CD (much of it drawn from the same era) redundant. Almost half of the tracks from that disc don't appear, the most serious omission being the cover of Dylan's "Baby, I'm in the Mood for You," which was probably Dion's best mid-'60s recording of all.

Tracklist:

CD 1

01. Can't We Be Sweethearts (2:24)
02. Ruby Baby (2:37)
03. Will Love Ever Come My Way (2:31)
04. This Little Girl Of Mine (2:49)
05. A Sunday Kind of Love (2:48)
06. Gonna Make It Alone (2:35)
07. This Little Girl (2:39)
08. Fever (3:08)
09. Donna the Prima Donna (2:53)
10. Drip Drop (2:37)
11. Baby Please Don't Go [#][Unedited Version] (2:23)
12. 900 Miles (3:38)
13. Work Song [#] (3:16)
14. Chicago Blues (3:09)
15. The Road I'm on (Gloria) (3:47)
16. Ruby Baby [#][Alternate, Early Version] (2:28)
17. Donna the Prima Donna [#][Italian Version] (2:43)

CD 2

01. Too Much Monkey Business [#] (2:26)
02. (I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man (2:41)
03. Katie Mae [#] (2:48)
04. You Can't Judge a Book by the Cover [#] (2:40)
05. Johnny B. Goode (2:58)
06. Spoonful (2:31)
07. Kickin' Child (3:03)
08. Drop Down Baby [#] (3:08)
09. It's All over Now, Baby Blue (3:32)
10. Knowing I Won't Go Back There (2:56)
11. My Love [#] (2:09)
12. Tomorrow Won't Bring the Rain (2:49)
13. Time in My Heart for You (2:45)
14. All I Want to Do Is Live My Life [#] (3:33)
15. I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound [#][Original Mix] (2:53)
16. Two Ton Feather (3:18)
17. Born to Cry (3:10)
18. You Move Me (4:37)