More
with Kenny Dino
Goldmine:
You followed that with...
Kenny
Dino: "Rosie, Why Do You Wear My Ring?"--a terrible song. I was always
hearing the good songs but they wouldn't let me do them. I was friendly
with all the Elvis writers, especially Sid Wayne, from Massapequa.
He wrote a lot of songs for Elvis. He also wrote "See You In September"
and a lot of other hits...good people. But again, the record companies
didn't know what to do with me. They had to categorize me...Elvis
or Roy Orbison? They tried the big strings thing...that didn't work.
Then Doc played me "Suspicion." I remember...Doc played me the song
on his piano at The Ansonia Hotel. I rushed the demo over to Aaron.
I knew this was a great song. But, you see, Musicor had a problem.
The other artist on the label was Gene Pitney. Everything went to
Gene first. Also, this song was written for Elvis and it was on his
publishing...and so on. At any rate, it turns out, nobody liked the
song. I wanted to record it but they wouldn't let me. They felt that
a Roy Orbison angle was the way I should go, but I was adamant. I
wouldn't do the session they lined up for me unless "Suspicion" was
charted. They agreed but there was a big fight over it...Everything
was two-track then...I was to record live with a 32-piece orchestra...it
was a big thing. When I came into the session, there were no charts
for "Suspicion" and I flipped out. Aaron and I started arguing...it
got nasty, I even took a swing at him. It was ugly but he deserved
it...he was just a con artist and a phony. I walked out of the session.
I went home leaving everyone, even the 32-pieces. I didn't care. The
only song I wanted to do, I couldn't. Terry Stafford cut the song
like 13 months later and it knocked The Beatles off the charts. And
that was the end of that.
Goldmine:
What did you do? Did you go back to the road?
Kenny
Dino: Sure. See, I didn't make any money on the records. I think the
first check I ever saw from Musicor was for $24,000. I never saw anything
else. By the end of '63, I had made over $180,000 in gigs. Al Dankoff
booked me everywhere. We did the Long Beach strip, played all of them.
I played rodeos, carnivals,county fairs...We did a thing with all
the CYOs around the country. Then I signed with G.A.C. That's where
my relationship with Frank Barcelona started. He was my agent at GAC.
He had just come out of the mailroom. Later, he came to Dankoff to
get seed money to start Premier Talent and Al turned him down.
Goldmine:
...and you continued touring?
Kenny
Dino: Oh yeah, we had good crowds all around. We played everywhere.
We played Virginia all the time...always good crowds. I mean crowds!
Norfolk and Hampton, Virginia...great audiences...I'm finding out
all kinds of things now: Bruce Hornsby used to come down all the time
to see me...Bruce Willis...Eddie Kendricks, too! I had a lot of bands.
One band, The Upsets, were hot. But all those guys died in Vietnam...In
one of my bands, the drummer was "Pudgie", he now owns a chain of
chicken restaurants. John Dinacola, from Bohemia, was in one of my
bands. You know, he wrote "I Had The Time Of My Life" and won a Grammy...Billy
Joe Royal was a bassist for me, when we were out of Savannah, Georgia.
He was onstage with me for over a year and I never heard him sing
a note!...Schuyler Deale played bass for me, he's now with Billy Joel.
I always had top players in my bands. I still do. I even had a problem
with an imposter once.
Goldmine:
An imposter?
Kenny Dino:
Yeah. It was '62 or '63. There was a guy going around as "Kenny Dino"
singing my songs. This was in Tennessee and Georgia where I had a
good following but I hadn't been down there for a while. Dankoff owned
bowling alleys down there and he found out about it. We caught the
guy and put an end to that.
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This
interview originally appeared in Goldmine Magazine, May 15,1992.
Volume
18, Number 10, Issue 308
©
Richard Arfin 1987 Revised
2004 All
Rights Reserved
