Presenting Dion And The Belmonts

Brand new sealed album from Dion and the Belmonte.

Dion And The Belmonts’ debut album of 1959 stands proud as one of the rock’n’roll era’s great records and a high watermark of vocal harmony. We delve deep into its genealogy to find out why this particular Italian job remains something special…

 

When Presenting Dion & The Belmonts was released on Laurie Records at the tail end of 1959, doo-wop as a descriptive term for the type of music that these days we’d call the LP a classic example of, didn’t exist.

To most listeners the record showcased a quartet singing in a melodically harmonious, yet occasionally rough-edged style that they would have seen as a kind of off-shoot of rock’n’roll.

Dick Clark, in his sleeve notes, simply described these “four fellows” as a vocal group delivering “an interesting variety of songs.”

The term “doo-wop” first appeared in print in 1961 in The Chicago Defender and the phrase was attributed to radio disc jockey Gus Gossert. However, the desire among young record buyers for such sounds was already well-established.