Be it in the safe haven of our homes, our minds, or both of these snug places, most of us tend to hold onto various mementos, far away images, and odd and ends that preserve our indelible memories of long ago. They are forever etched in each of us. Our humanness tethers us to these adult security blankets. In their way, these things are the timeworn artifacts that often define who we are, and the people, places and things we care about. For me, they are the masonry of my life.

In the darkest night, music has always held the power to light people’s hopes. It brings us back to where we were at various moments in our lives. Across the years, it has been the warehouse that has stored so many of my memories and feelings. Like a marking post along life’s highway, for me, and maybe for you as well, the marriage of music and lyrics together has always had an unfailing capacity to chronicle the world around me along my own journey. A case in point is the classic 1968 song, ‘Abraham, Martin, and John’ by the legendary 50’s Doo-Wop artist, and early 60’s mega star, Dion DiMucci; better known to the world simply as Dion.

Until quite recently, it had been many years since I’d heard Dion’s song, ‘Abraham, Martin and John.’ However, last week while driving down a dreamy sun dappled backroad, and surfing through the channels, the song came on. After such a long time, just hearing the lead-in was a catalyst to yank a string in my memory, and to give me pause to listen more intently. In his soft and intimate voice, he sang lyrics that were tinged with bottomless sorrow. Written by Dick Holler, the song captured, in a unique way, a bit of who all of us were a long time ago. Today, as hatred, violence and systemic racism explode across our nation, it is a song that’s worth listening to again.

Today, more than half a century after it was released in August of 1968 in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy’s assassinations, it is a song that still has the power to hold up a sobering mirror to us by painting a picture of fallen leaders who paid with their lives in trying to show us the way forward. Much like John Lennon’s ‘Imagine,’ ‘Abraham, Martin and John’ is as relevant today as it was the first time we heard it. It is as timeless as Dion himself.

For the most part, these days, if one mentions a singer named Dion, the vast majority of people will immediately assume that they are speaking about the powerhouse Canadian vocalist whose first name is Celine. However, a very long time ago there was another Dion. Born in 1939, Dion DiMucci was a New York tough, street smart Italian-American kid from the Bronx who could sing. Along with some guys from the neighborhood who were his backup vocalists, they became Dion and the Belmonts.

It was that storied and innocent time right before the Beatles would conquer the world. A time when guys wore greased-up slicked-back hair, black leather jackets, and girls wore poodle skirts, bobby socks and had big hair. It was the age of Elvis, Ricky Nelson, and Dick Clark. With chart-topping late 50’s hits like ‘I Wonder Why,’ ‘Teenager in Love,’ and later in his career as a solo artist, mega hits like ‘Runaround Sue,’ ‘Donna the Prima Donna’ and ‘The Wanderer’ that featured him singing in a much more mature and tougher-sounding voice than the shy kid on those Doo-Wop hits, those days also turned out to be the time of Dion.

By 1968, Dion, and virtually every other successful recording artists in the pre-British Invasion days, had been eclipsed and swept off the charts by the musical tsunami of the Beatles, Stones, Kinks and other UK artists. In the terrible days following the back-to-back assassinations of MLK and RFK, a virtual unknown named Dick Holler wrote a song that linked Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr together with the fallen Kennedy brothers; John and Bobby. Holler pitched the song to executives at Laurie Records, Dion’s label.

After having finally kicked a year’s long drug addiction he was lean, sober, and free of the iron grip of heroin. Dion was in the process of trying to reinvent himself as a folk artist. He was back in the studio after a long absence, and setting out on the long uphill road back.

As fate would have it, he recorded Holler’s touching tribute. With Dion finger-picking an acoustic guitar, the song is set against a musical backdrop of a heavenly harp, lush horns and a beautiful choir that still sweeps the listener away. In a tender and poignant style that was light years away from his once cocky Italian-Stallion swagger of ‘The Wanderer in every way, this song was Dion DiMucci’s high water mark as a solo artist. His voice, rang with emotion throughout, as he led in with, “Anybody here seen my old friend Abraham. Can you tell me where he’s gone? He freed a lot of people, but it seems the good they die young, I just looked around and he was gone.” He tied Lincoln, MLK and the fallen Kennedy brothers together in a way that has resonated deeply across multiple generations. Today, ‘Abraham, Martin and John’ still reaches out across the decades and strikes a chord in people.

Lost in the mists of time, a half century has now passed by our collective window since the song was released in 1968. That being said, as I listened to it again, after so long a time, its aching beauty and its message still reached out and touched me. It was a catalyst for me to think deeper about the growing state of anger, violence and racial unrest that is exploding across our nation today. The last line of the song still echoes in my mind as I write this piece.

“Didn’t you love the things that they stood for?

And didn’t they try to find some good in you and me

And we’ll be free.

Someday – soon – It’s gonna be one day

Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby. Can you tell me where he’s gone?

I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill with Abraham, Martin and John.”

I still find myself harboring an undying hope that ‘it’s gonna be one day soon.’

Paul Collins is a freelance writer from Southborough, Massachusetts.

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