The debut album from his self-titled group, Holy Diver, was released in 1982 and included the hits “Rainbow in the Dark” and the title track. He stayed with Sabbath for another release, Mob Rules and then also jumped ship from that unit when creative differences over the mixing of the live album Live Evil splintered the band, leading to Dio and Sabbath’s drummer at the time Vinny Appice, forming Dio’s first solo venture in the heavy metal/hard rock genre, Dio. It was also during this time that Dio popularized the “throwing horns” hand gesture that pretty much became his trademark and was generally attributed him in the hard rock/heavy metal genre, although other artists had used it before he did (the cartoon image of John Lennon on the cover of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine is “throwing horns” and George Clinton and Bootsy Collins also used it in the funk band Parliament-Funkadelic). They released the classic Heaven and Hell a year later, which was successful, but definitely and decidedly took the band to another direction with their new singer firmly entrenched within, as the ominously doomy sounds were replaced by Dio’s more lighter, mystical feel, yet still hard rocking approach. Rainbow released one more record with him, the live album On Stage, before parting ways, as Blackmore wanted to take the band down a more commercial path, more into the mainstream, something that Dio ultimately avoided and abhorred.īy 1979, he joined Black Sabbath, replacing Ozzy Osbourne, a key figure in making that band one of the doomiest, most heaviest and influential pre-metal bands of all time. All three albums rocked with a fervor, and Dio was the perfect fit for the intense, bone crunching attack of the sound. Rainbow released 3 albums with Dio singing lead, ( Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, Rainbow Rising, and Long Live Rock and Roll) and showcased Dio to a much wider audience, as heavy metal and rock fans discovered for the first time the powerful attack of Dio’s singing. Always keen on Dio’s vocals in Elf, he formed the band Rainbow and got Dio to be the front man. The lead guitarist of Deep Purple, Ritchie Blackmore, left that band by 1975. This found the band becoming an opening act for the legendary British hard rock quartet Deep Purple, while also recording three albums. By this point, the sound had changed also, so had the tastes of the pop cultural climate, and Elf shifted gears as well to accommodate the harder rock feel coupled with the folksy mellow vibes that was apropos during that era. The band went through one more final name change as the decade wound down, calling themselves Electric Elves, and then finally, shortening that to simply Elf. It was during this time that Padavona changed his last name to Dio, after the mafia member Johnny Dio, and started to be known as Ronnie Dio by the early 1960s. The band went through another name change, Ronnie Dio and the Prophets, and even released some singles on Atlantic Records. Their second single, “An Angel is Missing” with the B-side of Ray Charles’ classic “What’d I Say” found Dio on lead vocals. They even released a single, “Conquest”, an instrumental ala the sounds The Ventures were doing and the flip side “Lover” did not have Dio on main vocals, but on backup ones. His early passion was rockabilly and he performed in many bands which played those sounds during the late 1950s, playing bass in a band known as The Vegas Kings, eventually calling themselves Ronnie and The Red Caps once Dio took over as their lead singer. Music ran through his veins early on in his life, learning brass instruments first such as the trumpet and French horn. He was born Ronald James Padavona on July 10th, 1942 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Italian parents. But in many ways, Dio’s sound, fan base, versatility, flawless vocals, which metaphorically could move mountains with its rich high and low registers, makes him stand alone as arguably the greatest heavy metal front man of all time. Today is the celebration of the birthday of the late Ronnie James Dio, the heavy metal and hard rock singer and songwriter who carved his own niche in those aforementioned genres to become a figure as beloved as Ozzy Osbourne (Black Sabbath) or Rob Halford (Judas Priest).
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