Song makes tragic link between slays

ONE LISTEN was enough for an unimpressed Dion DiMucci to dismiss the song sent his way in the summer of 1968.

First, there were the lyrics, invoking the still open wounds of the April assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the June murder of Robert Kennedy.

And the arrangement: The demo version was “kinda happygo-lucky” for its subject matter, the future Rock and Roll Hall of Famer recalled.

“My first response was that it was exploiting or trying to cash in on these tragedies,” Dion remembers. “And I thought it was kind of trite.”

DiMucci decided to seek a second opinion, playing the cassette for his wife. And she heard something the musician had missed.

“She said, ‘It sounds like a gospel to me. It’s about a state of love that does exist, and it’s for us to make it real,’ ” recounted Dion, now 78, from his Manhattan apartment.

The song was titled “Abraham, Martin and John,” a reflection on the murders of four prominent advocates for American social change.

Its simple, direct lyrics linked the April 14, 1865, assassination of Abraham Lincoln with the June 5, 1968, shooting of Bobby Kennedy — weaving in the killings of the latter’s older brother John and King.

“Didn’t you love the things they stood for?” Dion would eventually sing. “Didn’t they try to find some good for you and me?”

By December, the single hit No. 4 on the Billboard charts on its way to selling more than a million copies, a musical balm for the turbulent times.

The tune, written in 10 minutes by Dick Holler, showed staying power beyond those dark days of 1968.

The song was later performed or recorded by artists from Bob Dylan to Marvin Gaye to Whitney Houston and Jon Bon Jovi, with its indelible opening line referring to Lincoln’s murder: “Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?”

If Dion was surprised by the song’s success, Holler knew immediately that he’d written something special.

After learning of the assassination, the distraught Holler canceled a New York recording session and flew to Florida.

He was soon sitting alone at an upright piano inside his St. Petersburg, Fla., office, surrounded by cups of cold coffee and scattered sheets of paper.

He flipped on a reel-to-reel tape recorder and something magical ensued. Fifty years later, he remains amazed by the process. “It all happened simultaneously, the music and the lyrics,” recalled Holler, now 83, from his California home. “I just wrote it that fast. And I was a bit astonished by that. “We returned to the office to get our bearings. And when I left that day, and went home, I had the song.”

This new song, he knew in his soul, was something different. Holler and his recording partner, producer Phil Gernhard, became intent on finding the right singer to deliver this musical epistle.

The pair saw that Dion was playing a small venue in Hialeah, Fla., and drove there to catch his solo acoustic act.

“And he was very, very good,” recalled Holler. “He hadn’t lost his voice.”

The impressed duo shared a cassette of Holler’s one-man demo. With his wife’s urging, Dion signed on to record “Abraham, Martin and John.”

It quickly touched a nerve in a nation shattered by tragedy and already on the cusp of radical change.

“The country was in a very restless period,” recalled Dion. “That was one of the reasons for the arrangement. I felt it was a handle to some kind of salvation, to link us to a higher reality. To touch our hearts.”