1961 No. 1, Whose Artist Narrowly Avoided One Of Music's Most Infamous Disasters, Hit The Top 65 Years Ago Today

Doo-wop harmonies and an unforgettable singing voice took Dion DiMucci from busking on street corners with his backing group, the Belmonts, to stardom. "Runaround Sue," which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 by October 23, 1961, cemented that status and gave him his only chart topper. Yet, it almost didn't happen, as DiMucci was very nearly on the plane that crashed on February 3, 1959, taking the lives of legends J.P. Richardson — aka the Big Bopper — Ritchie Valens, and rock pioneer Buddy Holly. He stayed grounded on "the day the music died," just missing the rock 'n' roll tragedy immortalized on Don McLean's "American Pie." 

DiMucci, who performed as Dion, and the others were midway through the Winter Dance Party, a grueling 24-date tour. They traveled in a converted school bus, facing sub-zero temperatures as they crisscrossed the upper Midwest. After a show in Clear Lake, Iowa, an exhausted Holly chartered a flight to Fargo, North Dakota, wanting to skip yet another overnight ride. Since there wasn't enough room for all the headliners, coin flips determined who got on. Dion won the toss but balked at the $36 price. "[A] light went off in my head because my father paid that monthly for rent in the Bronx," he told Forbes, "So I thought, 'I'm not going to spend a whole month's rent just for a flight."

Dion gave his seat to Valens, learning about the tragedy by seeing it on the TV news the following morning. "I didn't even know how to grab onto that," he remembered. "It baffled me." Somehow, he finished the tour, picking up vocals on Holly and Valens' songs, and the show went on.

With its stomp-clap rhythms, soaring harmonies, and Dion DiMucci's plaintive croon, "Runaround Sue" is infectious, top-shelf doo-wop. The lyrics are catchy, even though they're kind of toxic, with the protagonist Sue being cut down by a jilted, jealous narrator: "She likes to travel 'round, yeah / She'll love and she'll put you down" goes the bridge. Held to impossible, dated standards, she gets shamed for behavior celebrated in men, as in Dion's other big hit, "The Wanderer."

It's fitting, then, that this No. 1 has a juvenile, adolescent feel. "The song came together in a schoolyard," DiMucci, who co-wrote "Runaround Sue" with Ernie Maresca, recalled in Fred Bronson's "The Billboard Book of Number One Hits." "We used to hang out and just bang on cardboard boxes and get these riffs going that you could sing to." Perhaps because it emerged from these street jam sessions that the song's intricate vocal arrangements sound so raw, spontaneous, and vintage rock 'n' roll, sounding even cooler today.

When asked who "Sue" is, DiMucci has never given a straight answer, and there have been multiple theories. On an appearance on Oprah, his wife Susan claimed the song was about her. Not so, he told Forbes in 2019, "It really is about a girl ... The word 'Sue' fit the song — you couldn't use Roberta, or Alice, or whatever." He's never named names, yet despite its outdated worldview, the groove, harmonies, and unbridled energy of "Runaround Sue" make it truly timeless.