Today marks the 6th anniversary of the passing of a legendary heavy metal rock singer, Ronnie James Dio. Despite having no formal training, he possessed a powerful tenor voice perfectly suited to the genre. During a career spanning six decades, Dio fronted Elf, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio and Heaven & Hell. He is credited with popularizing metal’s “throwing horns” hand sign, which he picked up from his Italian grandmother who used the all-purpose sign to both cast and ward off evil curses. Dio is also thought to be the inspiration for Spinal Tap’s spoof of everything good and silly about metal.

Ronald James Padavona was born in Portsmouth, NH, during the short time his father worked in the WWII shipyards. After the war, the family moved back to their previous hometown of Cortland, NY, near Syracuse. The house was full of opera and, from the time he was 5 until he left for college, Ronnie’s trumpet playing. He liked to read science fiction and tales of medieval times. What he really wanted was to play sports, but he stopped growing at 5’4” and 130#. Ronnie took trumpet lessons until he was 17, played in the high school band and select dance band, and at 15 began playing in the typical high school cover band. They started out as the Las Vegas Kings. When Ronnie discovered he could sing (which he attributed to breathing exercises for playing trumpet), he started playing bass guitar.

Ronnie, second from left

Over the next ten years, the band’s name morphed through Ronnie and the Rumblers, Ronnie and the Red Caps, and Ronnie Dio and the Prophets. Ronnie took his new name from a Mafia gangster, Johnny Dio, to whom he might have been related. They played the usual places: schools, clubs, and the many fraternities in Syracuse, Ithaca, Rochester and Buffalo. The band cut several singles and an album. After high school, Ronnie went to U of Buffalo to study pharmacology, but dropped out freshman year to concentrate on the band.

In 1967, the band changed names again. Ronnie and the lead guitar player were both vertically challenged, and the toes of their Beatle boots would curl up in the NY winter weather, leading to a friend calling them the “Electric Elves.” They decided to play along and took that as their name. It was later shortened to Elves, and finally, just Elf. In 1968, the lead guitar player was killed and the rest of the band seriously injured in a head-on car crash in Connecticut. Ronnie received 150 stitches for lacerations to the head and face from going through the windshield. After recovering, the band was put back together with a new lead player. By 1972, they were just called Elf, and the band was driving across the country, playing wherever they could and looking for a record deal. They were auditioning for Columbia Records at a NYC club, and Roger Glover and Ian Paice of Deep Purple heard them and offered to produce them.

Elf

Elf began touring with Deep Purple as their opening act, and when Ritchie Blackmore quit DP in 1975, he recruited Ronnie and then most of Elf to become Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow. Dio left the group in 1979. By that time, Blackmore had fired all of his band mates from Elf.

On stage with Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow 

As luck would have it, Black Sabbath had just fired Ozzy Osborne, and Dio was immediately hired to replace him. He recorded and toured with BS until 1982, when they had a fall out over a recording engineer’s accusation that Dio was going to the studio at night and re-mixing the recordings to boost his vocals. Dio denied it, but he'd had enough.

Black Sabbath: Tommy Iommi, Vinnie Appice, Dio, Geezer Butler

Drummer Vinnie Appice left with Dio and they formed Dio. For the next 22 years, Dio recorded and toured regularly, except for Dio’s one album, one tour reunion with BS in 1992.

Statue of Dio in Kavarna, Bulgaria

In 2006, Dio joined up again with BS alumni Tommy Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Vinnie Appice in a band to be called Heaven & Hell. They toured, produced one album under that name, and recorded three new songs for Black Sabbath: The Dio Years, a compilation album. The group planned a new album and tour for 2010, but in late 2009, Dio announced that he was being treated for stomach cancer. The tour was canceled, and on May 16, 2010, Dio’s family released the news that he had succumbed to the disease. Ronnie James Dio was 67.

Dio's tomb -- note the engraving on the urns

Scene from Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny (NSFW)