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My True Story About My Life
The Dellie Hoskie Jr. Story...

Gold record recording artist DELLIE HOSKIE Jr. is a musical master. He has been impressing the World with his Intense soul / funk musical expression for decades. Dellie writes, arranges and plays from his heart and soul with great passion, the way real music is suppose to be.

Dellie's interest in music started when he was a young man around the age of 12 years old. His father Dellie Hoskie Senior was a musician and played the guitar. When Dellie was growing up at home, he would sneak into his father's bedroom and start playing the guitar because he wanted to be just like his father. Eventually Dellie taught himself how to play chords and he would make up his own songs on the guitar. This is how his passion for music began.

By the time he was in his teens, Dellie was itching to get out of Newport News. The church and the junkyard--that wasn't my cup of tea, he says. I took on responsibilities at an early age, got involved with females, and left home when I was 16 year old.

This was after the great post-war migration of African-Americans from the South to the big industrial urban areas of the North, but as Dellie admits with one of his trademark outbursts of self-deprecating humor, Man, I didn't even know the North existed! Me and my brother Joseph just hopped on a boxcar and we just rode; this was in the early '60s, around then.

We got off the boxcar in New Haven--we needed to look for something eat. We was hungry as hell.

The brothers had told Tarducci that their parents were also in New Haven, but their fib was put to rest one Sunday when they were playing music in an old Connecticut transit bus they were living in, on the grounds of the junkyard. We'd just get up and sing and play among ourselves, he says. The boss comes in one Sunday, he heard us back there singing in the bus and he wondered where our parents were. We broke down and told him the truth.

He was amazed at the way we were singing. John Tarducci! Man! He bought us our first equipment, and before too long, we started playing in the local clubs.

After Tarducci's generous gift to the young men, Dellie and Joseph put together a band. They were soon gigging all over town. One night in 1969, they were playing a dance at the old American Legion hall on Winchester Avenue, jamming through the James Brown classic I Can't Stand It.

Well, we was just clowning around, Dellie recalls. We were right in the middle of James' song, and I just stopped and started singing my lyrics. Some of the audience liked it, some didn't. I was just having fun. We went back to the bridge, did some other tunes, and then some people in the audience said, Get on that clown again!'

Before long, Dellie's first manager, one Eddie Noble, paid for the recording of The Clown at New Haven's Dynamic Studios, then released it on his namesake label, Noble Records. From there, it becomes one of those old classic tales of unscrupulous small-label heartbreak: I hooked up with him, signed the contract, says Dellie. That was a big mistake. He did take it all over the airwaves, and there were interviews, and everything was paid for of course, travel and such. But there was no money. The singles "The Clown" & "How much can a man take" were both Gold records sold to fans all over the world in 1971 and made Billboard top 20 for two weeks.

Dellie was still playing music into the 1970s. He played a little with the Five Satins, he says,and toured with the gospel group the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, played guitar and sang with them for about two years. The thing about gospel groups is that anyone can sit and have fun. Ihad my own group up here in Connecticut for a couple of years. I did a lot of gospel.

But he also endured a failed marriage (he has four children), and the death of his brother Joseph, crushed to death at age 19 by one of those large junkyard magnets, says Dellie. As the years wore on, Dellie began drinking more and more. But he never got into the dope or coke, and he didn't bottom out until the death of his father, about twenty years ago. Aw, the eighties, I hit rock bottom then. I was killing the bottle, just killing it. There was my divorce. I tried to kill myself a couple times back then. It were rough. It were real rough. After my father passed, yes, that's when I hit the bottom. I wouldn't pick up the guitar, I wouldn't sing. I was in really in bad shape then. I lost a lot of weight, and people thought I had some disease. Man, it was the stress, I'm telling you.

Well, he says, one night, my father, he comes to me in a dream in 2004 nearly 30 plus years later from his hit record, and he was real rough on me. He says, "What the hell you call yourself? What the hell you doing? I gave you all this talent! Go ahead, get your guitar, pick it up".

But I couldn't pick it up. A couple of nights later, he comes to me again in a dream, and he says the same thing. But still, I just couldn't do it. Then he come to me a third time, in a third dream, and he says, No worries, Dellie. Just do it. I'm with you; I never left you.' And I just started playing when I woke up, and that's when When Real Love's Gone' comes from. I just started playing it--every day, another song.

There would be another dream, this one with his deceased brother Joseph. As he relates the dream, Dellie lets out one of his trademark chuckles. All right, so I wake up and start smelling the coffee, you know, and I'm thinking, What am I gonna do with this music?' Wouldn't you know it but Joe comes to me in a dream one night, and he says, just type in demo' on the internet.

He did that, sent out a couple of dozen demos, and got about 15 responses, one of them from John J, DeGaetano of Arizona's AppolloEarBone Music Enterprises, Inc. My mother, she says to me, Dellie, you tried to kill yourself so many times. There's a reason you're still around. Dellie then recorded the full length CD called "I'm Back, but Real Love is Gone" on AppolloEarBone Music Enterprises, with John J. DeGaetano in 2004. The CD was released in stores and online in all major music outlets worldwide. With little money for promotions, the release had achieved modest success, but had stellar reviews from music publications around the world. The CD also achieved airplay in over 10 countries worldwide.

The songs on I'm Back But Real Love Is Gone reflect both his playful, fun side and his serious one, much as that famous single did, three decades back. It's My Birthday is a bouncy bit recorded in celebration of his 58th birthday this year. I did have a little party that day, he says. I don't hardly drink no more, thank God. I had a couple cocktails that day, and that's when I wrote it. But then there are bluesy soul ballads like Missing You and I'm Sorry, which are nothing if not sober and heartfelt.

Dellie has performed with some of the best entertainers in the gospel and jazz industry, including The Five Blind Boys, Shirley Ceasar and The Five Satins where he was on the road with them for a short time.

Today, Dellie is doing it again! Now in his 60's, Dellie is again on his way to making a monumental come back headed by John J. DeGaetano with his new sound... "The Blues".

Dellie's new Blues CD is slated to be released in 2010 under the direction of John J. DeGaetano on a new label called "DMD" (DeGaetano Music Design).



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