Sitting on the worn black leather couch in his sunlit Capitol Heights, Maryland, living room, the 81-year-old singer was surrounded by reminders of a long, busy life. Framed photographs, record covers and concert posters hung below a red sign proclaiming "THE LEGENDARY ORIOLES." There was a black-and-white portrait of the band members from the 1950s, with a fresh-faced Diz in the middle. Here was a photo of Diz sitting on a committee for the late longtime D.C. Mayor Marion Barry — "my buddy," he said.
But mostly he nodded and smiled behind tinted glasses as his wife of 59 years, Millie Russell, explained the mementoes on their wall. The nostalgia-heavy decor of Millie's careful selection is largely lost on Diz, who became blind from a cataract at age 55.
Since then, Millie, 75, has been watchful. When Diz shuffled out of the room and came back with white foam around his lips, she furrowed her brow. "You didn't do too good of a job shaving," she said, getting up to wipe the cream from his chin.
They met backstage at the Howard Theatre, when Millie was 13 and Diz was 19. Millie was in the crowd for a show with Jackie Wilson, and she spotted a jeans-clad fellow on her way out. He told her that he was a singer. "You don't look like a singer to me," she retorted. Diz responded with a chuckle, "Honey, you better believe it."
They married four years later, shortly after Diz joined the Orioles, the band widely recognized as the first R&B vocal group and credited with popularizing the musical style in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Though the version of the group that Diz sang with was considered its second generation — after frontman Sonny Til broke away from the original Orioles and started a new combo, tacking on the "Legendary" to distinguish them from the baseball team — he still recalls the band being in hot demand wherever it went, selling out shows in Texas, Michigan and at their home base in Baltimore.
Millie took over the band's management in 1981, the year Til passed away. There was doubt among fans about whether the group could persist without its leader, but Millie saw an opportunity with the departure of the group's longtime manager. At the time, Diz — a practicing optician before he lost his vision — was also overseeing seven different optometry businesses.
"I told them, 'You sing, and I'll sell,'" Millie recalled.
And sell she did. Though many venues considered the Orioles to be past their prime, Millie kept the gigs coming. Her biggest "get" was a performance slot at a gala for Bill Clinton's first inauguration, in the lead-up to acts like Barbara Streisand and Michael Jackson. The letter of invitation signed by talent directors for the inaugural committee — sent after Millie responded to an initial rejection with a passionate appeal of the group's historic significance — is tucked into a bulging folder with her other records of career highlights.
The group has seen many iterations since Diz joined, though none as successful as the first. In today's five-member group, there isn't a singer under 60.
For 34 years, Millie has been Diz's band manager. For 26, she's been his eyes. More recently, she's become his memory.
The diagnosis of early-onset dementia came almost a year ago, though there had been signs before then. Sometimes the name of a close friend would draw a blank, or Diz would claim to have misplaced a piece of clothing that he never owned. As bandmates brought their equipment inside for their weekly Friday rehearsal, Diz still held a shaving razor in his left hand like he'd forgotten to put it down.
When Diz rambles on about his past, Millie tends to roll her eyes and swat the air, as if his distorted memories were swarming like flies. But when she vocalizes her disagreement with his version of history, he's quick to contest.
"I know this," he said through gritted teeth. "I lived this."
But Millie doesn't trust those stories anymore. She winced recalling Diz stumbling on the lyrics to "Baby Please Don't Go" — one of the group's greatest hits — while performing last November. He skipped the second verse entirely and went straight to the last. The band kept playing like it was business as usual, and likely no one in the audience noticed, but for Millie the incident was searing.
"I won't let him embarrass himself like that," she said. The band's 68th anniversary celebration at Mr. Henry's restaurant on Capitol Hill was to be Diz's last major performance between going into "semi-retirement," a dignified term for a plan to suspend all but the occasional cameo appearance from now on.
After so many decades as her husband's right hand, Millie admitted that she was also ready for a slower pace. A sense of injustice dogs her view of their relationship. "You think if it was the woman who needed so much help, the husband would stay?" she said.
"She's steadfast," Diz nodded.
"A man is weak," Millie said. "And I'm tired."
But the band will stay in Russell hands. After Millie retires as manager, their 52-year-old son, Christopher, will take up the mantle.
When Millie discussed these plans a few days before the anniversary show, she was resolute. But something happened during Diz's performance last week that was unimaginable for a woman whose managerial prowess is linked to her strong stubborn streak:
She changed her mind.
It was Millie's persistence, after all, that got them the venue in the first place. Narayan Campbell, the assistant general manager at Mr. Henry's, said he was hesitant because the restaurant had just started hosting live acts again, with most of the performance slots allotted to jazz ensembles. But as she has for so many decades, Millie sold the Orioles.
"She just has an old-school straightforwardness to her," Campbell said. "That's something you don't see too much anymore these days."
The restaurant's upstairs space was packed with diners and standing audience members that evening. Several attendees identified themselves as products of "the old D.C." — back when the nickname "Chocolate City" rang true and going to R&B and doo-wop concerts was "a part of what young people did," as lifelong fan Carl Cole, 72, put it.
Everyone was there for Diz, it seemed, from Grace Ruffin of The Jewels to Steve Charles of The Clovers. The crowd clapped and cheered raucously when his son assisted him onstage. His rendition of "Baby Please Don't Go" went off without a hitch, and he was handed the mic several more times while he bobbed his head, tapped his toes and sang along to every song from his seat in the front row.
Millie sang along, too, beaming at Diz with pride. She decided then that this would not — could not — be his last performance.
"Every song they sang, he knew every word, every harmony, the whole nine yards," she said. "So, what I said before about semi-retirement was premature."
This wasn't news to Diz, for whom leaving music was never an option. Of every bodily function that fails with age, he is sure that his voice will be the last to go.
"You know the song," Diz said matter-of-factly, "so you just keep singing."
Share
