Mark Dinning (1933–1986)
Mark Dinning (born Max Edward Dinning in Manchester, Oklahoma) was a pop singer forever linked to the sentimental teen tragedy song “Teen Angel.” Raised on a farm near Nashville after his family relocated, he was the youngest of nine children; his sisters were the Dinning Sisters, a popular 1940s-50s vocal group. Dinning learned guitar young and signed with MGM in 1957.
His career breakthrough came with “Teen Angel” (1959, charted big in 1960), written by his sister Jean and her husband. The song—a maudlin story of a girl killed retrieving her boyfriend’s ring from a stalled car on train tracks—topped the Billboard Hot 100 despite (or because of) controversy and radio bans for being too morbid. It sold over a million copies. Follow-ups like “A Star Is Born (In the Sign of the Big Dipper)” flopped, cementing his one-hit wonder status.
Struggling with alcoholism, Dinning’s career faded; he battled health issues and died of a heart attack in 1986 at age 52. “Teen Angel” endures as a prime example of 1960s death-disc pop.