Rock singer Ronnie James Dio is best known for his work fronting heavy metal progenitor Black Sabbath after Ozzy Osbourne left the band. In fact, according AllMusic, Dio brought new life to Sabbath — which had been struggling both creatively and in the charts for years — when he joined in 1979. He and guitarist Tony Iommi even got to work writing the band’s classic song “Children of the Sea” at their first-ever jam session. The CW reports that Iommi called working with Dio “exciting and challenging.” He worked much differently than the band’s original frontman, and his influence greased Sabbath’s rusty creative wheels. “We were doing things that, quite frankly, would have been beyond us with Ozzy. He wasn’t that sort of singer,” Iommi said. “But with Ronnie, there were so many more options. It really did feel like we were starting all over again.”

And start over again they did. Dio’s presence in the band led to the hit albums “Heaven and Hell” in 1980, and “Mob Rules” in 1981, which when platinum and gold, respectively. Dio left after those albums, but he didn’t let that hold him back. He enjoyed a highly successful career as a solo artist before rejoining Sabbath in 1992 and again in the 2000s. So how well had his years of rocking paid off at the time of Dio’s death in 2010? Let’s take a look back and see.

Ronnie James Dio had a nice little nest egg at the time of his death

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