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Bio and Discography
Oh, what a story. Frankie Valli, who
came to fame in 1962 as the lead singer of the Four
Seasons, is hotter than
ever in the 21st century. Thanks to the volcanic success
of the Tony-winning
musical Jersey
Boys, which chronicles
the life and times of Frankie and his legendary group,
such classic songs as
“Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” “Rag Doll,”
and “Can’t Take My Eyes
Off You” are all the rage all over again. With the play
in its seventh blockbuster
year on Broadway, and five other casts performing Jersey Boys nightly from Las Vegas to London, the real Frankie
Valli is also packing venues around the world. To mark
the 50th anniversary of
the Seasons’ first hit “Sherry,” Frankie is touring
England, Australia and New
Zealand in 2012, in addition to keeping up his busy
schedule in the U.S.
The current
excitement prompted Frankie to salute
the decade that made him a star with his first new
studio album in 15 years. In
Romancing The ’60s,
he put his own
stamp on some of his favorite ’60s songs, the ones he
always wanted to record
but somehow got away. Produced by Bob Gaudio, an
original member of the Four
Seasons and Frankie’s long-time partner, the set
includes unforgettable new
versions of such gems as “Spanish Harlem,” “Call Me” and
“Take Good Care of My
Baby.” And the album features a guest appearance by four
young stars of Jersey
Boys, providing background vocals
for—what else?—“On Broadway.” Launched amid Jersey
Boy-mania, Romancing
The ’60s has
become the latest classic in Frankie Valli’s
half-century of recording.
But please don’t say that Frankie is
back. The truth is, he never went away. Sure, the
majority of the 71 chart hits
of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (including 40 in
the Top 40, 19 in the
Top 10 and eight No. 1’s) came during the 1960s, but the
music didn’t just
disappear. He has toured almost continuously since 1962,
and his songs have
been omnipresent in such movies as The
Deer
Hunter, Dirty
Dancing, Mrs.
Doubtfire, Conspiracy Theory and The
Wanderers. As many as 200 artists have done cover
versions of Frankie’s
“Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” from Nancy Wilson’s jazz
treatment to Lauryn
Hill’s hip-hop makeover.
Frankie and the Seasons have
influenced many other great recording artists. That was
acknowledged in dozens
of recent tributes collected for Jersey
Beat, the new Four Seasons boxed set. For example,
from Barry Gibb:
“Frankie Valli to me has become one of the hallmark
voices of our generation.
From the deepest emotions of his real voice to the power
of his falsetto, he created
a style that we all still strive to emulate.” From Billy
Joel: “I wrote ‘Uptown
Girl’ as the flip side to the story of ‘Rag Doll.’ I
always loved that record.”
And from Brian Wilson: “In the early ’60s the Four
Seasons were my favorite
group. I thought they were fantastic. The voice blend
was fantastic. The
competition helped me to get cracking. It inspired me,
because they made good
music. I went to the piano thinking I could top their
music.”
There’s something about Frankie’s
music that makes young people of every generation want
to get up and dance.
Amid the disco era, the Seasons hit it big with “Who
Loves You,” which reached
No 3 in 1975, and “December 1963 (Oh, What a Night), a
No. 1 record in 1976. On
the other side of the Atlantic, “You’re Ready Now” and
“The Night,” which
didn’t do anything in the U.S., emerged from dance clubs
in the north of
England to become huge hits in Europe. Two decades
later, in 1994, a dance club
remix of “December 1963” climbed to No. 14 in the U.S.
on the Billboard
Hot 100. In 2000, a
French-language rap version of “December 1963” went to
No. 1 in Paris. And in
July of 2007, a remix of the Four Seasons’ 1967 hit
“Beggin’ ” became the No. 1
dance record in Britain. That was eight months in advance of the March 2008 opening of Jersey Boys in London, where the play went on to win the Olivier
Award for the best new musical on the West End. Case
closed: Frankie never went
away.
Anyone who forgot about Frankie
apparently never watched one of the most popular and
critically acclaimed TV
series in history: The
Sopranos. The
Seasons’ music could be heard in the show or sometimes
over the credits. The
characters often spouted their admiration for “Frankie
Valli.” Tony Soprano
bragged that he used the same florist as Frankie. And
Frankie himself, in an
acting role, guest-starred in Seasons 5 and 6 of The Sopranos as mobster Rusty Millio—until Rusty’s unfortunate
demise in a hail of bullets.
Considering Frankie’s background,
it’s a wonder he didn’t end up like Rusty rather than in
the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame. Born Francis Castelluccio on May 3, 1934, he
grew up in a public
housing project—Stephen Crane Village—on the tough
streets of Newark, New
Jersey. As the character of Tommy DeVito, Frankie’s
friend and fellow Four Season,
says in Jersey
Boys: “If you’re from
my neighborhood, you got three ways out: You could join
the army. You could get
mobbed up. Or—you could become a star.” At an early age,
Frankie chose Door No.
3. When he was seven, his mother took him to New York
City’s Paramount Theater
to see Frank Sinatra. “I saw Sinatra coming out on
stage,” Frankie recalls,
“and the way he was lit up, it was like he had an aura
around him. I decided
then and there that’s what I was going to do—be a
successful singer.”
That’s not easy in the best of
circumstances, and hanging out in Newark was certainly
not the best of
circumstances. Several of Frankie’s friends did stints
in jail for small-time
robberies, including two buddies, Tommy DeVito and Nick
Massi, who would later become
original members of the Four Seasons. If you didn’t
watch out, Frankie says,
“you could wind up in the trunk of a car.”
Fortunately, Frankie’s friends
discovered that making music was a good way to stay out
of jail and car trunks.
In the early ’50s, DeVito headed a group called the
Variety Trio, and one night
he invited young Frankie on stage to sing “I Can’t Give
You Anything But Love.”
Soon, Frankie was known around the neighborhood for
having the voice of an
angel. In 1953, he caught the eye of music publisher
Paul Kapp, who helped
Frankie make his first record, “My Mother’s Eyes,” on
the Corona label.
Realizing that Castelluccio was “a little long for a
marquee” (as his
girlfriend kids him in Jersey
Boys),
he rechristened himself Frankie Valley (later
Italianized to Valli), borrowing
the name from friend and fellow performer Texas Jean
Valley. “My Mother’s Eyes”
made a little splash locally but sank without a trace
outside Newark.
A bit of national attention didn’t
come until 1956, when Frankie was in a group called the
Four Lovers with Tommy,
his brother Nick DeVito and Hank Majewski. They had a
minor hit with “You’re
the Apple of My Eye” by Otis Blackwell, who also penned
“Don’t Be Cruel” for
Elvis Presley. The Four Lovers also cut an album called
Joyride and appeared on the Ed
Sullivan
Show. But even this modest success proved to be
short-lived, and
Frankie kept open his other main career path—cutting
hair.
It wasn’t until 1959 that the
Lovers, now numbering three (Frankie, Tommy and Nick
Massi) started catching
some big breaks. First, a friend named Joe Pesci (yes,
the same Joe Pesci who
would go on, improbably, to become an Oscar-winning
actor) introduced the
Lovers to Bob Gaudio, a piano-playing, song-writing
prodigy and former member
of the Royal Teens. He had co-written the monster hit
“Short Shorts,” but then
his Teens had returned to obscurity. After taking in
Gaudio, the Lovers, now
Four again, started working with Bob Crewe, a brilliant
lyricist and producer
with a golden ear (his songwriting credits already
included “Silhouettes” for
the Rays). Meanwhile, the Lovers flunked an audition to
play at the cocktail
lounge of a bowling alley in Union, N.J., but they
decided the lounge’s name
would make a classy moniker for a singing group: The
Four Seasons.
For two years the Four Seasons sang
background for Crewe’s other acts while working on a
style of their own.
Finally, in 1962, Gaudio came up with a song that made
full use of Frankie’s
remarkable range, from baritone to falsetto. When the
unknown Seasons sang
“Sherry” on American
Bandstand, they
suddenly became the hottest band in the land, and after
nine years as a
recording artist, Frankie Valli became an “overnight”
sensation with a No. 1
record. The sound of “Sherry” was unlike anything else
on the airwaves. “Many
R&B groups had used falsetto as part of their
background harmonies,”
explains Frankie, “but we were different because we put
the falsetto out front
and made it the lead.”
Determined not to be a one-hit
wonder again, Gaudio collaborated with Crewe, and the
duo quickly composed two
more No 1 hits for the Seasons: “Big Girls Don’t Cry”
and “Walk Like a Man.”
Gaudio and Crewe went on to become one of the most
successful song-writing
teams in pop-music history. Around the same time, Gaudio
also formed a special
partnership with Valli. With a handshake, Bob agreed to
give Frankie half of
everything Bob earned as a writer and producer, and
Frankie agreed to give Bob
half of Frankie’s earnings from performances outside the
group. That
partnership remains in force 50 years later, still
sealed only with a
handshake.
The fateful year of 1964 brought the
British invasion, but that didn’t stall the Four
Seasons. With the Gaudio-Crewe
engine firing on all cylinders, the group released one
smash after another:
“Dawn (Go Away),” “Ronnie,” “Rag Doll,” “Save It For
Me,” “Big Man in Town”
and, in early 1965, “Bye Bye Baby (Baby, Goodbye).”
From late 1965 to 1967, Gaudio and
Crewe began working on songs that Frankie could sing
solo—adult-oriented songs
that didn’t rely on his famous falsetto. Songwriting for
the group was largely
turned over to the team of Denny Randell and Sandy
Linzer, who produced three
straight giant hits: “Let’s Hang On,” “Working My Way
Back to You” and “Opus 17
(Don’t You Worry ’Bout Me).” The Seasons also cracked
the Top 10 with a
gorgeous reinvention of the old Cole Porter standard
“I’ve Got You Under My
Skin.” Gaudio’s main contribution to the group during
this period was
“Beggin’,” written with Peggy Farina of the Angels.
Back in the studio, Gaudio and Crewe
were still puzzling over songs that could give Frankie
his own identity. After
several unsuccessful attempts, they finally fashioned a
signature song that
would make Frankie a solo superstar: “Can’t Take My Eyes
Off You.” Released in
1967, it went to No. 2 in Billboard
and
No. 1 in Cashbox.
With the popularity
of the original record and all the cover versions,
“Can’t Take My Eyes Off You”
has become one of the top ten most-played songs in the
history of BMI, one of
the two major companies that collect royalties for
songwriters.
After “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You”
came two more Top 40 solo hits: “I Make a Fool of
Myself” and “To Give (the
Reason I Live).” But unlike many lead singers who
achieve solo success, leave
their groups and never look back, Frankie stayed with
the Four Seasons,
producing hits in two parallel careers. While Frankie
flourished solo, the Four
Seasons stayed in the Top 40 with “C’mon Marianne,”
“Watch the Flowers Grow”
and a remake of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.”
In the early 1970’s the Seasons
finally had a cold spell. Massi and DeVito had left the
group, and the lineup
of players kept changing. But while Gaudio stopped
touring with the group, he
continued to write songs, and Frankie Valli remained one
of the biggest names
in the music business.
In 1975 Frankie came roaring back
with “My Eyes Adored You,” which reached No. 1,
“Swearin’ to God” and a cover
of “Our Day Will Come.” That burst of success spurred
Gaudio to put together a
new Four Seasons, led by Frankie of course. With his
future wife Judy Parker,
Gaudio wrote “Who Loves You” and “December 1963 (Oh,
What a Night),” two of the
biggest hits in the Seasons’ history. The new hot streak
culminated in 1978,
when Frankie’s solo performance of “Grease,” featured
not once but twice in the
movie soundtrack, reached the inevitable No. 1 ranking
in Billboard.
From 1962 to 1978, Frankie Valli and
the Four Seasons sold more than 100 million records,
even before the invention
of the compact disc prompted Seasons collectors to buy
the hits all over again.
For decades after their heyday, Frankie and the Seasons
continued to be a top
concert draw, and radio constantly played their
classics, not to mention the
new remixes that kept popping up on the charts. In 1990
Frankie and the other
original Seasons were inducted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame, only five
years after the Hall opened for business.
But who could imagine that the first
four decades would be only the beginning—that Frankie
Valli would celebrate the
new century with a new album and a heavy sold-out global
concert schedule? No
other pop star has ever received the kind of fresh lease
on life that Jersey
Boys has given Frankie Valli. In
2009 Jersey Boys
made it into the
Southern Hemisphere by having a wildly successful run in
Melbourne, Australia,
before moving to Sydney, Australia, and then New
Zealand. Meanwhile back in the
Northern Hemisphere, by late 2011 two different tours of
the play were
traveling through cities across North America, while
fixed companies continued
performances on Broadway, and in Las Vegas and London.
GK Films, producers of
Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, bought the
rights to make a Jersey
Boys movie. After the
best-selling Jersey
Boys Original
Broadway Cast Recording, produced by Bob Gaudio,
went platinum, Jersey
Boys became the first Broadway
show to produce a holiday album, another Gaudio
production, called Seasons
Greetings: A Jersey Boys Christmas.
It features Jersey
Boys cast members
from three continents. And Danielle Gaudio, Bob’s
daughter, had the idea to
extend the franchise further with Jersey
Babys:
The Music of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons for
Kids, an album
she produced with the help of her Dad and Robby
Robinson, who co-produced Romancing
the ’60s and has been
Frankie’s concert musical director for more than a
quarter-century. For Jersey
Babys, Robby made his magical
keyboards produce sounds that imitated everything from
harps to kazoos to penny
whistles, creating a delightful new take on Four Seasons
music.
For as far into the future as anyone
can see, Jersey
Boys will introduce
the music of Frankie Valli to new generations. The man
himself shows no signs
of slowing down. As his character says at the end of Jersey Boys: “Like that bunny on TV with the battery, I just keep
going and going and going.” For as long as he wants to
sing, people will want
to listen.
—Charles Alexander
Late
December, 2011
Frankie
Valli
& the Four Seasons / Frankie Valli Charted
Singles
* Solo Records
Year
|
Position
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1953
|
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*
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My Mother's Eyes
|
1962
|
1
|
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Sherry
|
1962
|
1
|
|
Big Girls Don't Cry
|
1962
|
23
|
|
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
|
1963
|
1
|
|
Walk Like a Man
|
1963
|
22
|
|
Ain't That a Shame
|
1963
|
77
|
|
Soon I'll Be Home Again
|
1963
|
3
|
|
Candy Girl
|
1963
|
36
|
|
Marlena
|
1963
|
36
|
|
New Mexican Rose
|
1963
|
88
|
|
That's The Only Way
|
1964
|
16
|
|
Stay
|
1964
|
28
|
|
Alone
|
1964
|
75
|
|
Sincerely
|
1964
|
3
|
|
Dawn
|
1964
|
6
|
|
Ronnie
|
1964
|
1
|
|
Rag Doll
|
1964
|
10
|
|
Save It For Me
|
1964
|
20
|
|
Big Man In Town
|
1965
|
60
|
|
Little Boy in Grown Up Clothes
|
1965
|
12
|
|
Bye Bye Baby
|
1965
|
64
|
|
Toy Soldier
|
1965
|
30
|
|
Girl Come Running
|
1965
|
3
|
|
Let's Hang On
|
1966
|
9
|
|
Working My Way Back To You
|
1966
|
13
|
|
Opus 17
|
1966
|
9
|
|
I've Got you Under My Skin
|
1966
|
39
|
*
|
You're Gonna Hurt Yourself
|
1966
|
68
|
*
|
The Proud One
|
1966
|
10
|
|
Tell It To The Rain
|
1967
|
16
|
|
Beggin
|
1967
|
2
|
*
|
Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You
|
1967
|
18
|
*
|
I Make a Fool Of Myself
|
1967
|
29
|
*
|
To Give (The Reason To Live)
|
1967
|
9
|
|
C'mon Marianne
|
1967
|
30
|
|
Watch the Flowers Grow
|
1968
|
24
|
|
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow
|
1969
|
61
|
|
Electric Stories
|
1969
|
52
|
*
|
The Girl I'll Never Know
|
1969
|
95
|
|
Idaho
|
1969
|
98
|
|
Somethin's On Her Mind
|
1969
|
45
|
|
And That Reminds Me
|
1970
|
94
|
|
Patch Of Blue
|
1974
|
1
|
|
My Eye's Adored You
|
1975
|
6
|
*
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Swearin To God
|
1975
|
11
|
*
|
Our Day Will Come
|
1975
|
3
|
|
Who Loves You
|
1976
|
1
|
|
December '63 (Oh What A Night)
|
1976
|
36
|
*
|
Fallen Angel
|
1976
|
78
|
*
|
We're All Alone
|
1978
|
1
|
*
|
Grease
|
1994
|
11
|
|
December '63 (Oh What A Night)
|
|
|