The Music of the 4 Seasons Featuring Frankie Valli

By Robert Reynolds

The 4 Seasons and Frankie Valli rank among the top vocal acts of all time. They amassed seven #1 hits, 18 Top Ten, and placed 61 singles in the Hot 100. They also put 32 LPS on the albums charts. Their songs are still regulars on radio playlists: Sherry, Big Girls Don’t Cry, Walk Like a Man, Rag Doll, Working My Way Back to You, Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You, My Eyes Adored You, December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night), Grease… Their journey was no overnight success, as they struggled through lean years and recorded many flops while searching for that elusive hit record. Their remarkable rag-to-riches story has been told via an award-winning Broadway musical and a Clint Eastwood produced motion picture. Learn about their hits, their misses, obscure album tracks and B-sides, professional trials as they worked their way from delinquents to members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This book examines the music they made famous and tells of all the glorious years that passed between.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781387931279

Robert Reynolds

Based in Calgary, Robert is an emerging author who spends his days working in the oil and gas industry but has been a big fan of the spy thriller genre ever since his childhood when he read one of his grandfather's original James Bond paperbacks from the late 50's. He is married with a young daughter and when he's not day dreaming about dangerous adventures in exotic locales he enjoys running and other outdoor pursuits.

Book preview

The Music of the 4 Seasons Featuring Frankie Valli

THE MUSIC of the 4 SEASONS FEATURING FRANKIE VALLI

mage result for free microphone gif

Robert Reynolds

ISBN:  978-1-387-93127-9

Copyright: 2018

Introduction

In the summer of 1962 the super hip tune Sherry burst upon the U.S. music scene, with The 4 Seasons quartet seemingly becoming an overnight success.  This was far from reality, however.  The group had been together with various lineups for almost ten years and had performed under a variety of stage names:  The Romans, Billy Dixon and the Topics, Frankie Valley and the Travelers, Frankie Vally, The Valli Boys, Frankie Tyler, to name a few.

But during those early years, their most recognizable performing name was The Four Lovers.  Charting at #62 with You’re the Apple of My Eye b/w Girl of My Dreams in 1956, this was their only brush with stardom—and it soon faded. There seemed little reason to expect much from any manifestation of the group, as the songs they recorded were basically maudlin interpretations of older, proven songs or amateurish new material. 

According to some sources the group used at least eighteen different stage names until they finally settled on the one we’d all remember, The 4 Seasons[1].  Even then the group occasionally reverted to labeling itself the Wonder Who for a couple albums.

But let’s digress to see what got them to 1962, Sherry, and eventual superstardom.

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[1] Note: The group is often identified as The 4 Seasons and as The Four Seasons.  For the sake of clarity they will be identified as The 4 Seasons throughout this book. 

Chapter 1 Early Years

The country was slowly emerging from the miseries of the Great Depression.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt had signed an executive order on April 5, 1933, establishing the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) putting hundreds of thousands of young men to work on conservation projects.  Although most of the nation’s unemployed young were in Eastern cities, most of the work projects were in the West.  For $30 a month the young men lived in small encampments similar to military bases. They built flood barriers, reforested areas thinned by logging, constructed bridges, established parks, and so on. The CCC offered hard work, food, shelter, a meager salary, and education in the way of literacy, vocational skills and even limited college level courses. The government’s CCC program provided optimism during a time of need. 

Model A Fords, DeSoto 4-door sedans and classy Packards ruled the dusty roads; for those who could afford them.  But rail was the popular choice for anyone traveling more than 300 miles.  Recently, Burlington Railroad’s Pioneer Zephyr, America’s first diesel-powered streamliner, had finished its inaugural run from Denver to Chicago.

Culturally, sophisticated men and women smoked Lucky Strikes and tobacco advertisements proclaimed Don’t rasp your throat with harsh irritants. Reach for a Lucky instead.  It’s toasted.  R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, maker of Camel Cigarettes, claimed their smokes calm your nerves, while also convincing smokers they would pep (you) up when (you) feel sluggish.

Although soup kitchens and breadlines served meals to the hungry, 1930 saw lime Jell-O make its first appearance, as did the chocolate chip cookie and Twinkies. General Mills introduced Bisquick the following year, Skippy peanut butter was introduced in 1933 and Ritz crackers made their debut in 1934—a perfect combination, it might be said.

Manhattan Melodrama, Of Human Bondage, Tarzan and His Mate and The Thin Man graced cinema screen.  Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, the Marx Brothers, Shirley Temple and Zasu Pitts were fan favorites.

Although recorded music sales had plummeted during the Great Depression, sales would slowly begin to increase as the depression eased. Paramount, Decca, Okeh, RCA Victor and Bluebird were but a few of the popular recording companies turning out the brittle 78-rpm discs.  Some of the top singers of the day were singing cowboy Gene Autry, yodeler Jimmie Rodgers, gospel singer Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong and crooner, Bing Crosby. Portable wind-up gramophones (phonographs) would come into vogue as people began to find a tad more money in their pockets.

1934 found Benny Goodman’s Moonglow, Paul Whiteman’s Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, and Eddy Duchin’s I Only Have Eyes For You constant radio fare.  Twenty-five years later, new versions of the latter two songs would again top music charts.

May 3, 1934, also saw the birth of one Francesco Steven Castelluccio, in the hard luck Stephen Crane Village public housing project in Newark, New Jersey. Little Francesco would be the first of Anthony Castelluccio and Mary Rinaldi’s three sons. The baby’s parents came from strong Italian stock.  According to genealogy records, the baby’s father, Anthony, would have been about twenty-three years old and his mother between twenty-one and twenty-five.  Both were born in New Jersey.

A year after Frankie’s birth, Newark’s City Subway began operating and the city’s Penn Station was dedicated.  By then, Newark had reached its zenith with a population of upwards of 442,000.  Later census figures show the city in decline, with the year 2000 showing it had dropped to 273,500. 

Castelluccio senior was working-class Italian-American who labored as a barber and later designed storefront window displays for Lionel Trains. Mother Mary Rinaldi, worked for a beer company. 

The Stephen Crane Village housing project was a series of red brick, low-rise, two-story apartment buildings a short distance from Branch Brook Park, near the Passaic River in the city’s North Ward.  The home was modest, but comfortable.  The units were self-contained apartments having front and back entrances and with living room and kitchen downstairs. Young Francesco/Frankie[2] grew up there with his parents and two brothers. Frankie’s younger siblings shared a full bed in one of the two upstairs bedrooms; his parents slept in the other.  The elder Frankie had his own twin bed.  The family shared a single bathroom, but the place had steam heat and hot and cold running water; although Frankie would later recall his mother boiling water on the stove so he could bathe. Like most Italian women, Frankie’s mother cooked splendidly and could create any feast on the family’s small kitchen stove. Frankie later remarked that he felt rich living in such luxurious accommodations. Even after achieving fame, he still hung around the old neighborhood because in his mind it was a safe haven.  Fearing his success might evaporate and he’d have no place to live, he didn’t move out of the project until 1964, two years after The 4 Seasons achieved fame and fortune.

Like most everything else during the Great Depression, America’s sport, baseball, suffered badly with average crowd attendance below 5,000.   Only the Detroit Tigers had managed to surpass one million in yearly attendance after 1931.  The St. Louis Browns brought in barely a million fans for the entire decade.

Two years after young Castelluccio’s birth, Joe DiMaggio burst onto the field at Yankee Stadium a short distance away in the Bronx.  The Italian-American DiMaggio never hit below a .323 seasonal average during the remainder of the decade; a period when he crushed a total of 137 home runs over those last four years.  The Yankees pulled out of the Great Depression tailspin by winning four straight World Series.

At last the American economy stabilized and was slowly beginning to come back, although trouble was festering in Europe. Japan was creating similar chaos in Asia and the Pacific.

With Germany bullying the European continent and Adolph Hitler smugly looking on, African-American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens dominated Germany’s Olympian track roster by winning four gold medals and putting to rest Hitler’s myth about Aryan racial superiority. 

Soon, war raged in Europe and the Pacific and many of America’s finest were conscripted into the military to fight aboard. 

By age seven, young Frankie’s mother took the lad to see Italian-American mega star Frank Sinatra perform at the Paramount Theater in neighboring New York City. Enamored by the bright lights, fervent applause and admiration of the audience, the lad was smitten by the limelight and soon arrived at a childhood decision fancying himself a future in showbiz. 

Nearby in Belleville, New Jersey, a kid named Tommy DeVito, youngest of nine children, taught himself to play guitar by absorbing country music being played on the radio.  At age 12, Tommy was making pocket change playing for tips in neighborhood taverns. After the eighth grade he quit school and formed his own band, bringing in $20 to $25 an evening.

On the other hand, the Castelluccio boy was heavily influenced by doo-wop, soul and jazz.  He practiced singing at home by listening to his favorite singers on phonograph records: Sinatra, Rose Murphy, and The Drifters.  Popular harmony groups like the Hi-Los, the Modernaires and the Four Freshmen also attracted Frankie’s interest, as did jazzmen Charlie Parker, Stan Kenton and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.  Female vocalists such as Nelly Lutcher and Sarah Vaughn were also high on the boy’s list of favorites.  Some historians believe Dinah Washington and Little Willie John influenced Frankie’s later high falsettos. 

Years later Frankie candidly remarked that his favorite Sinatra song was Only the Lonely.  Like baseball’s Joe DiMaggio, Sinatra was a hero to many young Italian-American men, especially those with a musical calling.  By the mid-fifties, a short ride across the Hudson River and up Manhattan to the Bronx would reveal another aspiring Italian-American vocal group—Dion and the Belmonts.  Lead singer Dion Dimucci also proclaimed Sinatra as a primary influence. 

Sinatra was an excellent choice as Frankie’s hero .  Ol’ Blue Eyes, as Sinatra was known, stood a mere 5’8, not much taller than the Castelluccio boy’s fragile 5’4 frame.  Both of course had Frank/Frankie going for him and Sinatra was a proven crooner, something young Castelluccio aspired to. 

Neighborhood acquaintances Tommy DeVito and Nick Macioci were in their mid to late teens as the war wound down.  It’s hard to say if they would have gone off to serve had the conflict stretched on. Frankie Castelluccio had yet to reach his teens by the time the war ended.

At last the war ended on both the European and Pacific fronts, battle weary men and women came home, and the economy began to prosper.

Sinatra in the musical Anchor’s Aweigh, and Dana Andrews in the gritty A Walk in the Sun, looked back the on the bleak years of war in varying degrees of earnestness. Happy-go-lucky songs like Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive and Rum & Coca-cola hit the airwaves, as did the country hit Stars & Stripes on Iwo Jima.  Cities expanded with new suburban subdivisions. Factories shut down their war support operations and returned to improving the lives of their workers and the country in general.

As his childhood years eased into his teens, Frankie would attend Central High School, a fair walk from his red brick home in the project.  The walk, however, gave him ample time to run song lyrics’ through his thoughts and perfect his impersonations of the singers whose voices sprang from the phonograph at home.  In time, he began to emulate many other young men from that place and time by hanging out on dimly lit street corners to harmonize. 

Doo doo, do wah…

Dum doobie dum, yeah yeah yeah…

Pop standards such as Blue Moon, Imagination, That’s My Desire, Heart and Soul, Heartaches, and countless other proven lyrical gems found themselves freshly infused with yips, doos and wahs deftly added like spicy ingredients in one of Mary Castelluccio’s exquisite Italian dishes.  Many reworked versions of old songs would rise to hit status and others would simply become oddities in record bargain bins.

Relentless rehearsals under moth-pestered streetlamps, in musty tenement hallways, and unoccupied locker rooms, honed