At 89, Frankie Valli is ready for one last encore
LOS ANGELES — Nobody came to Frankie Valli's wedding over the summer, which was exactly how the 89-year-old singer wanted it.
"Oh, it was terrific," he recalls of the very private ceremony at Las Vegas' Westgate Hotel, where Valli and his fourth wife, Jackie Jacobs, tied the knot in June, more than half a century after he set out toward becoming one of the 1960s' most reliable pop hit-makers as the falsetto-voiced frontman of the Four Seasons. "We both have families from back east, and afterward everybody said, 'Why didn't you tell us? We wanted to come!'" He laughs.
"They probably all would have, as long as I paid for the plane trip and the rooms."
Financial considerations aside, Valli is hardly wanting for crowds these days: With a set list chock-full of AM radio classics like "Sherry," "Walk Like a Man," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Working My Way Back to You," "Rag Doll" and "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" — each a compact marvel of lush vocal harmony and rough-and-tumble rhythm — Valli plays 75 or 80 well-attended concerts every year, including a gig in May at Inglewood's YouTube Theater in which that last tune sparked a singalong so robust that Valli told the audience, "They can hear us in Sacramento."
Last week the singer launched a new Vegas residency
