The Music of the 4 Seasons: Musicians of Note

By Robert F. Reynolds

The 4 Seasons with lead singer Frankie Valli rank among the top American vocal acts of all time.  Collectively, Valli and the group amassed seven number one hits, 18 Top Tens and placed an incredible 61 singles in the Hot 100.  They also placed 32 LPs on the top album charts.  Their hit-making years spanned more than fifty years.  4 Seasons songs are some of the most recognizable tunes of the 60s/70s and continue today to be regulars on radio playlists. Sherry, Dawn, 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, Swearin' to God, My Eyes Adored You, Grease, December 1963 (Oh, What Night), Who Loves You are but a handful of their memorable hit songs.  Their rise to fame and stardom was no overnight success story as they rose from the streets of New Jersey.  Their story has been told via an award-winning Broadway musical and a Clint Eastwood produced major motion picture. Learn about this amazing group's hits and misses, obscure album tracks, B-sides and career ups and downs as they sang their way from delinquents to esteemed members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  The Music of the 4 Seasons is a book no music lover will want to miss.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Reynolds
• Release date: Feb 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781387931279

Robert F. Reynolds

Robert F. Reynolds has penned several books, including: A Perilous Place; Thunder Bay; El Paso Run; The Rabbit's Tale; Along the Quay; Gray Wolf Pass; Mackinac Drift; Orchids and Sand; Molasses Men; Ernesto Juarez; Stiller's Creek; A Dark and Curious Place; A Fine Gray Rain; and others.  He's also written several music related books in his The Music of.... series. 

Book preview

Chapter 1      Early Years

In the summer of 1962 the song Sherry burst upon the music scene, with The 4 Seasons seemingly becoming an overnight success.  This was far from fact, however.  The group had been together with various lineups for almost ten years and 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 name was The Four Lovers.  Charting at #62 with You’re the Apple of My Eye b/w Girl of My Dreams in 1956, there seemed little reason to expect much from any incarnation of the group, as the songs 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 4 Seasons.  Even then they reverted to labeling themselves the Wonder Who for a couple albums. 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. 

But let’s digress to see what got them to 1962 and their first glimpse of stardom. 

***

The country was emerging from the doldrums 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 work, a meager salary, food, shelter and education in the way of literacy, vocational skills and even limited college level courses.

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

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 they 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. 

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

Although music record sales had plummeted during the Great Depression, sales would slowly begin to increase. Paramount, Decca, Okeh, RCA Victor and Bluebird were but a few of the popular recording companies turning out 78-rpm discs.  Some of the top singers of the day were singing cowboy, Gene Autry, yodeler Jimmie Rodgers, 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 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.  Parents Anthony Castelluccio and Mary Rinaldi came from 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 of whom were born in New Jersey. Little Francesco was the eldest of Anthony and Mary’s three sons.

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 and near the Passaic River in the city’s North Ward.  The units were self-contained apartments with front and back entrances with living room and kitchen downstairs. Young Francesco/Frankie[1] lived 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.  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.  The home was modest, but comfortable. 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.

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. 

Like most everything else, 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 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 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 had 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. 

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 genuine 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, a kid named Tommy DeVito, and youngest of nine children, taught himself to play guitar by absorbing country music 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.

War raged on in Europe and the Pacific and many of the country’s finest were being conscripted into the military to fight aboard. 

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 (Me and My Shadow) and The Drifters (Money Honey, Such a Night).  Popular harmonizing groups like the Hi-Los (Goody, Goody, Button Up Your Overcoat), the Modernaires (Juke Box Saturday Night) and the Four Freshmen (Graduation Day, It Happened Once Before) also attracted Frankie’s interest, as did jazzmen Charlie Parker, Stan Kenton and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.  Female vocalists such as Nelly Lutcher (Fine Brown Frame) and Sarah Vaughn (Whatever Lola Wants and Come Rain or Come Shine) were high on his list of favorites.  Some believe Dinah Washington (What a Difference a Day Made, Teach Me Tonight) and Little Willie John (Sleep, Fever") 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 (Where or When). Lead singer Dion Dimucci would also lay claim to Sinatra as a primary influence. 

If Frankie needed a hero of sorts, Sinatra was an excellent choice.  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 war 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, 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 seriousness. 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 years of youth edged forward, 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 lyrics’ through his thoughts; perfect his impersonations of the singers whose voices sprang from the phonograph at home.  In time, he did like many other young men from that place and time, hanging out on street corners as they harmonized. 

Doo doo do wah...

Dit dit dit dit dit...

Shoo doo doo dooby...

Voices became instruments; experiments in sound, melody and harmony.

Street corners in Belleville, New Jersey, like those in Brooklyn and the Bronx, teemed with ambitious youngsters crooning under moth fluttered streetlights or catching the hollow reverberation beneath bridges on summer nights. The street corners and schools were alive with doo-wop groups. Sometimes a group might get lucky and land an occasional local nightclub booking.

In frostier weather, Frankie and friends practiced in the heated lobby of the Stephen Crane Village project’s administrative building and at school, groups would gather in the locker room or bathroom and make use of its natural echo chamber.

Many old pop standards such as Blue Moon, Imagination, That’s My Desire, Heart and Soul, Heartaches, and countless other proven lyrical gems found themselves infused with a series of yips and doos and wahs