Mr Nice GuyBands We Loved - The Four Seasons
December 1st 2010 22:56
During their nearly 40 year career Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons sold over a 100 million records making them the most long lived and successful white doo wop group.
(born 3 May 1934) in the Italian First Ward of Newark, New Jersey as Francis Stephen Castelluccio) is best known as lead singer of The Four Seasons, one of the biggest music acts of the 1960s, which continued from then to the 1970s disco scene to the present day.
Valli scored over 25 Top-40 hits with The Four Seasons, a handful of Top-40 hits dubbed as a solo act in the late 1960s, one dubbed as The Wonder Who? in 1965, and again in the mid to late 1970s. His best known “solo” single is Can’t Take My Eyes Off You. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with The Four Seasons in 1990.
Valli started his singing career in 1952 and cut his first single in 1953 as “Frankie Valley,” a name he adopted from Jean Valley, his favorite female singer. In the mid-1950s he split up with the Travellers and joined The Variety Trio, which consisted of Tommy DeVito, twin brother Nick, and Hank Majewski. They redubbed themselves the Variatones, and later, “The Four Lovers” and had a top 40 hit with “Apple of My Eye” in 1956.
After a few more name changes, the group was renamed “The Four Seasons” in 1960. About the same time, Valli Italianized his name to its current form.
Nick DeVito and Majewski left the group in 1960 or 1961 and were replaced by Bob Gaudio and Nick Massi. As the lead singer of the Four Seasons, he had a string of hits beginning with a #1 hit “Sherry” in 1962.
Valli has been the lead singer from then until the present time.
Now 'rediscovered' worldwide through the broadway success of Jersey Boys, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons have rekindled the love affair while finding a legion of new fans from a generation too young to probably appreciate the trials and tribulations this amazing quartet endured in finding 'overnight' success.
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