The Smiley Smile Message Board

I've stumbled into an extended acquaintance with the Four Seasons this past month or so. In truth I haven't given them a thought since sometime in the 60's. Dougie Pendrell's big brother Frankie turned us on to the two greatest hits packages - the gold one and the black one.

Wow! These guys were good on every level - writing, performing, production.

And I think there was a friendly rivalry for awhile with the Beach Boys, each band delivering a good-natured put down of the other in a couple of tunes.

Of course Frankie Valli's falsetto easily matched Brian Wilson's, although each distinctly flavored East/West coasts.

But the Seasons don't seem to have been album oriented the way the Beach Boys were, except maybe for Ragdoll and Genuine Imitation Life. I'm probably mistaken on that point, but haven't the time to Google a discography.

Anyway, I only bring it to the attention of all here because I did stumble upon a reference to some sort of BB/Seasons coproduction in the 80's.

Can anyone help me with this?

I had the opportunity to meet Tommy DeVito of the Seasons s few times at a friends house a few short years ago. He was in from Vegas. He was best friends with one of her cousins from years ago. He didn't speak too well anymore, mostly a quiet rasp, and told me "his pipes were gone" but he gave me a signed CD of Italian guitar music he had just made. Pretty cool. It was fascinating to listen to the stories he told us about the Season's, from their salad days onward. He didn't have a lot of positive things to say about Frankie, but in general it was really interesting. As fate would have it, my wife worked for many years with Bob Gaudio's son, and never realized it, until he gave us 2cd row tickets to Jersey Boys a few years ago. When I asked her where she got them, she said from her friend at work Shannon Gaudio. I put it together. He also didn't have a lot of positive things to say interestingly, about the Seasons personally. I think they were in the shadows a lot until Jersey Boys, never really concentrating on albums, but great singles. I'm a big fan of their music, most of which is brilliant from their 60's days. It's was really cool to meet Tommy and Shannon, and get some inside scoop about this often overlooked band.

The Beach Boys and Four Seasons song is called "East Meets West." I don't know much about it, but to me it's every bit as gimmicky as the title implies, with lyrics like "from the nights in Hollywood, to the lights on Broadway". I could see it serving as a montage song for an 80s movie with a young couple from different coasts going on dates. ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ12pAM9Ujc

Ha, here's the Four Seasons "diss record" of the Beach Boys called "No Surfin' Today". Biggie and 2Pac had nothing on these guys!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xRmb3wtbNA

Apparently the Beach Boys made a dig at the Seasons on "Surfer's Rule" which I have never noticed. They sing "Four Seasons you'd better believe it" at the end of the song while Brian does the falsetto to "Walk Like a Man". Interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAf7qgqG7TQ

Also, here's a better video of "East Meets West" that's at least a little interesting to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6ce4pff8jY

Always liked the song "Put a Little Away" --Bob G. and the Seasons in the disco era.
Bob G. was brilliant.

Something liberating and peaceful about that chorus ("put a little away..."), even
as it is such a simple cadence --and with nice 4S/BB harmony backgrounds.


 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpiczf33qTQ&index=1&list=RDvpiczf33qTQ

I was a BIG 4 Seasons fan when I was a kid.  The Beach Boys...and then slowly...around Rubber Soul...The Beatles supplanted them.  I kept up with them up to and including Genuine Imitation Life Gazette...which basically came with a kind of fold-out album...or 'paged' cover...which turned out to be a mock-up of a newspaper.  The 'standings' in the 'sports section' listed the 4 Seasons in FIRST PLACE and the Beach Boys in the Cellar/dead last which I thought was a humorous thing to do...in lieu of No Surfin Today and Surfer's Rule.

[My gawd I only JUST got 'IT' right blinkin' now.  It wasn't Surfer's Rule as in "these are OUR rules Frankie...follow them shorty"...it was "WE RULE...you suck".  Man I'm a dolt!!! ::)]

Anyway...the story portrayed in the Jersey Boys movie which I watched a couple of months ago [and movies are hardly the authoritative source for accurate information] suggests that Devito was INSTRUMENTAL in putting the group together.  He basically noticed Frankie, heard the talent and potential, slowly nurtured Frankie and bought him along...and he found Gaudio and somewhat begrudgingly allowed  him to come into the group as they needed a composer/writer and Bob had co-written some novelty thing like Short Shorts was it?  Bob Crewe had something to do with Gaudio's inclusion as well I think. [I'm old...and my memory is crappy]   He had them singing back-ups for other artists til he felt they were ready...especially material-wise.

Problem was that Devito was a gambler...a heavy gambler with a problem according to the movie...and he gambled the group into serious debt with the WRONG people... :o ...if ya know what I mean ;).  He basically bet himself OUT of the very group he more or less formed.  Doubtless if any of that is even close to true that he'd have much good to say about Frankie.  Valli and Gaudio were allies...at least creatively...and Tommy knew it.  So?  He wasn't a Bob fan either.

I enjoyed the movie.  How accurate it is...I don't know.  The 4th 'season' Nick Massi just blew up finally, they say, and quit the group because he'd had WAY MORE THAN ENOUGH of Tommy and his slovenly ways.  They were roommates and bandmates in a pre Four Seasons group, I believe, before Valli and Gaudio came along.

They had plenty of lame names along the way.  The 4 Lovers being the last loser name.  They got the 4 Seasons off the flashing sign of a bowling alley which had told them to take a hike when they went there looking for a 'gig'.  Couple the new group name and the Gaudio/Crewe song Sherry together and years of paying their dues made Tommy, Frankie and the boys overnight sensations.

I guess every group has their fights.  Our heroes, The Fabs, did you read Keith's book...and his take on Mick?...and the 4 Seasons. :hat

If I remember  on Genuine Imation life Gazette the Beach Boy standings had them with 1 tie and it was protested. Funny, yes funny!

Tommy left the group quite a bit later than what the movie indicates. I believe he left in 1970 just before the album Half & Half was released.

The movie shows them all getting back together for their 'inducement' into the Hall of Fame...and [only in the movies] performing like they hadn't missed a beat.  Anything like THAT happen Doc? ???

[especially considering that Frankie's hearing was shot by then and he supposedly couldn't hear well enough to sing the way he used to.]

Well, I know Frankie's hearing problem started in the mid-70's and is partly the reason why he took a lower profile on the two Warner albums. I think he had the problem corrected in the late 70's or early 80's, but not absolutely sure. Always loved their hits. I saw them twice, once in 1964 on Steel Pier in Atlantic City (my very first concert when I was six years old), then again in 1976 at the Arizona State Fair. Both shows were terrific, as I recall.

I saw him...w/o the 4 Seasons [or at least the originals] performing at a hotel out near the airport in Toronto along with co-star Wilson Pickett somewhere in the vicinity of 1985.  He was on the money THAT night for sure.  [So too was Wilson]

Couple of observations about the Four Seasons: didn't they actually sell more records then the BB's in the '60's and have more #1 singles. They seldom get mentioned in any doc's about '60's music, as if the BB's were the only competition the British Invasion had. Also, I always felt that Brian had a much prettier and truer falsetto then Valli. Frankie's always seemed forced to me. What I have heard of the Season's Christmas is terrible.

Couple of fact checking sites on the Jersey Boys movie, one of which also mentions their return to the R&R Hal of Fame: 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/06/20/jersey_boys_accuracy_fact_checking_clint_eastwood_s_four_seasons_biopic.html

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/jersey-boys/

What I find interesting is Devito's dispute of the accounts on his leaving the group, yet it seems to me if it was truly not accurate it would have been an easy lawsuit win to have it removed from the stageplays AND the Movie

That should be Season's Christmas album. Sorry.

Ooohhh, to be technical, it should really be >  Four Seasons Christmas Album<  ( since the group had more than one Season and then you wouldn't need the apostrophe) 

Gosh you are so helpful.I should have you screen all my posts .

  I'm here a lot, if you want  to send them to me before you post

Yes Gerry...You're right.  The 4 Seasons continued to give a VERY STRONG account of themselves in the face of the British Invasion...and beyond.  They did at least as well as the Beach Boys in terms of chart success really.  I think Frankie's voice was WAY stronger than Brian's and his range was certainly wider.  Carl eventually developed a STRONG singing voice as well.  The Beach Boys were more about harmony and double tracking their lead voices.  They were singers...not belters.  Frankie could do both...the latter better than everyone but Carl.

bgas...highly unlikely that Tommy D would admit to peein' in the hotel room sinks and to seldom changing his underwear.  Mind you...as a 'ladies' man' 'vintage' underwear is a LOT less of a help and WAY more of a hindrance one who think. :lol

And Frankie Valli is now what?....81 years old.  Wow!!!  81.  Old fart. ;)

I love The Four Seasons, but I have to say that I find Frankie Valli's falsetto to be more strident than Brian's. It works for their songs, so that's okay. But, just considering the falsetto alone, I much prefer Brian's clear, pure tone.

Oh sure, I agree with that, I meant more the part of his >choosing to leave the group< rather than being forced out on account of his gambling/embezzling of group funds as it appeared

Oh, By the way!  For anyone who hasn't, the movie version is decent, but if you get a chance to see the touring stageplay it's great!! 

Me too.  Brian's is more of a singing voice...sweeter, cleaner...and far more romantic.  Carl's too.  Lou Christie was trying to capture Frankie's "sound".  Brian wasn't.

The Bobs, Crewe and Gaudio, made a great composing and production team, and the sound of those early recordings are explosive - and a great deal of that sound has to do with their version of Hal Blaine, the late, great session drummer, Buddy Saltzman.

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/legendary-session-drummer-buddy-saltzman-rip.284915/

I found No Surfing Today on the flip of Dawn in my sister's 45 rpm box, and have been haunted by it ever since...

Ya...I owned Dawn...and there it was.  Up in Canada, at least, the 4 Seasosn releases came out on several different lablels.  It was weird.  Some on Phillips.  Some on Reo.  Some on Pickwick I think?  And it kept happening.  Their drum sound POUNDED the Blaine/Brian thing.  Just ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Ol' Buddy was a GREAT session drummer...as was the person who mic'd and recorded that SOUND great.

bgas...the Vegas thing is likely a grey area.  I'm thinkin' when the 'made' guys tell you you're leavin' the band...you're leavin'.  And you're not asking them if you can at least finish the tour.  He owed them a pant-load of dough.  He's lucky he wasn't pushin' up the plankton.  Daisies would have been too good for him.

I wonder what was worse, dealing with the mafia or dealing with Murry?

What people miss when they compare Four Seasons to Beach Boys in record sales is that the Beach Boys, along with the Beatles, turned the teen/rock sales market from what had historically been a singles oriented market, to an album oriented market. Beginning in '63 and '64 kids started buying albums in big numbers and Surfin USA, All Summer Long, Beach Boys Concert etc... were among the strongest sellers in the US. The Beach Boys sold millions upon millions more LP's than the Four Seasons who never really made the transition to being a major player in the LP market, and therefore they were kind of left behind.

True Jon...but...Top 50/Top 40 radio and AM still ran the show through the 60s and into the 70s...AND singles were still the legitimate vehicle with which to measure success.  Heading into the mid 70s to the later 70s  when LP sales became the benchmark and when FM overtook AM in the radio ratings your point 'becomes' even more sharply focussed and important.  Still, that said, you do make an accurate assessment of the siutation as it transitioned out of the 60s and then through the 70s leaving the 4 Seasons completely behind...and, unfortunately to some extent, the Beach Boys as well.  Why?  The Boys lost their ongoing highly successful and constant presence on AM radio and on the singles charts.  As a result?  Endless Summer became an endless bummer for forward thinking and creativity and old 60s successes argued rather loudly and successfully for more time on stage.

Genuine Imitation Life Gazette...was pretty much a flop in terms of successes.  I must say though that I still really, REALLY like their Big Girls Don't Cry album...52 years later.

I drove out to Palm Spings a couple of weeks ago on the 10 Freeway.  Near PS there was a billboard for a Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons concert.  I am impressed.   Isn't Franki Valli almost 80?

81 this year I believe.  I have a picture here somewhere...Oh...here it is. > :old

Listening to the opening bars of Ragdoll - sounds like Be My Baby/Don't Worry Baby

Easily one of my favorite music moments ever. Just amazing.

And like "Don't Worry Baby" and "Be My Baby," I could listen to "Rag Doll" about 50 times in a row. Never get tired of hearing "Rag Doll" by the great, great Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe.  Inspired when Gaudio, while in his car, encountered a street urchin at the end of an exit ramp on NYC''s West Side Highway.

Only just discovered "Cry Myself To Sleep." Probably the saddest song I've ever heard.

It just amazes me how much music, really great popular music, was made back in the 60's. I was there for the whole ride and thought I pretty much knew it all, but in recent years have discovered I'd only skimmed the surface.

But, to keep this all aligned with the purpose of this board, what do you all think is the saddest song ever recorded by the Beach Boys?

Caroline, No......no if ands or buts!

Romantically sad: Let the Wind Blow
Existentially sad: 'Til I Die
Musically sad: The Lonely Sea

Kiss Me Baby

With my desk cleared, students busily preparing to clear out for New Year Festivities (we're in Nanjing), I have some time this afternoon for idle contemplation.

On the topic of falsetto styles I think Frankie might be described as a Tomcat, which suits the grittiness of New York. Whereas Brian's style is more, what, Angelic?

Well, they were able to fire Murry. . .apparently, in the case of the Four Seasons, the Mafia can fire you! Or fire upon you, or set you on fire, or. . .

Another great "Four Seasons" moment is in the chorus of "Finders Keepers". Mike's bass sounds like Nick Massi and the "lie" of the chords when the Boys sing the title is straight out of "Big Girls Don't Cry".   

My sister and brother-in-law saw Frankie with the current incarnation of Four Seasons about 3 or 4 years and said while his voice had obviously lost something, he still was very good.

I never saw the movie Jersey Boys but saw it on stage three times and loved it.

Rag Doll, Bye Bye Baby, Beggin', Big Girls Don't Cry and Everybody Knows My Name are among my favorites, but maybe my favorite is this very obscure one from 1972 that apparently was a hit in England but never released as a single in America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTyC7qY41Bo

My dad had the Seasons Gold Vault of Hits albums, so I grew up listening to them. Oddly, our local library also had a copy of their folk album, Born to Wander. I find it interesting that their 70's comeback was with a completely different lineup, and wonder how original fans felt about that. Can you imagine 15 Big Ones being Mike Love and a bunch of new guys?

Well, Bob Gaudio was still the main songwriter and producer so the creative aspect hadn't changed.  The last couple of Four Seasons albums didn't even have an exact lineup of four guys, just them being a collaboration between Valli and Gaudio made them Four Seasons albums.  The cover of the Streetfighter album shows six people behind Valli.  By a certain point, Four Seasons became just a name and didn't actually apply to the members of the group.  Now, Frankie Valli tours with a huge band as Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons though the Four Seasons aren't members of the band but four young anonymous backup singers/dancers behind Valli so the Four Seasons name has taken on yet another different meaning.

I saw them a couple of years ago in Vancouver.  Vallie and 4 young back up singers that were not born when they had their first hit. Good show though but now I read that Vallie is using back up tracking falsetto.

How about making that a thread of it's own? Might get more answers than in this one.

There's a number of cool Four Seasons threads on this board. They are great, and I recall a fairly recent interview of Brian's where he expresses admiration for their music and production. I remember (perhaps during the alledged autotune debate during C50) a poster compared recent live performances of Valli's --seemingly lip-synched-- and they didn't match. Not that he isn't lip-synching at all, but it makes you wonder.

The current Four Seasons is similar to the current Beach Boys - the lead singer with a bunch of hired hands. It looks strange to me, though, to see Frankie onstage with the Seasons being a bunch of 20-somethings. At least Mike's band appears to have a little more seasoning (no pun intended) in them.

The BIG difference though is Frankie sang lead and was the totally recognizable  LEAD sound of almost every 4 Seasons song.   Hits and album tracks.   Mike sang lead over the long haul on what?  Maybe 1/3-40% of all of the BB's songs?  That is a significant difference.

If you didn't really like 'The Sound of Frankie Valli' you didn't like the 4 Seasons.  How could you?   If Mike wasn't your favourite singer with the Boys...there were other options...and the surrounding voices, arrangements, harmonies and sharing of lead duties often in just ONE song provided enough variety to mask some of the 'sound' you didn't perhaps care for...as much.  Mike was the predominant up-front sound early on.  THAT changed, and pretty quickly, or the Beach Boys might never have made it out of 1965.  Truly.  HE was the surf and car sound...along with Brian.  Brian provided the 'ying'.  Mike...all of the 'yang'.

Carl to a large and expanding degree and Denny and Al to a lesser degree along with some quality leads from Brian and even Bruce provided a nicely rounded out presentation.  Frankie?  Well Frankie was...and is the 4 Seasons. ..all 4 of 'em.   I can't think of another voice which ever stood out above and beyond the mix until Who Loves You and Oh What a Night [Dec. '63].  Oh...and "why don't you..." but that was just a pedestrian bass voice.   Even *I* could do THAT.   [Sorry Nick Massi]

BBs biggest tribute to the Seasons = the song Wendy.

Brian went as far as saying he was trying to go their style (marching drum, etc.). Even Brian's vocal sounds more in-your-face (like Frankie's) than he used to.

I'm sure it wasn't personal.  You've just got to realize how maddening these things can be to anyone who understands punctuation and grammar.

Oh, and you've got two punctuation errors in that two-sentence post.  Three, actually.

Does anyone know how "East Meets West" came to be?  Obviously it was written by the Seasons camp, but just looking for some background if anyone knows. 

And Valli does use a backing vocal track when he performs live.  The guy is over 80.  He still sings live but for some of those high parts, it is pre-recorded.  The show is still very good.  If you are a fan and haven't seen him, who knows how much longer he is going to continue to perform.

Hold on there sparky. 

One thing I always admired about the Four Seasons (we've talked about it on here before) is the damn drums!  Listen to any of their songs and listen how great the drums are recorded and played.  I think several different people played them so it was probably more of a stylistic choice by the producer than actual technique by the drummer...

Glad I'm not the only one who hears it!  It's really an amazing sound. 

Rag Doll........... one of the best 45's ever made and one of the few recordings I could never grow tired of.

Heres my query, from 62 to 66 what proper 4 Seasons albums were there other than Rag Doll? I have a few but quite a few were just standards thrown together w the hit singles. The beach boys were one of the first groups to issue solid albums with little filler, the beatles and stones were putting out lots of covers for some time.

I have their 'folk' album, Born to Wander. I think it's a good, solid set of songs.

Well there were 5 main albums: sherry-62, big girls dont cry-63, dawn-64, rag doll-65 and working my way back to you-66, right?

I don't know any of these albums, only the singles. So I'm beginning to try to get them, especially '66, which was THE YEAR!!!

Opus 17 repeats the chord progression over and over but raises the tension by shifting the key up a step each time until the tune has nowhere to go but right up and out of the grooves!

I've Got You Under My Skin was a monster hit in New York and, I suppose, a major statement - supremely romantic.

I worked on this compilation of Four Seasons sound-alikes from the 60s. Not covers of songs by The Four Seasons, but original songs inspired by their sound. I think a lot of you here would like it!
There are lengthy sound samples of each track at the link below:

http://www.teensvillerecords.com/store/p20/A_Sound_For_All_%28Four%29_Seasons%3A_A_Selection_Of_Jersey_Harmony_Sound-A-Likes_32_Group_Sound_Rarities_1963-1967.html