As I perused the breaking news the past few weeks, something caught my eye and reminded me of sitting on one of the corner markers of the high school with a few other youngsters, whose moms or dads were involved in some type planning meeting for the school system in the early 1960s. The parents had nicely asked us to wait outside while they finished up the meeting with information that we were not supposed to hear, so we were waiting for our folks to come outside and signal us to the vehicles.
Someone just happened to have a transistor radio that was powered by batteries, and we were listening to KLIF or KBOX or KFJZ radio and sometimes trying to sing along with the popular songs. In my mind, Skip Weatherford or Dan Trott or Judy Jones had the radio, but it doesn’t really make much difference, since that was more than one-half century ago.
We were trying to run up and down the “slopes” of the corner markers and trying not to be pushed off the lower edges of the brick structures (a game), and periodically would stop to sing along with a tune that had been popular long enough that we knew most of the words.
And then, all of us stopped playing and listened closely, because a new song came on, sung by men, and it had some parts that were “so high” that even girls would have a hard time hitting the notes. And, we “loved” the song! It was 1962, and the song was “SHERRY.”
Not too long after that night, still in 1962, a followup hit, “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” started up the charts. And it had the same hard-tohit high notes. And that was followed in 1963 by “Walk Like a Man” and by “Dawn (Go Away)” and “Rag Doll”
in 1964 and by “Let’s Hang On!” in 1965.
Singers of this wonderful music were the FOUR SEASONS, an American rock-and-roll group, composed of (stage names) Frankie Valli Tommy DeVito, Bob Gaudio, and Nick Massi. And the singer doing the “high” work was Frankie Valli, who possessed a singing range of three total octaves.
The “something that caught my eye” recently was a statement by Valli and Gaudio that one of their singing mates, Tommy DeVito, would be greatly missed, as he had died of complications of “coronavirus.”
Tommy DeVito, who played lead guitar, and his buddies founded The Four Seasons in 1960 and had big hit after big hit, as evidenced by the above titles and others like “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” and “Working My Way Back to You.” He, along with Gaudio and Valli were inducted in 1990 into the Rock and Roll HALL OF FAME, as was the band’s bass guitarist, Massi, who had previously passed on in 2000, after a valiant battle with cancer.
Maybe you have seen or heard of the Broadway Hit, Jersey Boys, which detailed and probably immortalized this Band’s emergence and then rise to fame in public and especially on the RADIO after starting from very humble beginnings in, where else, New Jersey! (If you have not seen this production, my wife and I did—at the Dallas Summer Musicals—and highly recommend you take advantage of your chance if it returns!)
In the musical, one character especially causes trouble for the group, primarily with gambling debts—De-Vito—who, in later life admitted that the show’s details about him were more than ½ true, but he was quick to state that rumors of his being a slob and that the “mob” had run him out of town in the musical were completely fictional!
In his childhood days (1928—born in Belleville, New Jersey) as the youngest child (9th) of Italian immigrants, he was known as “Gaetano,” and the family was poor, to say the least. Gaetano “Tommy” often seemed to get into minor troubles.
However, after teaching himself to play the guitar by imitating country music on the radio, he early dropped out of school, playing for “tips” in the neighborhood establishments. By age 16 he had organized a rhythm and blues band, and by the early ‘50s, he formed a small-time band, called the VARIETY TRIO. Quite often, DeVito took credit for inviting Frankie Valli up onto the stage one night and giving him the start that made him famous as one of the “Four Seasons” and later as in individual performer. The Variety Trio became the “Variatones” around 1954 and then “The Four Lovers” in 1956.
The group became the “4 Seasons” in 1961, but their first single failed to attract much of an audience; however, the next one, “SHERRY,” did!
Supposedly, Tommy De-Vito left the BAND in 1970, left music, and began a career as a cleaner, settling and continuing to live in Las Vegas for decades—but always returning to visit in New Jersey each summer!
When queried about leaving, this amazing lead guitarist of a still-popular group stated that he was basically “tired of doing the same, old thing every day after every day,” but always had fond feelings and no regrets about his days as a member of the FOUR SEASONS.
And, by the way, those corner markers are still part of the structures at the Administration Building, which in the 1960s was the HIGH SCHOOL!
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