Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons
Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons put the falsetto out front and made it the lead, and “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” and “Walk Like a Man” all went to number one. Between 1962 and 1978 Valli and the group sold more than 100 million records, and “Rag Doll” became the Four Seasons’ fourth Hot 100 number one of the 1960s. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted them in 1990, “Sherry” won a place in the National Recording Registry in 2023, and Jersey Boys, the musical that tells their story, won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2006. The Recording Academy named Valli one of its 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award honorees. Since 2023, Frankie Valli Way in Newark has carried his name.
Born Francis Castelluccio on May 3, 1934, Valli grew up in the Stephen Crane Village housing project in Newark, New Jersey. In 1953 the music publisher Paul Kapp helped him make his first record, “My Mother’s Eyes,” and he renamed himself Frankie Valley, later Valli. By 1956 he was singing with the Four Lovers, and in 1959 the group, now with Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi, took in the songwriter Bob Gaudio and began working with the lyricist and producer Bob Crewe. After failing an audition at the cocktail lounge of a bowling alley in Union, New Jersey, they took the lounge’s name, the Four Seasons, and spent two years singing background for Crewe’s other acts.
In 1962 Gaudio wrote “Sherry” to use the full range of Valli’s voice, from baritone to falsetto, and after the group sang it on American Bandstand, Gaudio and Crewe followed it with “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “Walk Like a Man.” From late 1965 the team of Denny Randell and Sandy Linzer supplied “Let’s Hang On,” “Working My Way Back to You,” and “Opus 17 (Don’t You Worry ‘Bout Me).” In 1967 Gaudio and Crewe gave Valli “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” which reached number two in Billboard and has drawn cover versions from as many as 200 artists, among them Lauryn Hill, whose version earned a Grammy nomination. Valli stayed with the group while recording on his own: his “My Eyes Adored You” went to number one in 1975, Gaudio and Judy Parker wrote “Who Loves You” and “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)” for a new Four Seasons lineup, and Valli’s “Grease,” featured twice in the film’s soundtrack, reached number one in Billboard in 1978.
Valli’s Grammy nominations include Best New Artist of 1962 with the Four Seasons, two for “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” and Album of the Year for the Grease soundtrack, and “Big Girls Don’t Cry” has been in the Grammy Hall of Fame since 2015. The group returned to the top of the Hot 100 with “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)” in 1976, and Billboard counts the Four Seasons among the artists with Hot 100 number ones more than a decade apart.
A 2007 remix of “Beggin'” became the number one dance record in Britain, and Jersey Boys was followed by a feature film of the same name. In October 2020 the Four Seasons joined the Primary Wave Music Publishing family, which administers and markets their songs, and A Touch of Jazz (2021) was Valli’s first jazz album. The box set Working Our Way Back to You: The Ultimate Collection holds every song Valli and the Four Seasons ever recorded on 45 discs.
