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Showing posts with the label Frankie Valli

THE STORY OF THE JERSEY BOYS

The story of the  Jersey Boys  is the story of the Four Seasons.  Frankie Valli released a song,  My Mothers Eyes  in 1953 as Frankie Valley.  In 1954, he and guitarist Tommy DeVito formed The Variatones, which evolved into The Four Lovers.  All this occurred in Newark, New Jersey.  This photo was taken in 1954, with Valli to the left and DeVito in the middle.  The third person is Hank Majewski. The novelty was  Frankie Valli's falsetto .  Hawaiian music has long featured this form of singing, but Valli made it okay to sing pop music, with many others subsequently following. Of course, this is not new, for the use of falsetto has been traced back to the Middle Ages, and the Tokens had a hit in 1961 for  The Lion Sleeps Tonight , first made popular by the Weavers in 1951 as  Wimoweh , a 1939 African song. In 1959 the band began working with producer/songwriter Bob Crewe (on the right) when Valli was 25 years old.  The Four Lovers that year performed in Baltimore on the same stage as