For fans of this blog site, here is the latest summary ( number of viewing people ): All Time   3,811,201 viewers Today   6,305  Yesterday   5,680  This Month   103,335 Last Month  86,155 # of postings:  6,745 Views/day in the lifetime of this blog site:  565 221 countries have visited this site. The top three countries this month: 1. United State        242,146 2. Singapore             77,436 3. United Kingdom   19,619 I've never been able to explain this, but the viewership from Singapore is usually off the charts.  Perhaps someone from Singapore can contact me to explain why.  I will be there from December 23 until December 30, when we depart on the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Luminara for Hong Kong.   Well, now on to the topic of today.  Many of us, especially me, are getting too old.  One indicator of aging is your choice of music. ...

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 ...