by David Morgan
 

The first time I saw Jersey Boys was certainly an eye-opening experience. I grew up listening to the songs, enjoying the music, and never really understanding the amazing journey the 4 Seasons took getting to the level of success they finally achieved and ultimately the music Hall of Fame.

When I saw the show, I never understood the background of these 4 guys, how they literally rose out of the streets and barely escaped becoming thieves, thugs, and money launderers with connections to the mob to rock and roll legends and one of the biggest musical singing groups for over 40 years. Certainly one the most interesting rags to riches stories ever to be told.

I hope you also can be swept up in this wonderful story filled with humor, drama, exciting music and songs based on their true life story which also reveals the heart ache and sacrifices which success and fame can bring. Let this experience take you on that stroll down memory lane, back to when rock ‘n’ roll was just beginning, down the road to great memorable songs and times, back to the 60s and 70s, to the sound of the 4 Seasons.

By Mark Fossen
 

Four Guys Under a Streetlamp

You ask four guys how it happened, you get four different versions. And this is where all of ‘em start. A thousand years ago. Eisenhower. Rocky Marciano. And a few guys under a streetlamp singing somebody else’s latest hit.

In the peak era of Italian immigration between 1890 and 1915, most Italian immigrants in New York settled in crowded, low-rent tenement areas like the Lower East Side, East Harlem, and the West Village. Discrimination and the need for jobs and community led them to these “Little Italies,” which were defined more by their distinctly Italian sounds, smells, and culture than a majority Italian population. Starting in the 1920s, many Italians moved to outer boroughs like Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and as far afield as northern New Jersey, pursuing homeownership as part of the American Dream. By 1930, a third of Italian-born household heads owned homes, though this transition was not without challenges. The American-born children in these suburbs began to lose touch with the rituals, customs, and languages their elders had brought from southern Italy. 

The soundtrack of those "Little Italies" was rich with a musical tradition inherited from the Old World. Children grew up listening to radios and gramophones playing Neapolitan songs, Italian opera legends like Enrico Caruso, and bel canto singers like Mario Lanza, Jimmy Roselli, Jerry Vale, and Julius La Rosa. Far from being considered high art, opera and classical music were the soundtrack to everyday life.

With the move to the suburbs, that musical landscape shifted, as the Italian-American youth in these communities looked to mark their difference from their parents and find a new identity. For many, they found that identity in doo-wop.

Doo-wop originated in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when African American groups such as the Platters ("Only You"), the Drifters ("Under the Boardwalk"), the Ink Spots ("I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire"), and the Mills Brothers ("Paper Doll") created a new musical style that blended gospel, blues, jazz, and rhythm and blues. The genre showcases vocal groups featuring a range from bass to falsetto (usually tenor, second tenor, baritone, and bass), simple lyrics and music, and little to no instrumentation. While more instruments were added in commercial recordings, the music was usually created a cappella and groups would often use nonsense syllables such as “doo-wop”, “dip-da-dip”, or “sha-na-na” to back the lead vocalist.  (Hence the name "doo-wop".) Importantly, the genre had few financial barriers since no training or equipment was required, just a good ear and sense of style.

Robert Pruter writes in Doowop: The Chicago Scene, “It was on the street where the doowop art form was created and nourished and where the doo-wop groups were sometimes discovered. So it is on the streets where one must first look for the genesis and the early growth of doo-wop.” Teens gathered under streetlights for impromptu concerts. They blended the Black doo-wop they heard from early rock 'n' roll DJs like Alan Freed with elements of their parents' southern Italian musical traditions. It was public, romantically charged, lyrical and often took on the quality of a street-corner serenade. These young Italians sang on street corners in a tight circle where the sound would vibrate most intensely and musical direction could be given through simple hand gestures or eye movements. Groups found spaces with good echo—restrooms, subway and train stations—to practice, compete, and demonstrate their art.

Reflecting on his early days, Dion DeMucci of Dion and the Belmonts said, "Standing in front of that microphone, I could shut my eyes and see the street corner where we’d first started singing. I could hear everyone joining in, the girls clapping hands, and someone banging on a cardboard box. Sometimes it would be winter, bitter cold, but we’d still be out there, stamping our feet by an oil barrel fire."

As in many immigrant communities, an interest in the arts was discouraged in favor of more practical considerations, but there was an exception for music. In his late-1950s ethnographic survey of an Italian American community in Boston, Herbert Gans noted, “Although an interest in art is considered effeminate, there is nothing wrong if boys want to become singers of popular music, for this is an opportunity for self-display. In fact, most of the successful white singers today are Italians, and it is no accident that they are as much creators of a distinctive personal image as they are purveyors of songs. Italians have done well in contemporary popular music because it emphasizes the development of an individual image and style more than technical musical skill."

That "distinctive personal image" cultivated by Italian-American vocal groups was one with an edge, creating a stereotype seen for years to come. Dion DeMucci recounted the controversial first appearance of the Belmonts on American Bandstand, “there was something about the sight of those four Italians, decked out in city-slicker clothes, snapping their fingers and acting like Negroes, that must not have set too well with the folks in the Midwest. We were kind of exotic, which meant foreign, and that, in turn, meant dangerous.… If only those mothers and fathers who shook their heads in disapproval really knew where we were from, and what we’d been up to. As it was, our strange, foreign-sounding music, our olive skin, and big city smirks were menacing enough.”

Breaking with the Old World to embrace the new, young working-class Italians began to dominate the style to the point that music historians have called it interchangeably “Italo doo-wop” or “Italo-American rock.” For many groups, their success was as short-lived as it was intense, fading with the advent of the “British invasion,” socially conscious folk, and a more mature age of rock. For bands like Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons who could adapt to new styles, however, those first songs sung by four guys under a streetlamp would be the foundation of a decades-long career.

Bob Gaudio, Judy Parker, Yannick Zolo, and Edmond David Bacri
Jobete Music Company Inc., Seasons Music Company (ASCAP)

Bob Crewe and Frank Slay, Jr.
Regent Music Corporation (BMI)

Otis Blackwell
EMI Unart Catalog Inc. (BMI)

Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh
EMI April Music Inc., Aldi Music Company, Cotton Club Publishing (ASCAP)

Jesse Belvin, Curtis Williams, and Gaynel Hodge
Embassy Music Corporation (BMI)

Barbara Belle, Anita Leanord Nye, Stan Rhodes, and Louis Prima
LGL Music Inc./Larry Spier, Inc. (ASCAP)

Abel Baer and L. Wolfe Gilbert
Abel Baer Music Company, EMI Feist Catalog Inc. (ASCAP)

Bob Crewe and Frank Slay, Jr.
MPL Music Publishing Inc. (ASCAP)

Bob Gaudio, Bill Crandall, Tom Austin, and Bill Dalton
EMI Longitude Music, Admiration Music Inc., Third Story Music Inc., and New Seasons Music (BMI)

Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh
Famous Music Corporation (ASCAP)

James Moody, Dorothy Fields, and Jimmy McHugh
Famous Music Corporation (ASCAP)

Bob Gaudio
EMI Longitude Music, Seasons Four Music (BMI)

Bob Gaudio
EMI Longitude Music (BMI)

Bob Gaudio
Hearts Delight Music, Seasons Four Music (BMI)

Bob Gaudio
Hearts Delight Music, Seasons Four Music (BMI)

Bob Gaudio
MPL Music Publishing Inc. (ASCAP)

Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe
MPL Music Publishing Inc. (ASCAP)

Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio
Gavadima Music, MPL Communications Inc. (ASCAP)

Bob Gaudio and Judy Parker
Jobete Music Company Inc., Seasons Music Company (ASCAP)

Robert Feldman, Gerald Goldstein, and Richard Gottehrer
EMI Blackwood Music Inc. (BMI)

Bob Crewe and Kenny Nolan
Jobete Music Company Inc., Kenny Nolan Publishing (ASCAP), Stone Diamond Music Corporation, Tannyboy Music (BMI)

Bob Gaudio and Sandy Linzer
EMI Full Keel Music, Gavadima Music, Stebojen Music Company (ASCAP)

Bob Gaudio
EMI Longitude Music (BMI), Gavadima Music (ASCAP)

Bob Gaudio and Peggy Farina
EMI Longitude Music, Seasons Four Music (BMI)

Maurice Williams
Cherio Corporation (BMI)

Bob Crewe, Denny Randell, and Sandy Linzer
EMI Longitude Music, Screen Gems-EMI Music Inc., Seasons Four Music (BMI)

Denny Randell and Sandy Linzer
Screen Gems-EMI Music Inc., Seasons Four Music (BMI)

Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe
EMI Longitude Music, Seasons Four Music (BMI)

Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio
EMI Longitude Music, Seasons Four Music (BMI)

L. Russell Brown and Ray Bloodworth
EMI Longitude Music and Seasons Four Music (BMI)

Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe
EMI Longitude Music, Seasons Four Music (BMI)

Denny Randell and Sandy Linzer
Screen Gems-EMI Music Inc., Seasons Four Music (BMI)

Guy Fletcher and Doug Flett
Chrysalis Music (ASCAP)

Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio
EMI Longitude Music (BMI), Gavadima Music (ASCAP)

Bob Gaudio and Judy Parker
Jobete Music Company Inc., Seasons Music Company (ASCAP)