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Transcribed by Mystic Mr. Sam "Sherry"
Writer: Bob Gaudio
To many, "Sherry" seemed like an overnight success for the Four Seasons. In four short weeks the group's chart debut climbed to the top of the Hot 100, making an impressive leap from 11 to one. In truth, lead singer Frankie Valli had been working for 10 years before "Sherry" became a hit, and he formed the nucleus of the Four Seasons as early as 1955.
Valli, born Frances Castelluccio on May 3, 1937, started working clubs in his native Newark, New Jersey in 1952. A year later he released his first solo single, "My Mother's Eyes," under the name Frankie Valley. Two years after that he joined with three members of the Variety Trio - Nick and Tommy DeVito and Hank Majewski - and formed the Variatones. A year later, they changed their name to the Four Lovers and hit the charts with "You're the Apple of My Eye", a song they performed on Ed Sullivan's show.
Subsequent releases did not chart. Valli recorded a solo effort in 1958 titled "I Go Ape", significant because it introduced him to the songwriter, Bob Crewe, who would become the Four Seasons' producer and co-writer. That same year, another New Jersey group, the Royal Teens, had a top three hit with "Short Shorts." Both groups appeared on a Baltimore TV show the same day, and that's how Valli met Royal Teen Bob Gaudio.
"We both happened to be from New Jersey, so we struck up a conversation", Gaudio remembers. "We didn't see each other for a couple of years. I departed the Royal Teens and took a job in a printing factory as a compositor. I got real nervous, because some people lost a few fingers, so I left. A mutual friend of a friend mentioned the Four Lovers were looking for a keyboard player, so I auditioned and started working with them."
DeVito was replaced by Charles Calello who was replaced by Gaudio; Majewski was replaced by Hugh Garrity who was replaced by Nick Massi. The Four Seasons line-up that would record "Sherry" was in place by 1961. The group had been recording singles under a wide variety of pseudonyms and singing backing vocals for producer Crewe (for artists like Bobby Darin, Freddy Cannon and Danny and the Juniors).
An audition for a lounge in a New Jersey bowling alley didn't get them a job, but resulted in an important change. "We figured we'll come out of this with something", Gaudio says, "so we took the name of the bowling alley. It was called the Four Seasons."
The first single released under the new name was "Bermuda" on George Goldner's Gone Records in 1961. It failed to chart, but the group signed with the Chicago-based Vee Jay label, and their fortunes turned.
"Some songs come quickly and some songs take forever", Gaudio explains. "Sherry was a quickie. It took 15 minutes. I was ready to leave for a rehearsal we were having, and I sat at the piano and it just came out. Not having a tape recorder in those days, the only way I could remember it was to put a quick lyric to it and remember the melody and the words together. I drove down to rehearsal humming it, trying to keep it in my mind. I had no intention of keeping the lyrics. To my surprise, everybody liked the lyrics so we didn't change anything."
Gaudio also recalls the first time he heard "Sherry" on the radio: "I was driving on the Westside Highway (in Manhattan) and I had to pull off the road. It was kind of a shock. At first I didn't associate it with our record. The first ten seconds just sounded interesting, then the bell rang!"
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