By Rita Charleston
For the Times
Frankie Valli, he of the distinctive falsetto and numerous awards for his songs, said he always knew he wanted to grow up to be a singer.
“We used to sing around the Newark (N.J.) area where I grew up,” he recalled. “But ever since I was a kid and my mother took me to see Frank Sinatra at the Paramount Theater in New York, I decided then and there that I was definitely going to become a successful singer myself.”
And so he did. Valli, born Francis Stephen Castelluccio in Newark in 1937, recorded his first record, My Mother’s Eyes, in 1953 as Frankie Valley. Soon after that, he was named the lead singer of a group that he formed with three other Jersey boys, The Four Lovers. The quartet eventually changed its name to The Four Seasons — after a New Jersey bowling alley — Valley became Valli, and in 1962 they had their first number-one hit, Sherry, featuring Valli’s remarkable falsetto. Although many groups were using falsetto as a vocal backup at the time, the Four Seasons became the first group to use the high-pitched vocal as the lead.
“That falsetto is nothing I ever practiced. I always had it,” said Valli, who will be using it once again to entertain audiences during a Jan. 23 performance at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, starting at 8 p.m. “As a matter of fact, because it was so natural to me, I just thought everybody had one. And basically, every singer, to some degree, does. Of course, whether or not they use it is something else. It’s totally up to them.”
After Valli and the Four Seasons hit it big with Sherry, they followed up quickly with more hits, like Big Girls Don’t Cry and Walk Like a Man.
In 1967, Valli decided to do some recording as a solo artist while still remaining with the Four Seasons. His first record, Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You, was a megahit. And the hits continued with such songs as My Eyes Adored You, Swearin’ to God and Our Day Will Come.
However, around the same time his solo career was building, Valli began having serious problems with his ears and was eventually diagnosed with otosclerosis, an incurable ear disease that progressively leads to deafness. Valli was devastated, but kept on singing. Amazingly, on the stage and in the recording studio, he was able to cover his affliction so well that fans weren’t even aware he had a problem. Eventually, he had operations on his ears that allowed him to recover some of his hearing.
“I probably will always battle with a little bit of a hearing problem. It’s a progressive disease that affects the inner ear,” he said. “But by the time it makes a major impact on my hearing, I’ll already be finished with doing what I’m doing.”
Until then, Valli keeps on going and the Four Seasons have continued to record songs for five decades now. In 1990, the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and since then Valli has continued to lead them on the lucrative oldies circuit.
“We have managed to survive all these years in spite of the critics, who have not always been kind. But we’ve been able to get over the criticism and done very well,” Valli said. “I always found that critics were very critical of pop-oriented acts. I’m not sure why. Maybe pop-oriented acts weren’t hip enough for them. But critics only express their point of view, and I discovered you can’t run your whole life on what somebody else thinks. We’re not doing shows for the critics. We do our shows for the people, and the people seem to love us.”
These days, Frankie Valli enjoys expanding his career options.
“I’ve been playing around with doing a jazz album that is about six or eight songs into it so far. And I just completed my third episode of The Sopranos,” he said. “So these are just some of the things I’m having fun with and things I’ve always wanted to do.” ••
Tickets are $48.50 and $38.50. For more information, call the Keswick box office at 215-572-7650.