FOUR SEASONS – "December 1963 (Oh What A Night)"

I’ve had this conversation about ‘My Blue Heaven’, too – which I still persist in thinking is a narrative of a man coming home from work to be with his wife and infant child.

Prostitute jury is still out on close listening – supporting evidence is the “ended much too soon” inference of premature ejaculation (though that could just be fumbled loss of virginity) and possibly “felt so wrong but now it feels so right”.

Hm. I’ve never even thought of it being a sex song, or no more so than all songs about dancing are also about sex. I always imagined that she turned out to be his wife in the end! Possibly the combination of nostalgia and the epochal nature of the events recollected.

(And also that the epic Four Seasons song about an impending sexual experience is the astonishing ‘The Night’, so I’ve probably gone to different songs with different sets of expectations.)

This probably says more about some inherent sappiness on my part, than about the song… Nine, or ten if I’m feeling very happy

This one caught me unawares, it really did. Heard it on a pub jukebox and asked what it was. I was surprised to hear who it was, because the Four Seasons seemed to belong to another era. The song itself belongs to an era before that, even; I agree with Tom that it’s a rite of passage record and belongs with the fifties culture we were discussing a few threads back – on a Four Seasons cover, or I’m Anna Pavlova.

Their best was behind them anyway, and it’s a shame they never had a number one in their prime. Once again, a fine band are represented here by less than their best work.

This was a puzzling song for me when it was popular. I remember thinking how odd it was to have a huge hit – one of several at the time, in fact, by the Seasons and Frankie, together or separately – in the mid-1970s.

Now, given the mammoth popularity of “Jersey Boys,” it’s impossible not to conclude that the Four Seasons – a term that would include their songwriters, producers, session musicians, and the guys themselves – somehow managed to create a Very Unique Thing that continues to have the ability to connect with a large audience in a strong way. That’s a rare achievement – off the top of my head, Elvis, the Beatles, the many artists grouped under the heading of Motown, and maybe ABBA are the only other acts I can think of from the rock era that qualify. I find this endearing, for surely none of the cited acts come near to the Seasons’ “regular Joe” characteristic, and I find it nice to have one group of plebians among the Olympians. (Frankie Valli’s voice, of course, is the ringer in this equation, since it could very well be one of Zeus’s lightning bolts.)

Although I’d bought my first single back in 73, the family record deck had been so old it pretty much shredded everything played on it. This discouraged me from buying any new records until I had something at least half decent to play them on. So I saved up my hard earned cash for a ‘system’ of my own and finally bought it in March of 76. This particular record represents a new dawn for me as it was the first single bought to play on the new ‘unshredding’ record player (I’m resisting the term hi-fi here – it wasn’t that sophisticated). Both items were bought from the now defunct electrical store chain ‘Rumbelows’ which has no particular significance here other but I thought I’d mention it all the same. My thoughts about December ’63 are therefore tied intrinsically to this memory and I can’t help but have warm feelings towards it. Not that I wouldn’t have liked it anyway. The Northern Soul stomper ‘The Night’ with it’s driving bass line and the excellent ‘Who Loves You’ had preceeded it in 75 and so I was pretty familiar with 70’s Four Seasons before this became a hit. It didn’t end there either – for a while they were flavour of the month even amongst my school friends with the galloping ‘Silver Star’ and ‘Down The Hall’ in 77. All featured their famously smooth harmonies & melodies along with discofied ‘funky’ rhythms and synth breaks…and don’t forget Valli’s equally wonderful solo stuff including the mighty ‘Swearin To God’ (am I on my own here ?)…… and no I never realised December 63 was about a prostitute either – Tom you heartbreaker.

wwolfe no slight intended to the four seasons but isn’t the success of jersey boys due probably at least as much to the demographic and new york metro as anything else. i mean billy joel had a hit musical also and if those fanbases don’t exactly overlap they surely eat thanksgiving together right? mind you the four seasons had BIG songs so broadway makes a better home for them than it did say paul simon. but still the reason there’s a hit broadway four seasons musical is the same reason it’s damn yankees and not damn cardinals or damn orioles.

intothefireuk @ 18: You were supposed to buy a new stylus now and then!

Snif @ 15: The Four Seasons were a big deal and utterly distinctive in the 1960s – I’d hardly describe them as “ordinary Joes”, whatever that means, even if that is the selling point of the film. Those out to make money don’t generally let objective truth get in their way. My comment about some acts being represented by less than their best work didn’t have an attached sigh – the best work is the best work whatever the chart position. It’s an observation that in many cases, an act with a substantial body of excellent work may have had only one or two number ones – a good example from the 60s (the pop period I know best) being the Small Faces, represented not by Itchycoo Park or Lazy Sunday or Tin Soldier, but by the rather forgettable (imho) All or Nothing. Or, alternatively, an act like the Beatles with lots of number ones miss out with (arguably) their best: Strawberry Fields.

#22 Stylus ? Now you tell me !

……and don’t even begin to mention Clock’s abortive cover.

One of many memorable things that happened in my life during the nine weeks “Bohemian Rhapsody” was number one was my first sort-of sexual experience. It was really nothing more than a fumble with my cousin’s best friend, didn’t go anywhere near all-the-way, but was enough to be getting on with. Even so, I still find myself using alternative words to this later number one: “Oh what a night, late December back in ’75, what a special time to be alive…” Icky maybe, but that’s what it brings back!

“Silver Star” was a cracker, by the way, and another of the six-minute epics that followed in the wake of the aforementioned Bo Rhap.

I was just too young for the Four Seasons first time round, and their early 60s stuff always sounded a little samey and formulaic to me. There were certainly a few cracking songs in there, but it was light fluffy pop, which really didn’t make the most of Frankie Valli’s obvious talents. Maybe if I was 10 years older and had lived through that period as a young teenager I would have felt differently about them.

By the time this record came out, we had already had “The Night” and “Who Loves You”, and it certainly looked like the Four Seasons might “do a Bee Gees” and make a meaningful contribution to the disco/pop phenomenon, rather than just bandwagon-jumping. Frankie’s shrill falsetto was largely absent now, as a result of an illness, and he was often relegated to a supporting role, which he performed admirably. There were another few excellent singles after this – “Silver Star”, “Rhapsody” and “Down The Hall”, but they didn’t really have the staying power, and faded away again pretty soon, unfortunately, as I would like to have heard more.

I hadn’t made the “prostitute” connection either, but listening to the lyrics again it’s a strong possibility. The lyrics could be construed as the singer trying to convince himself that what he has done is OK. (would that count as a “guilty pleasure”?)

The song works either way, and it’s a pleasant nostalgic song, beautifully produced and easy on the ear.

It’s been one of these songs which has never really gone away. I don’t know if it’s a Glasgow thing or not, but even before the later remixes, the track seemed to be a favourite with every pub DJ, and was always played at weddings and just about any other function you ever attended!

Just in case any of you re not familiar with it,check out their cover of Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”, which they recorded under the pseudonym “Wonder Who”. I think there’s a clip on youtube. At first they didn’t admit it was them, but it was pretty obvious that it was. They then claimed it was a joke, which is probably true. It’s a lot “rougher round the edges” than their commercial stuff, but, for a joke, it ain’t half bad!

the prostitution interpretation had never occured to me either, i’d always assumed it was more of all purpose boys together in a more innocent time song. but why 1963? wikipedia reckons frankie had started recording in 1953 (which would have scanned just as well!) so he must have been an exceptionally unlucky pop star if it took him a further ten years to have a formulative sexual experience (though the cover photo on my k-tel four seasons compilation suggests this may not be impossible).

okay, so pop is hardly the place to look for strict autobiographical accuracy, but it does still seem odd for a band to be singing a song about being innocent youngsters at a time when their audience would presumably know they were already seasoned popstars. is there an american grafitti cash-in angle? who were the four seasons’ audience in the seventies? would 1963 push the right nostalgia buttons for them while 1953 would be the impossibly distant past?

and another question, was there anyone else that did disco doo wop?

I seem to recall somebody (Bob Gaudio?) saying that there was some JFK subtext to the song as well (“December 1963” as it were) but I’m not at all sure about that.

This one has become one of the School Disco/Guilty Pleasures staples, which does prejudice me against it somewhat, but also it is by some distance the least interesting of the three singles pulled off the Who Loves You? album (which is yet to resurface on CD); the title track makes me think of a road which the mid-seventies Beach Boys might profitably have taken (by the time they got round to disco, with the ’79 Boettcher-produced reworking of “Here Comes The Night,” it was a little too late) while “Silver Star” is just awesome and VERY arguably the beginning of House music – that beat! “Ecstasy on their faces!” – amongst many other things. And it also has one of the most bonkers chart runs in UK singles chart history, lumbering up and down from top to bottom of chart and back again, like a psychotic yo-yo.

At the time I think this was the longest gap between an act’s initial appearance on the singles chart and their finally reaching number one – “Sherry” debuted here in October 1962 – and it is heavily ironic that their eventual number one was a song which didn’t specifically feature Frankie Valli on lead; their previous UK best was “Rag Doll” which sat at number two for a fortnight behind “I’m Into Something Good” in the autum of ’64, and yet the Walker Brothers, the Tremeloes and the Rollers had all topped our charts with cover versions of their songs.

The revival happened apiece; first Valli resurfaced as a solo artist in early ’75 (although 1966’s “You’re Ready Now” became a belated Top 20 hit in Britain in 1971 thanks to Northern Soul and, in Scotland, its use in a lager TV ad campaign), then, to the astonishment of all concerned, “The Night” a 1972 track recorded for Motown’s shortlived MoWest subsidiary, surged into our top ten, again thanks to popularity on the Northern Soul circuit, and finally “Who Loves You?” saw them fully back and active.

I do think that both Valli and the Seasons as a group were seriously shortchanged (like many US artists) in our sixties lists (Andy Williams’ “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” went top five here but Valli’s version, as subsequently and unforgettably featured in The Deer Hunter, didn’t register at all) but at least they got on our register in the end, even if Valli these days is probably better remembered by younger readers for the Grease theme and his very astute and wittily self-referential performances as an actor in The Sopranos.

I’ll tell you the record which really worried me in the charts at the time – “Can I Take You Home Little Girl?” by the fortysomething Drifters ewwwww.

Don’t know about any disco doo wop (though Whitfield’s post-Ruffin Temptations were surely psychedelic doo wop?) but I can give you one example of Northern Soul doo wop; “Boogaloo Party,” the only hit the Flamingos ever had in Britain (early ’69).

good call on the temptations. the flamingos doing northern soul sounds great.

We’re hurtling towards my adolescence now. God help me mum.

This is the first record reviewed that I associate with snogging in dark corners of youth club discos rather than watching Top Of The Pops. It’s got more hooks than velcro, and I still love it.

Mike – dare I ask, “Friends Reunited”? Ever looked him up? I can imagine the frustration must have been immense.

“at an all-male boarding school, and in less enlightened times” <— DOES NOT COMPUTE d00d

Nice to know I’m not the only one who bows before the greatness of “Silver Star” though there are mixed feelings when you discover that what you thought was your secret personal musical pleasure from the past that no one else really appreciated is actually regarded as genius by every bugger around.

Re: #37

I actually did a bit about The Four Seasons’ “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” on my blog last week, it’s here if anyone wants to check the veracity of Rosie’s opinion.

It’s a small world but I wouldn’t want to paint it.