I don’t remember the first time I heard some fellow singing on the radio with a tuneful, angelic, high pitched voice, but I’ve always found the sound captivating. While my friends might have laughed derisively, I was always enchanted, whether I ever admitted it or not way back when. Not that it matters, or could ever be determined decisively, but it could have been the Tokens doing, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Having a hip older brother, I was exposed to pop radio from a very early age so it could have been, “Barbara Ann,” by the Regents or any number of doo-wop bands still active in the early ‘60s. Falsetto has been around for hundreds of years and is still a going concern with many of today’s hot talents. Just a smattering of examples from my favorite era include Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Tiny Tim, Smokey Robinson, Canned Heat, Curtis Mayfield, Del Shannon; Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations, and Jan and Dean. 

 Part of my fascination centers on the kitsch factor associated with grown men singing like their BVDs are more than a few sizes too small. It can be hard to take things seriously, no matter how heartfelt and sincere the subject matter might be, when the gent crooning about walking like a man could pass for your aunt Gertrude finding a mouse in her shoe. Like a lot of other music that I dig the most, Daddy-O, I not only developed a taste for the stuff, I discovered that the more bizarre, quirky and exaggerated the songs were, the more pleasing I found them. Three of my all-time favorites are Frankie Valli (with or without the 4 Seasons), Lou Christie, and the Newbeats. They all had hits, they all utilized a variety of singing registers, they all wrote lots of their own material or utilized in-house songsmiths, and they all had a knack for delivering off the wall material.

In the early ‘60s the 4 Seasons appeared to spring out of nowhere and take over the charts overnight. The truth is the various members had been slogging their way through the performing and recording world with nothing to show for their efforts but gigs in small venues and the occasional flop single since the mid ‘50s. By the late ‘50s Frankie and Bob Gaudio were working with producer/songwriter Bob Crewe and had a fairly stable lineup of musicians calling themselves the Four Lovers. They failed an audition to play a lounge in 1960, but took the name of the venue’s bowling alley as their own and never looked back. As the newly christened Four Seasons, and with the songwriting genius of Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio (among other collaborators), the band set the world on fire, first on Vee-Jay and then on Philips. While they started out using “four” spelled out as part of the band name, they quickly switched to the number “4.”

The first 4 Seasons album I bought was “Gold Vault of Hits.” I was just a little tyke. Who can argue with all killer, no filler? For years this was all I needed. One day I picked up one of the original albums for a handful of nickels and dimes and was pleasantly surprised. The music world had evolved radically by then, as my tastes had as well, but I could usually get as much enjoyment from quaint relics as I could from the serious music I was digesting hot off the presses. I wasn’t expecting to get more than a chuckle or two listening to the lame also rans from my childhood passing fad. I think it was the “Rag Doll” album. Rather than being embarrassed by the tunes, however, I found myself reliving the era as if I were discovering it for the first time. The production values, general vibes and vocal firepower were familiar, but all but a couple tracks were brand new to me. The feelings I once felt came rushing back as new sensations, not just nostalgia. Wow!

I never went completely overboard picking up their enormous back catalog, but I have picked up albums through the years when the price was right. My favorites are the oddball albums that, objectively speaking, were probably heaped with scorn by the contemporary audiences they were targeted at. Their last album for Vee-Jay was a contractual obligation done shortly before Vee-Jay went into bankruptcy. Rather than give Vee-Jay another batch of potential hits they would probably never see royalty payments for, the fellers came up with, “Recorded Live… On Stage with The Four Seasons.” There are two originals, “Little Boy in Grown Up Clothes,” and “How do You Make a Hit.” The rest of the album is padded out with covers including, “Mack the Knife,” “Day in, Day Out,” and “I Can Dream Can’t I.” As is the case with scads of “live” albums from the early to mid ‘60s, this one is comprised of state of the art studio recordings interspersed with crowd applause and/or a laugh track, depending on the song. The highlight for me is, “How do You Make a Hit,” a song within a song in which each member argues that they are the one responsible for making “Sherry” the chart topper that it was.

* 2X4

I could be wrong, but the concept of Frankie and his mates wedding their sound to folk music seems like a failure from the get go. I can’t imagine many folk music fans getting excited about New Jersey doo-woppers with a falsetto diva having their way with mellow, introspective material and vice versa. It turns out the folks who were probably most disappointed with this outing were the diehard Frankie Valli devotees. There are a smattering of high end shenanigans and some interesting Crew and Gaudio penned songs, but this could pass for a banjo-fueled New Christy Minstrels album. My favorite moment is one the rare exceptions to the rule, “No Surfin’ Today.” It opens with a ship’s bell clanging amid ocean waves crashing and, instead of limping into a sea of acoustic guitars, it swells with pop grandeur and Frankie’s most potent warble. It’s a folky lament, to be sure, but a rather silly one. The angry sea took the narrator’s gal from him the day before and now… he can’t surf for a whole long day. But don’t cry too much; he will probably be waxing down his board and shooting the curl in the morning. 

I picked up, “Edizione D’Oro,” while I was a college student. I probably had most of the songs already, but couldn’t pass up the chance to get a nice even batch of 29?? hits all at one time for a buck and change. There is nothing remarkable about the music here, aside from being a collection of some of the best produced pop confections on the planet, performed by a stellar group of talented singers, songwriters and musicians, but the packaging proved to be rather interesting. First Record is a label from Taiwan, with dubious credentials, that put out albums that were sold to American servicemen stationed overseas. The front and back cover are fine. You’ll need a mirror to read the liner notes inside, though.

“At the Hop Featuring the 4 Seasons” (Also Starring Charlie Francis, Barbara Brown, and The Buggs) is a wonderful example of a scam perpetrated by a number of unscrupulous independent record labels in a more naive era. I haven’t found a documented explanation of what went down, but I’ve heard similar tales involving other bands and labels, so take this account with a grain of salt. Coronet was probably approached by someone associated with the 4 Seasons when the singing foursome were absolute nobodies and given a couple demos and photos in hopes of getting the band signed. If that were the case, Coronet passed. Later, when the lads were making some other label rich, Coronet realized they could milk that success with a release of their own. They stretched the two songs they had by the 4 Seasons into a full album by including material from a few other nobodies they had unsolicited material from. If you weren’t paying attention at the record emporium, you might believe you were getting a fresh crop of tunes from your favorite band. I don’t know much about Charlie Francis or Barbara Brown, but Coronet put out an entire album by The Buggs and it’s one of the best Beatles rip-off products ever!

Apropos of nothing, if I had picked up a copy of Edith Massey covering one of my favorite 4 Seasons songs when I had the chance, I’d rule the world!!!

============================================================================

Lou Christie had a successful career, primarily in the ‘60s, but stretching into the ‘80s, and is still going strong playing the oldies circuit. He had five songs that made it to the top 40 in America and was popular in England and much of the rest of the pop world to varying degrees with, “Lightnin’ Strikes,” “Two Faces Have I,” “I’m Gonna Make You Mine,” “Rhapsody in the Rain” and “The Gypsy Cried.” He got into music and singing at a very early age. When he was 15 he started a songwriting partnership with the mother of one of the girls he hung out with. Lou and Twyla Herbert (20 years his senior) wrote hundreds of songs together throughout Lou’s career. For me, they are the cream of the crop. Although he was singing, writing music and recording before he was aware of the 4 Seasons, they had an effect on Lou Christie’s style once “Sherry” brought them onto his radar. It’s arguable that he could have had more hits had he toned down some of the wackier elements of his sound in the studio, but I adore the absurd teen angst scenarios, the mix of tenor and soaring falsetto and the over the top background vocal antics.

While I heard “The Gypsy Cried” and “Two Faces Have I” in the early ‘60s, the name Lou Christie was not familiar to me until a few years later when “Lightnin’ Strikes” raced up the charts to number 1 and was ubiquitous for months afterwards. Even though I loved the song to death, I didn’t pick up the album, or even the single, at the time because I was still a kid. My allowance covered at most a record or two a month and I was engrossed with groups like Herman’s Hermits, Freddie and the Dreamers and the Left Banke. As a grasshopper, I knew a record had to have at least two hits on it or it was a waste of my time and not-so-hard-earned money. I was a college brat and all about diving into the seedy underbelly of filler material on dusty, dated albums by one hit wonders from my childhood when I finally picked up, “Lightnin’ Strikes.” Side one contains pedestrian readings of contemporary hits along the lines of, “ Since I Fell for You.” On side two, though, Lou lets his freak flag fly and is a zany dynamo from the high wire antics of opener, “Trapeze,” right through to the big hit finale. This is where I discovered the genius of the production skills that matched his impressive vocal range with imaginative pop instrumentation and female backups from another dimension. On the chorus sections of “Crying in the Streets,” Lou and the gals sound like they are choking on pieces of meat, “ack, ack, ack, ack,” before joining in on a tight chorus vocal line followed by another (assumed) bite of steak for the next, “ack, ack, ack, ack.” Something might have gotten lost in translation, but for me the effect is charming pop perfection!

At that point I was hooked. I knew I had to get more Lou Christie. This was before the advent of CDs, and I’ve never been a particularly motivated LP hunter, so it was a passive “had to get.” Lou was added to my mental list of artists like the 13th Floor Elevators and Chocolate Watchband that had out of print releases I’d pick up if they ever crossed my path while browsing through used record bins or digging through boxes at swap meets and yard sales. I was quite excited when I finally turned up, “Strikes Again,” at a record store. Excited enough to pay $8 for a used copy of a record that couldn’t have held much interest to the general public! Although it was released in ’66, shortly after the hit its name eluded to, the material had been recorded years earlier. It has a very dated sound for ’66 because it was not a product of an artist informed by that year’s Beatles records and product from all the other artists pushing boundaries in a similar vein. As was the case with the “Lightnin’ Strikes” album, these were songs that had been recorded through the years that hadn’t found a home yet. If I had been a ’66 purist I would have been thoroughly disappointed. There are some cool moments for me on this record, but overall it doesn’t quite match side two of “Lightnin.” However, “Guitars and Bongos” is one of my favorites from all his work!

Reviewing records for a magazine or two during the early/mid CD era was a wonderful thing. Each month I would trade in stuff I’d reviewed, but could live without, for gobs of in-store credit. I always had enough to get whatever new stuff I was following as well as a handful of rereleases and/or oldies compilations. As the Lou Christie back catalog became available on CD, I picked it up and filled in the gaps in my collection. CDs can also hold more music than vinyl so a lot of my purchases were two albums along with a few bonus tracks, all crammed onto one little disc. “Lou Christie,” the first album is paired with, “Strikes Again.” The two flow together seamlessly because they were recorded at roughly the same time, though one is from ’63 and the other wasn’t released until ’66. “Lightnin’ Strikes” and “Painter of Hits” is a great collection of songs as well. “Painter of Hits” was new to me at that time and I was a little leery of finding out Lou had “grown” musically. Thankfully, the album is steeped in the same teen drama and exhilaration of the early pop ‘60s sound I love so much. It contains its fair share of contemporary hits, “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon,” et al., but Lou does a good job with them. “The Complete Co&Ce/Roulette Recordings,” contains the first album, some even earlier singles and some previously unreleased odds and ends. It’s a nice batch of songs, but for me the most exciting Lou Christie CD compilation is, “Egyptian Shumba, the Singles and Rare Recordings 1962 - 1964.” It’s credited to Lou Christie and the Tammys. The Tammys was a trio of ladies Lou worked with before he had hits. He told them he would come back to work with them if he ever made it and, by golly, he did! This disc is packed with wild and wacky fun. There are plenty of songs I’ve already raved about, that were released on various albums, plus a bunch of equally off kilter material from the vaults, including seven cuts by the Tammys. The title track is one of the most infectious songs imaginable! Lou Christie finally let me down with the CD, “I’m Gonna Make You Mine - The Very Best of.” The title track is a total ear worm and a few others are fairly fun, but the music has been updated to some sort of bubblegum/adult contemporary/’68 pop synthesis that leaves me rather cold. He was always a guilty pleasure rather than a mainstay, so I guess this is where he jumped the barracuda as far as I’m concerned.

The Newbeats released three albums and a bunch of singles but are remembered primarily for the songs, “Bread and Butter,” and “Run, Baby, Run,” and to a lesser degree, “Everything’s Alright.” According to the liner notes from their third album, “Run, Baby, Run,”  Dean and Mark Mathis were playing a gig in Louisiana when Texan Larry Henley jumped on stage to sing with them. The more likely story comes from the liner notes from an Ace release (keep reading) in which Dean and Mark were introduced to Larry before the gig and asked to bring him up to sing at some point. They got along well, but continued recording as two separate entities until they got together about two years later to record a demo of “Bread and Butter.” They took the song to Hickory Records who dubbed the group the Newbeats, recorded them properly and set them on the road to stardom. Their first outing went to number two so they might have thought they were destined to be the next Elvis. Their other hits didn't get nearly that far up the charts, though, and other singles faired poorer still. After ten years of touring and recording, the gents called it quits in 1974. 

I assumed there was at least one female in the Newbeats when “Bread and Butter” was on the radio every day for months when I was a kid. I bought the album named for the hit when I was in high school, but still had no clue it was a man hitting all those high notes because there is absolutely no info about the band to be found. The back cover is identical to the front. The record is one half fun quirky songs, “Pink Dally Rue,” “Everything’s Alright,” “A Patent on Love,” “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” “Tough Little Buggy” and “There Oughta be a Law (Bout the Stuff I Saw),” and one half straightforward covers along the lines of, “Bye Bye, Love,” “So Fine” and “Ain’t that Lovin’ You, Baby.” In retrospect, my take on the covers being run of the mill changed somewhat considering it was a male rather than a female doing the falsetto. I listened to that first album a few times, filed it with the rest of my collection and pretty much forgot about it.

It wasn’t until I had moved back to Los Angeles, after going to college and staying on in San Luis Obispo for a few years, that I finally picked up another Newbeats album. It’s from my favorite era, the cover is corny, I remembered the hit warmly and the price was right. It was reading the liner notes that clued me in to these cats being another example of the Frankie Valli experience. Needless to say, I enjoyed this album a lot more than the one I originally picked up. Of course, I pulled “Bread and Butter” out again for a few spins and developed a much greater appreciation for it as well. The “Run Baby, Run” album follows a similar pattern with hits of the day like, “Help” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” mixed in with songs more tailor-made for their sound such as, “Mean Wooly Willy” and “It’s Really Goodbye.” My digging the sound of the high pitched croon emanating from a male has nothing to do with sexism. I love many, many, many female singers, musicians, songwriters and groups. One of the first bands I obsessed over as a young sprout was the Supremes. I’m all about looniness. It’s like a cartoon in which a hulking, mean looking he-man opens his mouth and Marilyn Monroe’s most delicate whisper comes out. Most folks have a chuckle and move on. I’m the guy who never seems to get tired of the stale gag.

When Collectables came out with a best of CD, “A Golden Classics Edition,” I picked it up. The 18 tracks are made up of what I consider the good stuff (non-standards) from their three albums on Hickory as well as some singles in a similar vein. This is the point at which I discovered a good deal of their songs remind me of, “The Boy from New York City.” I also realized that Larry Henley sounds an awful lot like Janis Joplin whether he’s belting out a snarled raspy lead, getting mellow and soulful or even cackling at the humor of one of their songs. It’s Janis fronting a band of happy go lucky, parent friendly, teen pop stars stuck in the early ‘60s, mind you, but Janis none the less. Roughly ten years after the Collectables release, Ace followed up with the motherlode of all things Newbeats related.  They put out a 26-track CD with every track from their first two albums, “Bread and Butter” and “Big Beat Sounds,” and a pair of bonus tracks. They followed that up with another CD, “Run Baby Run,” that contains the lads’ third album and 15 bonus tracks recorded around the same time. They followed that one up with yet another CD, “Groovin Out on Life,” that couples an additional nine cuts by the Newbeats with eight tracks recorded by Dean and Mark and ten songs recorded by Larry Henley. Larry didn’t utilize the falsetto for his solo work and he has a powerful voice. The Collectables CD is probably a whole lot more Newbeats than the vast majority of ‘60s pop fans need. The three Ace CDs are strictly for mega-nerds. The liner notes are extensive and fascinating. After repeated listens to the Ace treasure trove, I have picked the song that best exemplifies what I love about these cats. Give a listen to, “Short on Love,” and let their groove thang make you a believer. 

Edwin Letcher

December 20, 2020