{"id":4280,"date":"2014-07-06T16:51:43","date_gmt":"2014-07-06T21:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=4280"},"modified":"2016-02-14T22:54:21","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T03:54:21","slug":"jersey-boys-corner-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=4280","title":{"rendered":"Jersey Boys, Corner Boys"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just went to see Jersey Boys<\/a> at the movies, i.e. the film follow-up to the popular Broadway play about the career of The Four Seasons. For the younger folk out there, the Four Seasons were a popular \u201chit parade\u201d foursome from New Jersey who spanned the 1960’s, and who had a few more hit tunes in the 70’s and 80’s. They \u201cbroke out\u201d in 1963 with a trio of do-wop style hits (Sherrie, Big Girls Don’t Cry, Walk Like a Man); but somehow they kept their finger on the pop-tune pulse for the rest of the decade, even as the \u201cBritish Invasion\u201d (Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Kinks) and the Woodstock generation (The Who, Jimi Hendrix, CSN&Y) revolutionized the radio waves and conquered the record racks. <\/p>\n

The Four Seasons hit pipeline finally went dry after 1968, although they managed a few comeback hits after 1975 by banking towards a more showy \u201cLas Vegas\u201d style, and with slower emotional ballads. Actually, after 1965 the Four Seasons were less of a foursome and increasingly were a changeable back-up act for lead singer Frankie Valli. Valli has to be given a lot credit for being flexible and figuring out how to stay relevant in the big-music world in rapidly changing times.<\/p>\n

(And of course, there’s always a quiet man behind someone like Valli. I never knew that much about the Four Seasons, as it was the Beatles that we kids memorized and idolized. So, it was only when I finally saw Jersey Boys that I learned about the \u201ccatalyst\u201d who converted a local north Jersey act into a world-class recording band: Bob Gaudio<\/a>, the highly-talented if poorly educated high school drop-out whose songwriting changed everything for Frankie V and semi-gangster \/band founder Tommy DeVito.)<\/p>\n

Jersey Boys also interested me because I knew a little bit about a mostly unremarked \u201csideshow\u201d to the early Frankie Valli story<\/a>. For several years (ending not long ago), I knew a guy at work who grew up in the same housing project as Frankie (i.e., the Stephen Crane Village public housing complex in North Newark). Sometime after the Jersey Boys story hit Broadway in 2005 and started attracting national attention, this fellow told me a bit about his own youthful musical endeavors in the old neighborhood. These took place in the mid to late 1960s, say roughly 1963 to 1969, just a year or two after Frankie and Tommy (who also hailed from this neighborhood) had hit the big time and moved to the suburbs. The first venture for my work associate was an acapella combo called \u201cThe Savoys\u201d, who had gained local acclaim and recorded a few 45s. They are still remembered on various \u201coldies-but-goodies\u201d web sites<\/a>, and you can still listen to their songs on You Tube (e.g. Gloria<\/a>, from 1965, and Visions of Love.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

So OK, Frankie and Tommy and friends weren’t the only ones who gathered on the street corners in the local project on summer evenings and who later managed to put their harmonies onto vinyl. By 1965, however, white-guy acapella was not going to get you onto the airwaves of WABC or WMCA, the two top-40 hit parade radio stations in the New York area. The Beatles, Stones, Byrds and Supremes were now defining the game. Even Bob Dylan was already there with \u201cLike A Rolling Stone\u201d! <\/p>\n

However, things got a little more interesting for my workmate and his Savoy bandmates in 1966, when one of the original guys quit and was replaced with Frankie Valli’s younger brother, Bobby Castelluccio (later Bobby Valli). Bobby and the other Savoy members were about 17 years old at this point. Even though Frankie V had moved out in 1963, his mother, father and younger brother Bobby stayed on at Stephen Crane, so the Castelluccio \/ Valli musical influence could still be felt in that project.<\/p>\n

You can read what happened from there in Mark DiIonno’s article<\/a> from the Newark Star Ledger. According to several of the core bandmembers, Frankie (allegedly) became interested and involved in the fate of the former Savoys, now that his little brother was on board. They followed his advice and learned to play guitars and keyboards and thus adopt a more current musical style. They transmuted themselves into a pop group called \u201cStephen Crane Village\u201d, and according to my workmate and his former band partners (other than Bobby, who does not mention any of this on his own website<\/a>), they could have become another top-10 act, but for the fact that Frankie Valli ultimately held them back because of his sibling rivalry psychology. <\/p>\n

Given the renewed interest in Frankie Valli’s story courtesy of Jersey Boys, the old Savoy \/ Stephen Crane Village members are proposing their own movie version of this story, to be called \u201cCorner Boys\u201d (which may have some legal hurdles to use, given that various copywrited shows including The Wire<\/a> utilized this name for some of their own episodes \u2013 it’s not exactly an original name.) According to the Ledger article and a video on the nj.com website<\/a>, movie producer T.J Mancini was interested in this story. A Google search does not indicate that anything had become of this proposal since the 2012 article. <\/p>\n

So, after seeing Jersey Boys and knowing a bit about the \u201cCorner Boys\u201d story from my conversations with my former workmate and from the Ledger article, I decided to do a mini-investigation and analysis of my own regarding the fate of \u201cBobby Valli and the Stephen Crane Village\u201d. (Had that band made it somehow, they clearly would have had to change the name; outside of Newark and Belleville, nobody knew what a \u201cCrane Village\u201d would have meant \u2013 was it a place where construction cranes came from, or was it about a certain weird type of waterbird? And what would they have changed the name to? \u201cThe Village People\u201d perhaps? No, there weren’t any YMCA’s in North Newark, and these fellows just weren’t like that . . . )<\/p>\n

Should \u201cCorner Boys\u201d see the light of day (or the light of a theater projector)? I vote NO, at least not as a catty tell-all about what a nasty bastard Frankie Valli was to his brother and his musician friends. First off, listen to those You Tube recordings of the Savoys. They were OK, but you really can’t imagine them on the top-10 hit countdown; not really in 1958, and not at all in 1965. The members of the Savoys definitely had some musical talent, but they clearly didn’t have their fingers on the pulse of modern styles. If the story is true about Frankie V telling his brother Bobby in 1966 that his bandmates had to ditch accapella, then he was doing them all a big favor! In other words, guys, wake up!!!! I mean, did the British Invasion radio airwaves somehow not get thru in the projects?<\/p>\n

We can’t corroborate why the Crane Village recordings of \u201cRich Man\u201d and \u201cIf You Could Love Me\u201d were never released. Unfortunately, I could not find any internet renditions of these tunes. Were they really top-10 material, that Frankie Valli at first helped his brother and his friends to get into the studio (as the Ledger article implies), but were later held up because Frankie feared that they would propel his brother to the same level of fame that he enjoyed? <\/p>\n

Or did the record company managers, whose money was on the line, just decide that there were better bets out there at the time? If the money people had seen dollar signs above Crane Village, could Frankie (who was ultimately at the record companies’ mercy \u2013 by 1966 and 67, there were plenty of other big acts out there besides the Four Seasons) have stopped them? One has to wonder if our \u201cvillage people\u201d got as far as they did (i.e., into the big studios) because of Frankie Valli’s benevolence. It seems just as plausible as the sibling rivalry theory, in the absence of any soundtracks to listen to.<\/p>\n

We do have one clue as to what Bobby Valli and Stephen Crane Village could do, musically. In 1969 (after Woodstock and Altamont, to keep things in context here), despite the alleged interference of Frankie Valli in blocking his brother’s recording success, Stephen Crane Village did release a 45 that supposedly got some airplay. And it is on the Internet<\/a> for us to hear.<\/p>\n

That song is called \u201cHey Summer\u201d, and after a few listens I think it gives us some good clues as to what determined the fate of Stephen Crane Village. The style is vaguely Four Seasons-like; Bobby V definitely could lay down some Frankie-like falsetto harmonies. The overall style is a bit saccharine, reminiscent of the short-lived \u201cbubble gum<\/a>\u201d genre of 1967-1970 (let’s not forget that the Archies, Cuff Links and 1910 Fruitgum Company all had hits in 1969). But the lyrics are . . . well, a bit clumsy. The opening line goes \u201cGee this picnic’s fun, with a groovy thing with you . . . \u201c OK, so maybe Stephen Crane Village needed a Bob Gaudio . . . but he was already taken (although according to the Ionnio article, Mike Petrillo, another writer for the Four Seasons, had given some songs to the band). <\/p>\n

The most specific contention in the \u201cCorner Boys\u201d story, according to the article, is that Frankie V had arranged with a producer for Crane Village to record a song called \u201cThe Worst that Can Happen\u201d, months before it became a 1968 hit by Johnny Maestro and the Brooklyn Bridge. After not hearing anything more about it, one of the Village members finally heard the Johnny Maestro version on the air, and concluded that they got stabbed in the back. Well, maybe . . . but again, without hearing whatever Crane Village might have done with that song, it’s hard to say. I have to wonder, would a Four Seasons style and the high-pitched falsettos that Bobby Valli used have worked with that song? Would they have been better than the more baritone approach that Maestro used? Was it Frankie Valli who gave Johnny Maestro the nod, or was it the people who had money on the line?<\/p>\n

Overall, without any further evidence contradicting what I have already heard, I remain unconvinced that Stephen Crane Village brought anything new or exciting to the quickly changing music scene of the late 1960s. If their \u201csuppressed works\u201d (e.g. \u201cRich Man\u201d) were so good, why didn’t the backers who pressed \u201cHey Summer\u201d into vinyl also put those tunes out? Perhaps the old recordings were a bit out of fashion by 1969, given the emerging \u201cpsychodelic era\u201d; but couldn’t they have been spruced up with a bit of solid drumming, some horns, and some edgy guitar licks? Was \u201cHey Summer\u201d really the best they had to offer?<\/p>\n

Frankie Valli comes out of Jersey Boys looking a bit saint-like, having tried to deal with failing marriages, a troubled daughter who eventually died from an OD (plus a stepdaughter who died in a tragic accident, not even mentioned in the play or film), and a band partner who owed big money to the mob and could have been killed. The Corner Boys story would have occurred during at least a portion of the Jersey Boys story arc. Concerns about Frankie’s little brother (who was about 15 years younger) and his musical ventures did not make the cut. The former Savoys \/ Stephen Crane Village members featured in the Star Ledger article appear to be bidding for some last minute fame (and a few bucks, no doubt) by throwing mud at the iconic image of Frankie that emerges from Jersey Boys. But without a real \u201csmoking gun\u201d proving that Frankie conspired to break their wings, these guys are mostly just blowing smoke. <\/p>\n

The \u201cCorner Boys\u201d story regarding the Savoys, Crane Village and Bobbi Valli could still be an interesting and valuable addendum to the Jersey Boys legend, if it were handled in a more positive and thoughtful fashion. It does make you ask \u2013 why did Frankie Valli and his friends make it to the big leagues, and yet his brother with his own friends did not? Bobby more or less had Frankie’s vocal skills, if \u201cHey Summer\u201d is any indication (and Bobby Valli did have a successful career as a singer in his own right, despite his time with the Crane Village group). And the other Savoys \/ Village people were probably no more or less talented musically than Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi. Was Bob Gaudio the creative spark that made the difference? Did living in Frankie Valli’s shadow help or hinder the Village group? Or did the radical changes in the pop music scene taking place after 1964 close the door to the musical talents that a group of street-harmonizers from North Newark could offer the world of pop? The Corner Boys story COULD BE a really interesting case-in-point comparison as to how and why an artistic talent \u201ccatches fire\u201d, versus other talents that don’t. <\/p>\n

But only IF those guys who spoke with Mark Ionno could filter out the \u201ccould have been a contender\u201d negativity in their story, and look more positively at what they did experience and accomplish. Which is still a whole lot more than most anyone with any sort of interest in making music for the public could or will ever do! One good sign that perhaps the \u201cCorner Boys\u201d are ready to make peace with the \u201cJersey Boys\u201d can be seen in the videos that were made of a radio show appearance<\/a> that the former Savoy members made recently at radio station WPAT. In the second video<\/a> of the You Tube series on that show, the host asked them about the Frankie Valli angle, and instead of re-running the \u201cwe got gypped\u201d line from the Star Ledger article, they were rather gracious about Frankie’s legacy. <\/p>\n

I hope that these fellows can still make something of their Corner Boys story. It may not hit Broadway nor become a world-wide movie release like Jersey Boys, but with a good and intelligent film maker and an honest and open-minded approach, it could be turned into an interesting indie movie that might continue to tell a compelling story regarding the nature of talent, art and fame, long after Jersey Boys itself is forgotten.<\/p>\n

PS, another small thing that inspired my interested in this topic: not long ago I had dinner at Michael’s Pasteria, a nice little pizza place\/restaurant on the main drag (Franklin Avenue) in Nutley, NJ. Nutley is where Frankie V and some of the other Four Seasons members lived in the 1960s and 70s. On the wall in Michaels is an autographed photo of Tommy DeVito. And, about every 6th song on the piped-in background music is by the Four Seasons, of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just went to see Jersey Boys at the movies, i.e. the film follow-up to the popular Broadway play about the career of The Four Seasons. For the younger folk out there, the Four Seasons were a popular \u201chit parade\u201d foursome from New Jersey who spanned the 1960’s, and who had a few more hit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4280"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4280"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5958,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4280\/revisions\/5958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}