Comments on: The Four Seasons’ “Raven”

By: Ted Hammond

Ted Hammond — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:56:18 +0000

I did a little more research about the timing of the earliest charted track versions of “Can’t Get Enough Of You Baby”.

Several Wikipedia articles claim the Toys’ version was from late 1965, when “A Lover’s Concerto” came out on DynoVoice 209. Tim Neely’s Goldmine Publication shows CGEOYB on DynoVoice 219 as an uncharted Toys single released in 1966. Joel Witburn’s “Top Pop Singles” shows a Toys release on DynoVoice 218 as charting in April, 1966.

Charlie Calello was almost certainly the arranger for both the Four Seasons’ and Toys’ versions of CGEOYB, in association with the writers and producers of The Toys and the song, Denny Randell and Sandy Linzer. I gave a listen to a YouTube “video” online of CGEOYB by The Toys. The Toys arrangement is quite simple compared to The Four Seasons arrangement. But as we have seen, “The Entire Four Seasons Organization” works very quickly. Regardless of which arrangement was first, Charlie Calello could have probably made the arrangement more or less elaborate in short order, in days or even hours.

I think only an insider could tell us who went into the studio first, both probably in late 1965. In any event, THE FOUR SEASONS charted on 1/29/66 on the ALBUM charts with the “Working My Way Back To You”, LP. THE TOYS LP, “The Toys Sing A Lover’s Concerto and Attack”, charted a week later on the ALBUM charts on 2/5/66. So in any event, THE FOUR SEASONS had the first CHARTED track of CGEOYB, and both tracks charted well over a year before Question Mark’s version, and decades before Colour Field and Smash Mouth.

By: Ted Hammond

Ted Hammond — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 01:59:16 +0000

I just looked it up in IMDB for the Soundtrack of “Love Actually”. The Bay City Rollers are played in the movie doing “Bye Bye Baby (Baby Goodbye)”, but were omitted from the Soundtrack CD. IMDB misspells Bob Crewe’s name as “Crew” in the songwriter credits. They managed to get “Gaudio” right. If you do a search on [Love Actually Soundtrack "Silence Is Golden"], it will turn up some links with the actual movie quote.

I think the Tremeloes sang the “Silence Is Golden” one half step higher than the Four Seasons, whereas I think that the Four Seasons are in a key one half step higher than Smash Mouth on “Can’t Get Enough Of You Baby”. Theres’ some trivia I can’t even find on the web!

By: John Hornsby

John Hornsby — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 23:10:12 +0000

Ted: That line in “Love Actually”….wasn’t it a comment that the 4 Seasons were the first to do Bye Bye Baby, after the version by The Bay City Rollers was played? Maybe my memory is going…”too many memories”!

By: Ted Hammond

Ted Hammond — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 18:07:37 +0000

The Movie “Love Actually” has a line that states that the Four Seasons were the original artists to do “Silence Is Golden”.

“The Proud One” by the Osmonds hit #1 Billboard Adult Contemporary also in 1975.

About a year later, Donnie Osmonds’s Seasons remake “C’mon Marianne” hit #38 Hot 100/#25 AC. “C’mon Marianne” was written by Larry Russell Brown and Raymond Bloodworth. They wrote several songs recorded by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Brown and Bloodworth were discovered by FV4S producer Bob Crewe, who also wrote their 1966 #102 “Bubbler” called “She Ain’t Lovin’ You (No More)”, recorded as by “The Distant Cousins.”

By: Len Gersten

Len Gersten — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 06:59:33 +0000

One other song that comes to mind is Frankie Valli’s solo single “The Proud One,” which charted in the upper-reaches of the Hot 100 (#68)in 1966 and was later covered by the Osmonds in 1975 and peaked at number 22.