Today in Four Seasons History
March 13th, 2007On March 13, 1976, the Four Seasons had their fifth Number One hit with “December 1963″ (Oh, What a Night),” which was their first hit to top the charts since “Rag Doll” in 1964. “December 1963″ remained in the top position on the Billboard Hot 100 for three consecutive weeks and was also their only British Number One single.
Gaudio’s writing partner was Judy Parker, who would eventually become his wife. At first, the song was about the repeal of Prohibition, and was called “December 5th, 1933.” Judy wasn’t pleased with that concept, though, and said that the words were a little “too cute.” New lyrics were written, and the melody reworked.
It broke right around Christmas of ’75, and slowly climbed to Number One by mid-March. The song spent six months on the charts, and sold more than three million copies, making it the Four Seasons’ best-selling single ever. In 1994, thanks to the film “Forrest Gump,” the song reentered the Top 100 (peaking at #14), becoming one of the longest-running single in the chart’s history, with 54 weeks total.
Is Tommy Devito on this video? Who’s playing drums? Bass? Anyone know? Thanks.
Comment by Dennis — March 13, 2007 @ 1:13 pm
My gosh, I still remember exactly where I was when I heard George Michael announce #1 as “December, 1963″ started on WABC Radio 77 in New York, and almost to the day that Frankie hit #1 with “My Eyes Adored You” a year earlier. Could it be 31 years?
Is it time now for another incarnation, maybe with the great pipes of Daniel Reichard??
Comment by Howard Tucker — March 13, 2007 @ 2:48 pm
Dennis
Tommy DeVito is not on this video. Tommy DeVito’s last performance with the 4 Seasons was in December 1970. As pointed out in the Blog description, “Oh What a Night” was recorded in 1975 and hit No. 1 in 1976. The drummer is Gerry Polci and the bass player is Don Ciccone and they were in fact the same people who sang on the record, thus you have 3 people singing lead parts on “Oh What a Night” with Frankie doing the middle part (“I got a funny feeling…”). The lead guitar play is John Paiva and the keyboardist is Lee Shapiro. It is my understanding that Bob Gaudio sang on the “Oh What a Night” record but is not pictured in the video in a performing role which he stopped doing in early 1972 as I recall. The part in Jersey Boys where his character says to Frankie something like “performing was never my thing” is a very true statement.
Comment by David Cace — March 13, 2007 @ 5:19 pm