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Bob Crewe
Robert Stanley Crewe (November 12, 1930 – September 11, 2014) was an American songwriter, dancer, singer, manager, and record producer. He was known for producing, and co-writing with Bob Gaudio, a string of Top 10 singles for the Four Seasons. As a songwriter, his most successful songs include "Silhouettes" (co-written with Frank Slay); "Big Girls Don't Cry", " Walk Like a Man", " Rag Doll", " Silence Is Golden", "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore)", "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" and " Bye, Bye, Baby" (all co-written with Gaudio); "Let's Hang On!" (written with Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell); and "My Eyes Adored You" and "Lady Marmalade" (both co-written with Kenny Nolan). He also had hit recordings with the Rays, Diane Renay, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Freddy Cannon, Lesley Gore, Oliver, Michael Jackson, Bobby Darin, Roberta Flack, Peabo Bryson, Patti LaBelle, Barry Manilow, and his own Bob Crewe Generation. Early life Born in Newark in 1930 and raised in Bel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Freddy Cannon
Frederick Anthony Picariello, Jr. (born December 4, 1936), better known by his stage name Freddy Cannon, is an American rock and roll singer, whose biggest international hits included "Tallahassee Lassie", " Way Down Yonder in New Orleans", and " Palisades Park". Biography Freddy Picariello was born in Revere, Massachusetts, moving to the neighboring city of Lynn as a child. His father worked as a truck driver and also played trumpet and sang in local bands. Freddy grew up listening to the rhythm and blues music of Big Joe Turner, Buddy Johnson and others on the radio, and he learned to play guitar. After attending Lynn Vocation High School, he made his recording debut as a singer in 1958, singing and playing rhythm guitar on a single, "Cha-Cha-Do" by the Spindrifts, which became a local hit. He had also played lead guitar on a session for an R&B vocal group, the G-Clefs, whose record "Ka-Ding Dong" made No. 24 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 in 1956. At a young age he joined ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jerry Butler
Jerry Butler Jr. (born December 8, 1939) is an American soul singer-songwriter, producer, musician, and retired politician. He was the original lead singer of the Rhythm and blues, R&B vocal group the Impressions, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. After leaving the group in 1960, Butler achieved over 55 ''Billboard'' Pop and R&B Chart hits as a solo artist including "He Will Break Your Heart", "Let It Be Me (The Everly Brothers song), Let It Be Me" and "Only the Strong Survive (song), Only the Strong Survive". He was inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame, National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame in 2015. He served as a Commissioner for Cook County, Illinois, from 1985 to 2018. As a member of this 17-member county board, he chaired the Health and Hospitals Committee and served as Vice Chair of the Construction Committee. Biography Early life Butler was born in Sunflower, Mississippi, United States, in 1939. When Butler was three years old, the fam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Shepherd Sisters
The Shepherd Sisters (also known as The Sheps) were an American vocal quartet of four sisters born and raised in Middletown, Ohio, United States: Martha (born Martha Jane Shepherd, April 22, 1932 – February 24, 1998), Gayle (born Joyce Gayle Shepherd, May 31, 1936 – May 7, 2018), Mary Lou (born May 19, 1934), and Judith (November 20, 1939 – July 10, 2009) Shepherd. The sisters were born into a family of eight children, six sisters and two brothers, with Judith being the youngest. In the late 1950s, they appeared on ''Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts''. One of their first recordings, "Gone with the Wind" got them a call from Dick Clark. Subsequently, they made many appearances on Clark's ''American Bandstand''. In New York City, Morty Craft had a song he wanted them to record, "Alone (Why Must I Be Alone)". In 1957, "Alone" would become their biggest hit and their signature song. In the U.S. it reached No. 18 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart; in the UK Singles Chart it mad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Mary Jane Girls
The Mary Jane Girls were an American girl group formed in 1983, best known for their songs "In My House", " All Night Long", "Candy Man", and their cover version of " Walk Like a Man". They were protégées of musician Rick James and disbanded in 1987. Joanne "Jojo" McDuffie was the lead singer, the others filling out the group's style and appearance. On the studio recordings, McDuffie was backed by session vocalists rather than the other Mary Jane Girls. The group released two albums in the 1980s, and recorded a third – which was shelved for decades but finally released in 2014, as part of a larger retrospective of Rick James' work. The group was inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Music Hall of Fame in 2019. Background Rick James was frequently backed in his studio recordings by vocalists Joanne "Jojo" McDuffie and the sisters Maxine and Julia Waters. For live performances, starting in 1979, James was backed by McDuffie along with Cheryl Bailey (who used the stage name Cheri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Divine (performer)
Harris Glenn Milstead (October 19, 1945 – March 7, 1988), better known by his stage name Divine, was an American actor, singer, and drag queen. Closely associated with independent filmmaker John Waters, Divine was a character actor, usually performing female roles in cinematic and theatrical productions, and adopted a female drag persona for his music career. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, to a conservative middle-class family, Milstead developed an early interest in drag while working as a women's hairdresser. By the mid-1960s he had embraced the city's counterculture of the 1960s, countercultural scene and befriended Waters, who gave him the name "Divine" and the tagline of "the most beautiful woman in the world, almost". Along with his friend David Lochary, Milstead joined Waters' acting troupe, the Dreamlanders, and adopted female roles for their experimental short films ''Roman Candles (1966 film), Roman Candles'' (1966), ''Eat Your Makeup'' (1968), and ''The Diane Linklet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walk Like A Man (The Four Seasons Song)
"Walk Like a Man" is a song written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio and originally recorded by rock band the Four Seasons. The Four Seasons's version The song features the counterpoint of Nick Massi's bass voice and the falsetto of lead singer Frankie Valli. It was their third number one hit, initially reaching the top of the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 on March 2, 1963, remaining there for three weeks. "Walk Like a Man" also went to number three on the R&B singles chart. ''Cash Box'' described it as "a feelingful, cha cha beat stomper ... that again sports the falsetto gimmick" and has an "ultra-commercial arrangement by Charles Calello". During the sessions that produced the hit recording, the fire department received an emergency call from the Abbey Victoria Hotel (the building that housed the Stea-Phillips Recording Studios). As producer Bob Crewe was insisting upon recording the perfect take, smoke and water started to seep into the studio; the room directly above the studio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bob Gaudio
Robert John Gaudio (born November 17, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer, and the keyboardist and backing vocalist of the pop/rock band the Four Seasons. Gaudio wrote or co-wrote and produced the vast majority of the band's music, including hits like "Sherry" and "December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)". Though he no longer performs with the group, Gaudio and lead singer Frankie Valli remain co-owners of the Four Seasons brand. Biography Early career Born in the Bronx, New York, Gaudio was raised in Bergenfield, New Jersey, where he attended Bergenfield High School. Rotella, Mark"Straight Out of Newark" ''The New York Times'', October 2, 2005. Accessed October 9, 2007. "Originally from the Bronx, Mr. Gaudio had, at age 15, written the hit "Who Wears Short Shorts", which he made up while driving with friends along the main drag in Bergenfield." His mother worked for the publishing house Prentice Hall and his father in a paper factory. He showed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Four Seasons (band)
The Four Seasons are an American rock music, rock and pop music, pop band formed in 1960 in Newark, New Jersey. Since 1970, they have also been known at times as Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The band evolved out of a previous band called The Four Lovers, with Frankie Valli as the lead singer, Bob Gaudio on keyboards and tenor vocals, Tommy DeVito (musician), Tommy DeVito on lead guitar and baritone vocals, and Nick Massi on bass guitar and bass vocals. On nearly all of their 1960s hits, they were credited as The 4 Seasons. The legal name of the organization is the Four Seasons Partnership, formed by Gaudio and Valli, and was taken after a failed audition in 1960. While band members have come and gone, Gaudio and Valli remain the band's constants, with each owning 50% of the act and its assets, including virtually all of its recording catalog. Gaudio no longer plays live, leaving Valli as the only original member of the band who still tours . The band's original line-up wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Big Girls Don't Cry (The Four Seasons Song)
"Big Girls Don't Cry" is a song written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio and originally recorded by the Four Seasons. It hit number one on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 on November 17, 1962, and, like its predecessor "Sherry", spent five weeks in the top position but never ranked in the ''Billboard'' year-end charts of 1962 or 1963. The song also made it to number one, for three weeks, on '' Billboard'''s Rhythm and Blues survey. It was also the quartet's second single to make it to number one on the US R&B charts. Background According to Gaudio, he was dozing off while watching the John Payne/Rhonda Fleming/ Ronald Reagan movie ''Tennessee's Partner'' when he heard Payne's character slap Fleming in the face. After the slap, Fleming's character replied, "Big girls don't cry." Gaudio wrote the line on a scrap of paper, fell asleep, and wrote the song the next morning. However, the line does not appear in that film. According to Bob Crewe, he was dozing off in his Manhattan home with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saul Bass
Saul Bass (; May 8, 1920 – April 25, 1996) was an American graphic designer and Oscar-winning filmmaker, best known for his design of motion-picture title sequences, film posters, and corporate logos. During his 40-year career, Bass worked for some of Hollywood's most prominent filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. Among his best known title sequences are the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict's arm for Preminger's ''The Man with the Golden Arm'', the credits racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of a skyscraper in Hitchcock's ''North by Northwest'', and the disjointed text that races together and apart in '' Psycho''. Bass designed some of the most iconic corporate logos in North America, including the Geffen Records logo in 1980, the Hanna-Barbera "swirling star" logo in 1979, the sixth and final version of the Bell System logo in 1969, as well as AT&T Corporation's fir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maxine Brown (soul Singer)
Maxine Ella Brown (born August 18, 1939) is an American soul and R&B singer. Background and career Maxine Brown began singing as a child, performing with two New York City based gospel groups called the Angelairs and the Royaltones when she was a teenager. In 1960, she signed with the small Nomar record label, who released the deep soul ballad "All in My Mind" (which was written by Brown) late in the year. The single became a hit, climbing to number two on the US ''Billboard'' R&B chart (number 19 pop), and it was quickly followed by "Funny",Larkin C, ''Virgin Encyclopedia of Sixties Music'', (Muze UK Ltd, 1997), p. 79 which peaked at number three. Brown was poised to become a star and she moved to the bigger ABC-Paramount in 1962, but left the label after an unsuccessful year and recording several non-chart singles for the label, and signed to the New York-based uptown soul label, Wand Records, a Scepter Records subsidiary, in 1963. Brown recorded a string of sizable hits ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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