Covered: Bob Crewe & Bob Gaudio, Volume 1: 1957-1974

The songwriting team of Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio is another one that doesn't get as much respect as it deserves. So they're a good subject for this next installment in my "Covered" series. They were responsible for writing most of the big hits by Franki Valli and the Four Seasons. But they had many songwriting successes for other musical acts as well.

Note that since many of the songs here were first hits by Franki Valli and the Four Seasons, I wanted to avoid turning this into mostly a "best of" by the band. So I tried hard to select versions of those songs by other musical acts. I've made two volumes, and many of the hit songs in this time period (1957 to 1974) aren't included until cover versions that happened in the time of the second volume. Examples that were 1960s hits but don't show up until later covers include "Sherry," "Rag Doll," "Walk like a Man," "Bye Bye Baby," and "Barbarella." Also keep in mind that these two wrote most Franki Valli and the Four Seasons hits, but not all of them.

Bob Crewe was thirteen years older than Bob Gaudio, so his music career started first. In 1953, he partnered with another songwriter, Frank Slay, Jr. Four years later, in 1957, they had their first hit with "Silhouettes" by the Rays. I haven't included that, because I chose another version of the song by Herman's Hermits, which was a big hit in 1965. The B-side was another song they wrote together, "Daddy Cool." The Diamonds had a hit with it in 1957, so I included that version here. They also had a big hit in 1957 with "Tallahassee Lassie" for Freddy Cannon in 1959.

Meanwhile, Bob Gaudio was starting his music career. In 1958, at only the age of 15 years old, he wrote the hit "Short Shorts" for the band he was in at the time, the Royal Teens. Not long after that, he came across a band led by Franki Valli, and joined them as a piano player and songwriter. They soon were renamed "Franki Valli and the Four Seasons." From the very start, they were produced by Bob Crewe, which is how Crewe and Gaudio met each other. It probably helped that both of them were from New Jersey.

The very first hit by the Four Seasons in 1962, "Sherry," was written by Gaudio alone. But soon, Crewe and Gaudio were generally writing the hits together. From 1962 to about 1968, they wrote dozens of hits together, just for the Four Seasons. 

Meanwhile, with Gaudio busy a lot of the time as a member of the Four Seasons, Crewe had a whole other career going on as a producer, which often also included more songwriting with others. He even formed his own record label, Dyno Voice Records, and had over 20 hits with artists on that label other than the Four Seasons. One hit was actually in his own name - the "Bob Crewe Generation" - an instrumental called "Music to Watch Girls By," in 1967. However, that's not here because although he produced it and performed it, he didn't write it. In 1968, his group the Bob Crewe Generation wrote and performed all the songs for the soundtrack to the hit movie "Barbarella." I put a cover of the theme song on Volume 2.

So the 1960s were an extremely successful time for both Bobs. Generally speaking, songs Gaudio helped write ended up first being performed by the Four Seasons, though sometimes other groups ultimately had the big hit. For instance, the Four Seasons version of "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore)" didn't even make the Top 100 singles chart in 1965. But the Walker Brothers did a version in 1966 using the same arrangement and hit Number One in the singles chart in Britain with it. Meanwhile, Crewe had his fingers in other pies, and sometimes wrote songs with other songwriters.

However, in the late 1960s, the style of music favored by the Four Seasons fell out of favor, with musical trends changing rapidly and drastically. Gaudio teamed up with another songwriter, Jake Holmes (best known for writing "Dazed and Confused"), and made the 1969 Four Seasons album "The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette." It was their attempt to stay relevant with a quasi-psychedelic album. (Crewe wasn't involved with the songwriting, but he produced the album.) It was too strange to sell well, but it's reputation has grown over time, and it's actually a pretty good, interesting album, in my opinion. John Lennon reportedly considered it one of his favorite albums.

Overall though, the time from 1968 to 1973 was rough for both Crewe and Gaudio. It looked like both of their music careers were petering out. However, both would have great successes starting in 1974. But that will be saved for Volume 2. (The one song here from 1974, "You're Ready Now," is actually a cover of a song they first wrote and released in 1966.)

Here's links to their Wikipedia pages:

Bob Crewe - Wikipedia

Bob Gaudio - Wikipedia

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Daddy Cool (Diamonds)
02 Short Shorts (Royal Teens)
03 Tallahassee Lassie (Freddy Cannon)
04 Big Girls Don't Cry (Orlons)
05 Navy Blue (Diane Renay)
06 Big Man in Town (Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons)
07 Silhouettes (Herman's Hermits)
08 The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine [Anymore] (Walker Brothers)
09 Dawn [Go Away] (Rockin' Berries)
10 I'm Going Out [The Same Way I Came In] (Kiki Dee)
11 Sock It to Me Baby (Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels)
12 Silence Is Golden (Tremeloes)
13 [You're Gonna] Hurt Yourself (Bystanders)
14 Beggin' (Timebox)
15 Can't Take My Eyes Off You (Nancy Wilson)
16 Mrs. Stately's Garden (Four Seasons)
17 Stone Liberty (Diana Ross)
18 You're Ready Now (Guy Darrell)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/do5dtFze

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/6uSrZKGp9dqYhGe/file

There are very, very few photos of Crewe and Gaudio together, and those didn't show their faces well. So I found individual photos and put them together for the cover. The one of Gaudio (with black hair) is from 1966 while the one of Crewe (with reddish hair) is from 1959.