Sherry & 11 Others (Vee Jay, 1962)

[John]

This is the first in a series of reviews of the albums release by The Four Seasons. Hot on the heels of the success of "Sherry" (2 million sales in 8 weeks) an album hit the stores in the USA and shortly afterwards in the UK and elsewhere. This selection of 12 songs is a curious mixture, consisting of some songs from the "Sherry" session and some recorded before the success as The Four Seasons. So we have new material (Sherry, Big Girls Don't Cry), material issued previously under other names (Lost Lullabye as Billy Dixon and the Topics on the Topix label), remakes of previous hits (Apple of My Eye, The Girl In My Dreams were a single with moderate chart success as The Four Lovers in 1956), Frankie's "party piece" (I Can't Give You Anything But Love, his imitation of Rose Murphy, the Chi-Chi Girl - "I can't give you anything but brr brr doop dap a deebah...") and a few filler tracks. The recordings are mostly in proper stereo and are recorded to a very high standard. When I spoke to Bob Gaudio in the 1970s he agreed that they stood up very well even today and had been recorded to a standard that was far in excess of what was needed at the time. Fortunately indeed. The performances are very tight. This may be a debut album, but they had been recording and performing for some 10 years before this so they were not beginners. In fact, The Four Seasons played and sang on many recordings by others before they found their own success. Musically the album is a little extreme in some respects, with Frankie's falsetto storming across the music. Very much toned down from The Four Lovers days though and by this time both his lower range and the falsetto had matured into fine musical instruments. I'm not sure how a modern audience would react to some of the more extreme items, but they do tend to like the hits. I like the album but realise it may be an acquired taste.