With career sales of more than 175 million records and their long-term membership in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons have inspired fans and enlightened the music world for more than 60 years.
For the first time ever, Madfish/Snapper Music presents the complete music of one of America's greatest musical exports. A group who sang about the everyday tragedies and victories that they shared with their audience. A group of thee people, for the people.
Rhythm and blues was barely even pregnant with rock 'n' roll when a Jersey boy named Francesco Stephen Castelluccio — aka Frankie Valli — took his first teenage steps in music.
Working Our Way Back to You chronicles his every stride through a career of 195 singles and 31 studio albums across 44 audio CDs and 1 LP (the latter a stunning multi-foldout reproduction of the original US packaging of The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette vinyl album, in its original mono mix, available here for the first time ever).
The package includes an extraordinary assemblage of unreleased treats (demos/alternate takes), rare treasures (vintage live recordings) and long-unavailable mixes, including much sought after tracks the group cut for Motown. The box set also includes a 144-page hardback book, a separate singles book showing a multitude of picture sleeves from around the world, and a book of Collectors notes (the latter penned by Four Seasons Appreciation Society's Ken Charmer).
The hardback book, authored by lifelong Four Seasons fan Paul Sexton(presenter and producer of BBC Radio 2's four-part series "Jerseybeat: The Four Seasons Story" in 2008) follows the group's story from humble New Jersey beginnings to the opening of the award-winning Jersey Boys musical on Broadway. Also included are more than 50,000 words of interviews by New York Times Best Selling author Ken Sharp with Four Seasons members Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito, Joe Long, Lee Shapiro and John Paiva, producer/collaborator Bob Crewe, arranger Charles Calello, key songwriters and session players.
The full list of contents is as follows:
- 44 audio CDs documenting a career from 1961 to 2016 featuring 31 newly-remastered studio albums and all of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' worldwide singles
- More than 800 tracks including bonus live albums, demos, outtakes, B-sides and more
- A replica triple foldout US-only sleeve issue of The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette LP (available for the first time ever on mono vinyl)
- A lavish hardback coffee table book that tells the full story of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons by long-time Seasons expert Paul Sexton, including extensive interviews conducted by New York Times Best Selling author Ken Sharp and written contributions from Brian Wilson, Barry & Maurice Gibb, and Billy Joel
- A portfolio chronicling single & EP sleeves from around the world, including chart placings
- A Collectors Note Book from Four Seasons Archivist Ken Charmer
- Compiled with the full cooperation and support of Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio
Music fans can get more information and pre-order this stunning box HERE.
Praise for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons:
“I thought they were fantastic. The voice blend was fantastic. The competition helped me to get cracking. It inspired me.” -Brian Wilson
“I've always loved Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. Everything they did made an intense impression on me from ‘Rag Doll’ to ‘Big Girls Don't Cry’ to ‘Walk Like A Man’ to ‘Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You.’ At the time of The Beatles, Frankie Valli's voice reigned as the voice you would hear when you fell in love.”-Barry Gibb
“Frankie Valli is a fantastic singer. He was doing falsetto long before any of us were doing it. It was just another way of using another instrument for your songs.”-Maurice Gibb
“To me in a way they were the Beatles before there was a Beatles. They wrote their own stuff. They sang their own stuff and they played their own instruments. This was an incredibly huge band of my youth. There were a lot of life lessons in their music.”-Billy Joel
“They made some of the greatest records ever. They were the biggest productions right there with Phil Spector and Motown.”- Stevie Van Zandt
Robert Kinsler
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