by Kevin Burton
Here’s what we know about the female character from “December 1963 (Oh What a Night,” the Four Seasons’ fifth and last number one hit:
She had the ability to walk. She walked into a room. That’s all we get.
No eyes of blue, no golden hair, no perfume in the air, no long and tall, no other specifics at all are in the lyrics.
This was first-time sex from the boy’s perspective. “You know I didn’t even know her name, but I was never gonna be the same” is the male narrator’s gleeful recollection.
“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” this wasn’t.
But it was all over the radio in late 1975 into 1976. Coming on the heels of the 1975 number 3 smash “Who Loves You,” December 1963 took the quartet from New Jersey at least briefly, near their early 60s heights. December 1963 was nearing the end of its three-week reign at number one on this day 50 years ago.
I guess including the lyric, “she was everything I dreamed she’d be” and leaving it at that, allowed us adolescent boys in radioland to fill in our own details.
The song started life in a very different form, not in first sex, but in legal booze.
“According to the co-writer and longtime Four Seasons group member Bob Gaudio, the song was originally set in 1933 with the title “December 5th, 1933,” and celebrated the repeal of Prohibition,” according to SongFacts.
“Neither lead singer Frankie Valli, nor co-writer (and later, Gaudio’s wife) Judy Parker were thrilled about the lyrics (and Valli objected to parts of the melody) so Gaudio redid the melody and Parker redid the words until all were content with the finished product. It ended up being a nostalgic love song, or as Valli put it more bluntly, “it was a song about losin’ your cherry,” Songfacts wrote.
The group had to play down the sexual overtones in this song to appease conservative radio stations, according to SongFacts.
Parker wrote the lyrics from the perspective of a man recalling his first intimacy with a woman,” according to Wikipedia. “Parker sought to do this in a way that was family friendly because of the Four Seasons’ (and Parker’s own) clean reputation.”
Consider that Parker, a female, wrote this male-conquest boast song and that Gerry Goffin a male, wrote the sensitive “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” for the Shirelles, and you see how songwriters are free to see and explore how the other half lives.
“The lead singer on the first verse is Four Seasons drummer Gerri Polci – Frankie Valli comes in on the second verse.” SongFacts wrote.
The Four Seasons’ resurgence was short-lived. Fred Bronson, writing in the Billboard Book of Number One Hits, said the band had “three more singles that didn’t make the top 30” after December 1963.
True enough. But do yourself a favor and check out their 1976 song “Silver Star,” which did rise to number 38. I don’t remember hearing it on the radio and only stumbled upon it because I wrote a series of posts about songs with different colors in the title. But it’s worth a listen.
Billboard said “Silver Star” is an “infectious rocker with a disco feel,” and that it sounds, in spots, like early Who songs. Cash Box called the song “an up-tempo cut, with strong emphasis…on vocal harmony.” Record World said that it “should keep the group’s streak [of hits] alive without any difficulty.”
Well it didn’t. But the band already had one distinction in the era of the British Invasion, that nobody else could claim.
“When December 1963 (Oh What A Night) hit US number 1 in 1976, it made The Four Seasons the only artist in history to have chart toppers before (“Sherry,” “Walk Like A Man,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry”), during (“Rag Doll”)and after the Beatles.
And though the band fizzled, its sound lived on in “Uptown Girl,” “a Billy Joel hit in 1983 that sounded like it really should have been recorded by the New Jersey quartet,” Bronson wrote.
“What amazes me about that record,” Gaudio said, “it’s like everything we’ve ever done but it’s like nothing we’ve ever done.”
“That’s a tribute to him being able to accomplish the essence of the songs we were writing in those days. Yet I think he did it with a freshness….I really think he took the next step.”
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