Mixtape - Songs that Steal the 'Be My Baby' Drum Sound # 24 The Four Seasons

Side 2 Track 10 3.01. 

' Leaving New York through the Lincoln Tunnel, you drive through the neighborhood known as Hell's Kitchen. On Tenth Avenue the kids have for many years approached stopped cars at traffic lights and wiped their windows hoping for quarters. One afternoon, in 1964, The Four Seasons' Bob Gaudio was leaving the city on his way home to New Jersey.  when he noticed that the kid smearing the glass was a girl.

' I saw her face. Just the picture of her face and the clothes, tattered...with holes in her stockings and a little cap on her head.' Gaudio told Fred Bronson, author of The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. She finished her job and stood back as Gaudio searched his pockets for change. To his mortification he had none, The smallest thing he had was a five.

'There was a split second when I said 'I can't give her a five dollar bill.' But I couldn't give her nothing. So I gave her the five dollar bill. The look on her face when I was pulling away - she didn't say 'thank you,' she just stood there with the bill in her hand and I could see her in the rearview mirror, just standing in disbelief in the middle of the street with the five dollars. And that whole image stayed with me; a rag doll was what she looked like.'

Gaudio went home and wrote a song about her. Only in the song the Rag Doll became a young woman and rather than five bucks, the singer wants to offer her his love against the wishes of his family and society. Gaudio says that he and producer Bob Crewe worked for two weeks completing the writing. Then they took the Four Seasons into a New York demo studio, their ordinary headquarters being booked by others, and worked with an engineering crew they'd never met before.

The record they came up with is prototypical Four Seasons, from its crashing drum intro to the piercing glockenspiel and tambourine accoutrements , from Frankie Valli's wild falsetto to the bel canto doo-wop harmonies. As a fantasy about love in America, it's certainly the best ever contrived at a stoplight. As a record it was one last glorious blast of Italian R&B at the top of the charts before the Brits took over for good. The week it fell from Number One it was replaced by 'A Hard Day's Night'. It was the last Number One the Four Seasons ever had.'

Dave Marsh - The Heart of Rock & Soul