Frankie Valli

Valli has been the lead singer from then until the present time. Pal Whiteman died at the age of 77 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Nick DeVito and Majewski left the group in 1960 or 1961 and were replaced by Bob Gaudio and Nick Massi. As the lead singer of the Four Seasons, he had a string of hits beginning with a #1 hit "Sherry" in 1962. After he disbanded his Orchestra, in the 1940s and 1950s Whiteman worked as a music director for the ABC Radio Network. About the same time, Valli Italianized his name to its current form. In 1931, Whiteman married motion picture actress Margaret Livingston. After a few name changes afterwards, the group was renamed "The Four Seasons" in 1960. Bing Crosby got his start singing with the Whiteman Orchestra.

They redubbed themselves "The Four Lovers" and had a top 40 hit with "Apple of My Eye" in 1956. While Whiteman gave them very limited chances to improvise, he paid them top salaries and encouraged them to make small band jam recordings on the side. In the mid-1950s he split up with the Travellers and joined The Variety Trio, which consisted of Tommy DeVito, twin brother Nick, and Hank Majewski. Whiteman appreciated jazz musicians and hired many of the best white jazz men for his band, including Bix Beiderbecke, Frankie Trumbauer, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Steve Brown, Gussie Mueller, Jack Teagarden, and Bunny Berigan. He cut his first single in 1953 at 16 with The Travellers, as "Frankie Valley & the Travellers", or according to other sources, as a solo career as "Frankie Valley". Whiteman commissioned George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue, which was premiered by Whiteman's Orchestra with Gershwin at the piano in 1924. Valli started his singing career in 1952. Whiteman claimed that he was "making a lady out of jazz".

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with The Four Seasons in 1990. While it is easy to sneer at Whiteman in retrospect, his notions were critically popular and commercially successful at the time, and Whiteman's music was often the first jazz of any form that some people heard. Valli Scored over 25 top-40 hits with The Four Seasons, a handful of top-40 hits dubbed as a solo act in the late 1960s, one dubbed as The Wonder Who? in 1965, and again in the mid to late 1970s. While today most fans of jazz consider improvisation to be essential to the musical style, Whiteman thought it sloppy and uncouth, and thought the music could be improved by eliminating it, except occasionally in elaborate arrangements. Frankie Valli (born May 3, 1937 in the Italian First Ward of Newark, New Jersey as Francis Stephen Castelluccio) is best known as lead singer of The Four Seasons, one of the biggest music acts of the 1960s, which continued from then to the 1970s disco scene to the present day. Others reject thses notions, and regard Whiteman's music as an interesting development in jazz history. In the late 1920s and early 1930s Whiteman billed himself as The King of Jazz (see: Jazz royalty), though much of what his band played hasn't been considered "true" jazz by later generations.

In the late 1920s he recorded for Columbia Records. Whiteman's became the most popular band leader of the decade. In 1920 he moved his band to New York City where they started making recordings for Victor Records which propelled Whiteman and his band to national prominence. He started out as a classical violinist and violist, then started leading a jazz-influenced dance band which became locally popular in San Francisco, California in 1918.

Whiteman was born in Denver, Colorado. Paul Whiteman (March 28, 1890 - December 29, 1967) was a popular United States orchestral leader.