The Soul Of Crewe - Gaudio

The solo soul vocalist appeared and flourished in the early 60’s with artists like Brook Benton, Lenny Welch, Little Anthony and others providing emotional ballads that signaled the ‘Birth Of Soul’.

With the R’n’B market so distinct and separate from the white pop market at the start of the 60s it was not the area where white song-writers and producers ventured too often. Bob Crewe was different though and he had created pop hits with black artists back in 1958 with Hal Miller and the Rays and signing the Four Seasons to the mainly black label of Vee-Jay in 1962 would provide access to black balladeers and their vocal styling.

Writing with Bob Gaudio after the phenomenal success of ‘Sherry’, ‘Big Girls’ Don’t Cry’ and ‘Walk Like A Man’ at Vee-Jay would enable them to write and produce excellent songs like, ‘Whatever You Want’ for Jerry Butler and ‘Tomorrow’, ‘King Of The Mountain’ and ‘Another Day’ (which features the Four Seasons on backing vocals) for Chuck Jackson.

Crewe would continue to produce the occasional soul track throughout the 60s.

But it was another Jackson who was to sing two of the best songs by this classic song-writing team. Mike ‘Doo-Wop Daddy’ Miller takes up the story………..

“Jerry Jackson was a very accomplished black singer who really never had the one big hit, although a number of his recordings should have hit the top 20. "Wide Awake In A Dream" is one of the most beautiful songs that Crewe & Gaudio ever wrote together, and one of the most obscure. This late 1962 single may have suffered from poor promotion or was just a little ahead of it's time, but I sure would have loved to see this as a 4 Seasons release in 1963. Of course it would not have featured the wonderful falsetto vocals that the group was working on at this time, but the material deserved a better showing than it got. This particular song is so good, I could almost see a re-release by someone today.

One of 4 songs recorded by Jerry Jackson in October of 1962 these were a huge surprise for most 4 Seasons collectors just a few years ago. Bob Crewe & Bob Gaudio wrote the four songs, "Wide Awake In A Dream", "Turn Back", Gypsy Eyes", and "She Lied" in 1961 and / or 1962. Originally, "Turn Back" was recorded in 1961 for the Diamond records label by Kevin McQuinn in another Crewe production. It is another superb song

It is hard to tell if The 4 Seasons are on any of these recordings or not. I personally do not hear them clearly, but the liner notes on the Bear Jerry Jackson set  say that Crewe produced the tracks, and it lists The Four Seasons as being in attendance at the recordings.They could have been, or some of them could be on the recordings,but it's just odd that you can't pick out their voices very well. The recordings do NOT list Charlie Calello as the arranger. We have in conversations, confirmed that on some of these older recordings, Bob Gaudio and Charlie Calello actually acted as the producers, but there is no label credit given. They would actually be in the booth doing what the producer usually does. Bob Crewe was a very busy guy, and you can see how he might say, “you just finish this up, you know what I want, what sound I am looking for”.
In an interview, Charlie Calello says that the very first record that he worked on with Crewe was "Ev'ry Step Of The Way" by Kevin McQuinn on Diamond records in late ( September- October) 1961. Charlie said that it was him, Bob Gaudio, and Frankie Valli in the recording booth. Calello said that he never even met McQuinn ( Eddie Quinn ), as they laid down the track, and they left it with  Crewe who then added the vocal parts with Quinn later.”

And as for the question of whether or not Jerry Jackson does a superb version of ‘Turn Back’?

Check out the songs in the player.

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