THE DEEJAY DID IT 

Deejays could influence songwriters to change their songs around a little...just as a personal favor.  

Sherry -- The Four Seasons

Year: 1962 
Position: #1 
Label: Vee-Jay     

   "Sherry" was the first of fifteen Top 10 hits for the Four Seasons and established their trade- mark sound, Frankie Valli's unique falsetto. The group was new to most of America in 1962, but it wasn't an overnight sensation. Valli (born Francis Castellucio), for example, had been singing for ten years and had formed the nucleus of the Four Seasons seven years earlier, in 1955. It was called the Variety Trio, then the Variatones, and finally, the Four Lovers. By 1961, the new lineup was in place, taking its name from the Four Seasons bowling alley in New Jersey, where they auditioned for but didn't get, a job singing in the lounge. Their first single, "Bermuda", was released on Gone Kecords in 1961. It flopped. The group needed a hit to break through. They came up with one that was easy to write, but harder to name. 

   THE STORY: One afternoon in 1962, Bob Gaudio, who had sung with the Royal Teens before joining Frankie Valli's Four Lovers, was getting ready to go down to a Four Seasons rehearsal. Before he left, he sat down at a piano for fifteen minutes. The music for an entire song came out. He didnít have a tape recorder in those days, so he quickly wrote down some words and made up the title, "Terry", as a way of remembering the new melody. He didn't intend to keep the lyrics, but when he got to rehearsal, everybody liked them. Only the name needed to be changed. 
    At that point, the Four Season's producer was Bob Crewe,a singer-turned-songwriter/producer who worked with acts like Bobby Darin, Freddy Cannon, and Danny and the Juniors. The group called up Crewe from rehearsal and sang Gaudio's new song, "Terry", to him over the phone. Crewe was wild about the song, but the name became an issue. They almost changed it to "Peri", the name of the record label Crewe worked for (Peri was also the name of the label-owner's daughter). And they almost changed it to "Jackie" (a tie-in with Jackie Kennedy, who was at the height of her popularity). But in the end, Crewe rejected both of those ideas, and they stuck with "Terry" a little while longer. 
    One of Crewe's best friends in the music business was Jack Spector,a top-rated deejay on New York's WMCA radio. They'd known each other for years, before either was in the big time, and now in New York the two would hang out sometimes, eating hot dogs at Nathan's in Brooklyn. One day Crewe excitedly told Spector about this new group he wanted to record, and their great song, "Terry". As Spector recalled: "I said, 'Hey, dummy! Don't call it 'Terry'.  Make it 'Cheri'-that's my daughter's name.' He said, 'Oh, no problem.' It was that simple. I'm sure that if you ask him today, he may have forgotten about...why it was called 'Sherry'. But this was just an offhand remark that happened in early 1962." 
    Subsequently, Crewe left the Peri label, signed the Four Seasons to the Chicago-based VeeJay Records, and financed the recording session of what was now "Sherry." The record made its way to WMCA and was reviewed in a deejay meeting-where songs were picked for airplay. Spector had given the song its name, but he'd actually never heard it. "We listened to it," he recalls, "and everybody said, 'Oh wow, what a different sound. Listen to this guy with the falsetto, he's unreal. Who is that guy?'  Nobody knew who he was. Everybody thought they were a black group at first." 
    WMCA, whose audience was building rapidly, started playing the record, and soon the station's chief rival, WABC, picked it up as well. "Sherry" quickly broke out of New York and rose to #l in the nation, launching the career of the Four Seasons and making Jack Spector's then-three-year-old daughter a part of rock 'n' roll history.