What We Know Still Exists: The Unreleased Recordings of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons

 Why this list?

The 2023 box set brought well over 150 previously unreleased recordings to fans. But it did not bring everything. By the time the track list was settled, at least 30 more unreleased recordings had been identified, on the 1970 Philips 16-track tapes, in the Universal Motown vault and among the Warner Bros Tapes from 1979, but budget and time did not allow them to be researched further. Some recordings were found and left off; some are known to sit in vaults; some are in fans’ hands. This post sets out, as plainly as we can, what we know still exists and what we have in summary. It is not a complaint. It is a record, so that the music is not forgotten and so that whoever looks after the catalogue in future knows where to look.

Found for the box set, but not on it

• “Deep In Your Love”. One of three songs completed at a session in September 1982, and first written around 1979. It was on our list for the box set but was lost in Snapper’s administration of the project. Its companion “Testin’ The Water” was included, and “Gypsy Woman” from the same session had been released on a Curb compilation in the late 1980s. All three can be heard from the master tape on my YouTube channel.

• “I’ve Cried Before” in stereo. A group stereo version was on our list for the box set but did not appear. A new, time-corrected stereo version was completed in October 2026. The original effort by me was rejected but with the help of AI, the fully synced version represents the only ‘true’ stereo version of the single.It can be heard here in my mega storage and downloaded. 

• The instrumentals of “Beggin’” and “I’m Gonna Change”. An extended stereo instrumental mix of “Beggin’” (3:25) and a stereo instrumental backing track of “I’m Gonna Change”, transferred from acetates in the Partnership’s storage in April 2021 and rated essential in our review. Both are superb Northern Soul tracks, and both were left off. I have Re-Mastered both in digitally extracted stereo. “Beggin’” is here on my You Tube channel. “I’m Gonna Change” is in my MEGA storage and can be heard and downloaded here.

• “With My Eyes Wide Open”, original mix. The ninth of the Motown-era alternate mixes found in the Partnership’s storage. It was meant to join the other eight on the box set’s Motown disc but did not make it. It can be heard on my YouTube channel.

• Four unique single mixes. Our January 2020 check of every Philips single found these versions differ from the album tracks, and they were recommended for the box set’s bonus tracks: “Ronnie” (Philips 40185), “Lay Me Down (Wake Me Up)” and “Heartaches And Raindrops” (Philips 40688, credited to Bob Crewe Presents), and the DJ edit of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” (Philips DJ-10). None made the box set, and none has had an official digital release. We hold copies of all four. The “Ronnie” single is close to the album’s mono version, and the albums only carry it in fake stereo, so it was left out by agreement; a new stereo version made with AI separation can be heard on my YouTube channel. It is taken from a 1bit extraction of the audio signal by sound engineer Stefan Wriedt yielding a very high-resolution digital representation of the source, though the sonic ceiling is ultimately bound by the 1960s source material itself rather than the digital capture format. No multi-track version exists so this maybe the best available today. Tell me if you hear better.

• The Warner tracks. Warner Bros’ own master cards list recordings that were never released:

“Stagger Lee” — Frankie Valli, master WCA-008285, recorded at Cherokee Studios, Los Angeles, 11 September 1978: his cover of Lloyd Price’s 1959 number one.

“Can’t Be Too Much Music” — Frankie Valli, master XCA-008617, Sunset Sound, 20 February 1979.

“Soul” (live) — Frankie Valli, master YNJ-000075, recorded live at the Garden State Arts Center on 11 July 1980. A Warner legal memo of 15 May 1981 marks it “do not use”, saying Warner had no legal rights to the tape, which was to be returned to Curb. No one we know has heard it.

• There are lots of alternate mixes/takes’ from both the late 1960s tapes and the 1970s too in our digital archive.

Still On tape but currently ‘lost’ in the Partnership’s storage

• The missing A&R reel, box 273. An A&R Recording tape box, typed “Frankie Vallie”, lists six songs from around 1969–70: “To My Father” (To Make My Father Proud), “A Face w/o A Name”, “Natural Making” (Natural Morning), “Alone Again”, “You Got Your Trouble” and “I Was A Boy”. When the box was opened it held a different reel: damaged mono session mixes from the Timeless album, which we salvaged for the box set. The reel the box described is missing. It may have been taken, or it may sit unrecognised in another unmarked box. On it would be the original session takes of “A Face Without A Name” and “Natural Morning”, and two songs never released:

“I Was A Boy” — so typed on the box; logged by Philips as “I Was A Baby”, master 42863. The box typist was loose with titles, so only the tape will settle which is right.

“Alone Again” — written by Artie Schroeck, who we believe also arranged the session.

The “Natural (Making!!) really ...Morning” on the tape would have still been lost but for the help of Artie Schroeck. The box set version came from a copy Artie Schroeck made from the session tape for himself, which he sent to me after I interviewed him; I mastered it and joined its two parts together. The ‘lost’ session reel itself would be the original source.

• The Reunited Live recordings. Reunited Live was recorded over three nights at the Garden State Arts Center, New Jersey, in July 1980, then edited in the studio by Charles Calello and Bob Gaudio and mixed at Cherokee Studios in November 1980. The Partnership’s storage holds four finished stereo master reels (FSP 0907 to 0910, Cherokee file 4415), which between them carry the whole album and nothing more. Their take numbers show that other performances existed, but the original concert multi-tracks, and any songs left off the album, are not there. Bill Inglot also scanned a tape of out-takes from these shows, which was never checked for the box set.

Warner Bros logged the concert songs on its own master cards. One survives in our papers: “Soul” (live), master YNJ-000075, 11 July 1980, job order 029001. The neighbouring cards in that series should list every song recorded over the three nights. A request to Warner (now Rhino) for master cards YNJ-000060 to YNJ-000100 would show exactly what was taped, and three of the Cherokee boxes carry Warner tape library numbers (TML 6858, 8902 and 9257) that would help locate the reels.

• The 1982 sessions. UK fans heard at the time that eight tracks had been laid down in April 1982 for a new album. The research for the box set found a rehearsal session tape, with only one incomplete song featuring Frankie’s voice (“You’re Never Too Old To Rock And Roll”), and the three songs completed that September shown above. Whether anything more was recorded is still an open question.

• Hundreds of five-inch reels, many unmarked and thought to be mostly 1970s demos submitted to Bob Gaudio, which have never all been played. An unmarked reel could come from any decade. Before anyone plays these reels, they should be identified, dated and checked by an engineer; much tape from the 1970s needs treatment before it can safely be played even once.

In the Universal Motown vault

In January 2019 Universal’s Vault Services confirmed 19 Four Seasons and Frankie Valli titles from the Motown years with a vocal on tape, and listed 11 more to be checked. Thirteen Motown titles were approved and released on the box set. Several others remain in the vault, among them a Frankie Valli version of “Chained”. Of 35 identified titles we have a clear indication that at least 15 good tracks have been found by Motown’s Vault Services. 

“We Had It All (Walking In The Sunshine)”. This title turns up three times: as an unreleased track in the Motown-era tape listings; as a backing track on a Who Loves You session tape of 1975, on which the group sing the sub-title, “Walking in the sunshine”; and on a Warner Bros master card for The Four Seasons (master BB-005168), received by Warner on 7 August 1975. It is not the better-known “We Had It All” by Troy Seals and Donnie Fritts, whose lyric has no such line, so it appears to be an original song carried over from the Motown years. Lee Shapiro, the group’s musical director at the time, is sure there was a vocal. Only Bob Gaudio could have registered the master with Warner, and we believe he would only have done so with a vocal on it. So a finished vocal recording may well exist, most likely in Warner’s tape library. It was given the Master Number 60769 at Motown indicating that production mixes were made and may be on either Tapes P2110 or P2111 which was the Bob Gaudio session output.

The vault also holds the ‘full’ session tapes behind the released Motown tracks, with alternate versions and mixes. There could be dozens on the 16 track tapes, according to the late Keith Hughes (Motown Tape researcher). In 2020 we proposed a follow-on set,“The Motown Sessions”, built from those tapes, and the idea still stands. Fans want to see what experimentation was tried to arrive at the final mixes, and the Beach Boys research by Mark Linett has shown how much dedicated fans will pay for such an ‘experience’.

In other archives

• Sigma Sound, Philadelphia. The Lost Disco Album sessions were recorded at Sigma Sound in 1979, produced by Bob Crewe after the group had left Warner Bros. Sigma’s tape collection is now held by Drexel University and may include session reels and mixes from those dates beyond what the Partnership holds. An enquiry has not yet brought a positive reply.

• Universal’s Philips and Mercury library, where a mono master of “One Man” turned up in 1997. Whilst Bill Inglot has maintained a good search of the Mercury tapes was done back in the late 1980s, the fact that a clearly marked “Four Seasons – MONO MASTER’ tape can was found leaves the question of the need for further searches ‘open’.

In fans’ hands

Our own collections hold live recordings that were not available for the box set, and Frankie and The Four Seasons’ appearances on The Mike Douglas Show in 1969 and 1975, supplied by Bruno Gargano, which can be seen on my YouTube channel. Everything we were sent in digital form during the box set research is preserved in our digital library.

Our own archive also holds about forty unreleased or alternate recordings, left over from the box set research or reviewed since its release: complete tracks, demos, instrumentals, alternate takes, live sets and television performances. Among them are Frankie’s “The River Runs Deep”, a Charles Calello production; “Make Your Tomorrow Tonight” from a Motown acetate; extended alternate mixes from Bob Crewe acetates of “Hickory” and “Charisma”; two takes of “Down The Hall” and take 8 of “Dream Of Kings”; early demos of the unfinished “Poor Fool” and “A New Beginning”; a 1975 live set; and nine songs from three Midnight Special television shows courtesy of the late Johnny Hornsby. However Burt Sugarman’s shows are being released gradually on You Tube in ‘quality’ stereo but it is hard to collect the Valli/Seasons performances in isolation. They are not ours to release, but they are safe copies, documented, and available to the Partnership for any future collection.

What would bring them out

Every recording on this list belongs to someone, and only the owners can release it. For the vault recordings a search has to be requested by the rights holder. That is why, wherever the paperwork allows, this list gives the details that a future search needs: master and tape numbers, studios, dates, job orders and storage references. We have gathered the relevant data where it is available, so that the Partnership can ask the record companies to conduct a search. We will keep the list up to date and keep offering what we know, and if a new single of “I’d Rather Leave While I’m In Love” does appear, it will show that the search is still worth making.

If the Partnership would invest and employ the resources to search then we would help and share what we have documented and saved.

If you know of a recording that belongs on this list, please get in touch at mowestchameleon@gmail.com or through the Historical Society’s Facebook group.

The Four Seasons 60s Tapes: What Survives, What We Have Made of It, and Where to Look Next

The question every fan asks

Why are there no new mixes of the 1960s hits? Where are the multi-track tapes? And are the masters we hear today the best that exist?

The short answer is that no multi-track session tapes from the 1960s were ever handed to The Four Seasons Partnership. What the Partnership holds are finished master tapes and copies of them, of varying age and quality. From those it has built the library of digital masters that Rhino uses today on the Partnership’s behalf.

That is not a story of neglect by one company. It is a story the whole record industry shares, and it is worth telling simply: what happened to the tapes, what has been achieved with what survived, and where there might still be something to find.

A problem the whole industry shared

In July 1997 Billboard published Bill Holland’s award-winning report on the state of the record companies’ vaults, “Labels Strive to Rectify Past Archival Problems”. After talking to more than seventy people who knew the vaults, he concluded that untold numbers of recordings had been “thrown away, mislaid, left behind in warehouses, and even sold for scrap”. Several of his findings bear directly on The Four Seasons.

• Multi-tracks were routinely not kept. Holland’s sources named RCA, Capitol, ABC, Mercury-Smash and Philips-Mercury as labels with policies “throughout the ’60s and ’70s of reusing, scrapping or not storing multitrack session tapes, and just keeping mixed masters”. Philips was The Four Seasons’ own label.
• One copy was thought to be enough. Before the CD, nobody expected old recordings to earn again. “If they kept one copy, any kind of copy, then they figured they were cool.”
• Studios closed, and tapes went with them. Labels often left session tapes, and even masters, at the studios. Holland names Bell Sound and the Record Plant among the New York studios whose closure “added to the lore of lost tape stories”. When the Record Plant’s tapes were offered back to the labels for little more than the storage fees, few replied, and the unclaimed reels “went into the dumpster”. Both studios played a part in our story.
• Labels that changed hands lost the most. Small labels of the ’50s and ’60s that sold singles to teenagers, and were then bought, sold and moved from city to city, lost more than anyone. Vee-Jay, which went bankrupt in 1966, fits that description exactly. Its story, and how The Four Seasons’ Vee-Jay masters came back to the group, is told in the introduction to our Discography.

Tape itself is not safe either. A later report for the Library of Congress described how analogue tape sheds, sticks and breaks down with age, and how the machines and the people who can play it are becoming scarce. As one engineer put it, “The pool of expertise is shrinking every day.”

So when we look at what survives of The Four Seasons’ 1960s recordings, we are looking at what survived an industry that, for twenty years, did not think it mattered.

Motown: the exception that proves the rule

Not every label lost its past. Holland singled out Motown as a company that had kept “most of the masters and most of the multitrack reels”: around 30,000 tapes, with backup copies of nearly everything, through four owners and three cities. You can hear what that care made possible on A Cellarful of Motown!, the series of double CDs compiled by our friend Paul Nixon. Across five volumes, from 2002 to 2020, Paul brought out more than 200 recordings from the 1960s that had never been issued. A few came from Northern Soul collectors; many came through Andy Skurow at Universal’s Vault Services and the late Keith Hughes, who also researched unreleased material for Ace Records’ artist box sets. A good number were found on tapes in Universal’s Motown vault, now held at Iron Mountain, often on reels that were unmarked or in boxes with the wrong label.

Keeping tapes is one thing; knowing what is on them is another. Even Motown’s computerised tape index was typed up by interns copying whatever was written on the tape boxes. It is well known among Motown collectors, and Harry Weinger himself has admitted it, that you never really know what is on a Motown tape until you play it. In his own words:

“It’s not like taking the tape off the shelf, and just digitizing it… Is it the right tape? Is it mastered properly? Is it the right version?”

That has been the cornerstone of our own Motown tape research. One Four Seasons example shows why: a tape box marked “No Vocal — Assigned to The Commodores” turned out to hold a finished Frankie Valli vocal of “What Love Has Joined Together”.

The same care benefited The Four Seasons. When the Snapper box set was researched, the group’s Motown-era tapes from 1971 to 1975 were found at Iron Mountain, the storage company that now holds much of the industry’s past. Thirteen unreleased masters were cleared and issued for the first time, together with eight alternate mixes found in the Partnership’s own storage in Los Angeles, which Snapper chose to include when approval for further unreleased tracks could not be obtained.

The earlier years tell a different story. For the Vee-Jay and Philips recordings of 1961 to 1971 the session tapes were largely not kept, and the music survives mainly on mixed masters and copies. You can see the difference on our website. The Master Sessions pages for 1953 to 1971 can name each recording session and master number, but they can rarely point to a surviving session tape. The MoWest/Motown Session & Tape Trail can follow individual songs from session tape to storage copy, and sometimes on to a different artist’s record.

What the Partnership holds

In 1973 the Partnership won ownership of the Philips masters, and it has licensed them ever since. The research for the 2023 Snapper box set gave us a clear picture of what its own storage holds.

• The Vee-Jay recordings: ten delivery reels, five mono and five stereo, made at Bell Sound in September 1966 when the masters came back from the bankrupt label. They are copies of the finished masters, not session tapes, but they play well.
• The Philips albums: a mixture of masters, safety copies and file copies. A box marked “Original” cannot always be taken at its word.
• The Philips singles: reels headed “Orig Masters”, with a good part of the singles catalogue missing from them.
• Session tapes: almost none. In the words of the engineer who searched the storage, nearly everything there was safety copies.

That is the raw material. It is less than any of us would like, but it is not nothing, and a great deal has been made of it.

What has been achieved

Between 1987 and 1991 Bill Inglot transferred the known masters to digital for Rhino’s CD programme. Those transfers, and the work since, give the Partnership a library of digital masters drawn from the best tapes it holds. That library is what Rhino uses today on the Partnership’s behalf.

The Snapper box set, Working Our Way Back To You, released in June 2023 on 44 discs, took the work further. For every track we identified a named tape source, and where there was a choice we chose the best. For the Vee-Jay years that meant the 1966 delivery reels, chosen because they played best and measured best in their raw digital transfers. In doing so the researchers did exactly what Holland called “vault detective” work, only as fans rather than employees.

In 2011 we were impatient. The Partnership had said the unreleased tracks did not exist, but the paper records we had recovered showed they did, so back then our research was a campaign. The box set showed what was possible. Between us, the fan group researchers gave the Partnership more than 50 unreleased tracks for the set, and many came from outside the vaults altogether:

• cassette copies, such as “I Wonder Why”;
• lost vinyl pressings;
• demo acetates;
• recordings of live shows;
• television appearances with unique performances of songs never recorded in a studio.

In detail the figures speak for themselves. Of the box set’s 814 or so tracks, 271 (a third) were bonus tracks beyond the original albums, and 60 of those were alternative or unique single mixes. 129 previously unreleased tracks came from the Partnership’s and Universal Motown’s storage, and a further 82 were contributed by the UK Appreciation Society and its network of collectors. It took three years and, on my part alone, more than 2,000 hours, with Bob Fisher’s help day to day.

Not everything we found went in. On the small reels in the Partnership’s storage there were early studio development mixes of perhaps a dozen of the Motown-era songs, two unfinished Motown tracks, and one Frankie Valli vocal sung in a different key. We judged none of them good enough to release. In the final transfers we also turned down duplicates of versions already chosen and a demo that turned out not to be Frankie or the group at all. Deciding what to leave out was as much a part of the job as finding things, and it is the same judgement any artist makes about his own unfinished work.

Together we achieved something unique, and fans finally got to hear wonderful performances by Frankie and The Four Seasons, and by Frankie on his own. Everything we were sent in digital form during that research has been preserved in our own digital library, alongside the salvaged tape copies.

What collectors should know

Good tapes do not guarantee a good-sounding release. After the box set came out I measured the finished discs with a DR Meter, which shows how much of the music’s natural light and shade survives. Most of the first thirteen or so discs, up to and including New Gold Hits, scored lower than earlier CD reissues of the same recordings. They were just a little too ‘compressed and un-necessarily loud.

The tapes were not the cause. The Vee-Jay delivery reels chosen for the first five discs measured well in their raw transfers. Our belief is that extra compression was added at the mastering stage, and the finished discs were not checked against the sources before release, or with me as the set’s Master Track Adviser.

This is not a complaint about the original records. Bob Crewe mixed his mono singles with drive and density for radio, yet most of them still measure around DR9 to DR10; “Let’s Hang On” is a DR10 and “Ronnie”, on Edizione D’Oro, a DR10, and we kept our own transfers as close to the 45s as we could. The trouble is tracks squeezed well below that for no good reason, by poor transfers, worn tape or careless mastering. On the box set’s New Gold Hits disc, “Let’s Ride Again” measures DR6 and “Beggin’” DR7, [way too much compression] whereas the Ace CD of the same album gives DR10 to DR12 in stereo; the mono tape box in the Partnership storage itself was marked as ‘not suitable for mastering’. The same box set however also shows it need not have been so: its disc of 1966 to 1971 rarities, drawn from a mixed bag of tapes and years, measures between DR8 and DR12, DR10 overall. Around DR10 to DR12 is comfortable listening and leaves the volume to you. At DR6 or DR7, long listening becomes tiring. Our measurements and test records for every comparison disc are on file.

So for the 1960s recordings, the best-sounding versions are often still the CDs of the 1990s from Rhino, Ace and Collectors’ Choice. If you are building a collection, those are the discs to look for.

It is fair to add that the end of the project was a disappointment. After Bob Fisher died, decisions about the content were made without consultation. The superb instrumental versions of “Beggin’” and “I’m Gonna Change”, both great Northern Soul tracks, were left off, along with a few others we had found. No explanation was ever obtained from the Partnership as to why most of the unreleased Motown recordings were judged below the quality required. These were Snapper’s and Bob Gaudio’s decisions to make, since it was their investment. But the set could and should have had more, and that is why this blog, and the list that goes with it, exist.

When the set was being finished in 2022, I told Snapper I would be open with fans about its shortcomings, so that they could decide for themselves. This is me keeping that promise.

Where tapes could still be

We cannot say what survives beyond what we have seen. But there are places still worth checking, and each has a reason behind it.

• Universal’s vaults. The Philips and Mercury library moved from Chicago to New Jersey and now sits with Universal’s holdings at Iron Mountain. In 1997 a mono master of the unreleased song “One Man” turned up in that library, so not everything came back to the Partnership. Any request to search has to come from the Partnership itself.
• Copies sent abroad. Masters were copied and shipped to overseas companies for local releases. As Harry Weinger said, “If you’re shipping a master to Europe, it may be in a vault – but you can’t always find it.”
• What the studios left behind. Bell Sound traded until 1976 and the Record Plant until much later. Holland’s report shows that tapes left at closing studios were sometimes rescued by engineers and collectors rather than thrown away.
• Whoever holds the old Vee-Jay vault today. Vee-Jay’s own copies, and any three-track tapes it held, were never traced after 1966.
• The private collections of producers and engineers. Bob Crewe’s archive, as far as we know, holds his own productions for his own labels, but there could be more…...and that has never been confirmed.
• The Partnership’s own storage. There are hundreds of five-inch reels there, and many are unmarked. Bill Inglot, who searched the storage for the box set, told us he had already done “a pretty thorough search” of them: the vast majority were demos submitted to Bob Gaudio rather than Four Seasons recordings, mostly from the 1970s onwards, and in his view “it would not yield much… if anything.” He may well be right. But the same storage had surprised him and us before. A tape box from A&R Recording, typed with six Frankie Valli songs including the unreleased “I Was A Boy”, turned out to hold a different reel altogether: damaged mono session mixes from the Timeless album, which we salvaged for the box set. The reel the box describes has never been found. If one box can hold the wrong tape, others can too. And that tape with the lost unreleased tracks will probably be there[in and unmarked box?? After all original tapes newly found there in April 2021 gave the box set a 1966 demo of “Beggin’” by Peggy Farina and Bob Gaudio, identified by a handwritten note, and an unheard demo by Frankie Valli, “What Would I Do”. Until every reel is played, nobody can be certain, and playing them all takes a budget the box set never had.
• Fans’ collections. Cassettes, acetates, off-air recordings and live tapes have already given us some of the box set’s best moments. Holland heard the same from the industry: “There are people all over who have tapes that were thrown out in the trash… just holding on to them.”

The search goes on

Not everything we found made it into the box set. Our own collections still hold live recordings that were not available at the time, and Frankie and The Four Seasons’ appearances on The Mike Douglas Show in 1969 and 1975, kindly supplied by Bruno Gargano, can be seen on my YouTube channel. Click any title in the menu below to watch. The search is not only about finding lost tapes. It is also about getting what has been found heard.

Watch: Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons on The Mike Douglas Show, 1969 and 1975

No.	Show date	Performance (click to watch)	Notes
1	24 Nov 1969	Sherry Medley	First set; no new material during the Philips dispute
2	24 Nov 1969	(You’re Gonna) Hurt Yourself	Second set; an alternative live version
3	Mon 1 Sept 1975	Opening show	Two music sets and an interview
4	Mon 1 Sept 1975	All In Love Is Fair / The Way We Were	Stereo DVD transfer
5	Tue 2 Sept 1975	Medley	Full line-up before Joe Long left
6	Tue 2 Sept 1975	Love Theme	Isolated from the broadcast by John Paiva
7	Wed 3 Sept 1975	Part 1	Two songs plus interview
8	Wed 3 Sept 1975	Part 2: I Left My Heart In San Francisco	The only known performance
9	Thu 4 Sept 1975	Part 1: Stay / Silence Is Golden	With interview; arrangements by Lee Shapiro
10	Thu 4 Sept 1975	Part 2: Sherry Medley	The 1975 version
11	Fri 5 Sept 1975	Working My Way Back To You	Penultimate performance of the week
12	Fri 5 Sept 1975	My Eyes Adored You	Final performance of the residency
13	Sept 1975	Who Loves You	Day not stated; one of Joe Long’s last performances

For the recordings we know of, we have gathered the relevant data, where it is available, to enable the Partnership to ask the record companies to conduct a search. The companion list sets it out.

Today we are more relaxed Music Detectives. We follow the trail wherever we see a possible find, because we know what can be found.

If you worked with these tapes, or hold recordings of your own, please get in touch at mowestchameleon@gmail.com or through the Historical Society’s Facebook group. We are always hunting for more.

Postscript: a song that may be about to surface

As this was being written, Robby Robinson announced on his online show, Jam’n’Java, that he and Frankie had finished recording a new record, to be released soon. We understand the song is “I’d Rather Leave While I’m In Love”. At the time of writing, two weeks on, there has been no further news.

The song has a history. Charles Calello recalled that it was planned for the Lady Put The Light Out album in 1977, but the arrangement was left with the copyist and lost. It was still missing when the Reunited Live concerts were recorded in 1980, which is why the song is not among those recordings. When the arrangement turned up later, Frankie sang the song often in concert, yet as far as we know he never recorded it in a studio. The only copy we have found is an audience recording in poor quality.

Any good-quality recording is most likely to be one of Robby’s own tapes of a live show. Whether the new record comes from such a tape or is a fresh recording, we will have to wait and hear. Either way, it would be a song fans have waited almost fifty years for.

A companion post, “What We Know Still Exists”, lists the recordings we know survive but that have still not been released.

Sources

Bill Holland, “Labels Strive to Rectify Past Archival Problems”, Billboard, 11 and 17 July 1997 (archived at chezmarianne.com/bholland/words/vault.html).

Paul Kingsbury, “The Preservation Challenge: Changing Technologies for Recorded Sound”, in Capturing Analog Sound for Digital Preservation, CLIR pub. 137 (clir.org/pubs/reports/pub137/part1/).

Harry Weinger, interview in The Second City, as quoted in Timepieces, “Motown Unreleased — 37 Years of Myths and Mis-information, Part 2” (2011).

A Cellarful of Motown!, Volumes 1 to 5 (Motown, 2002 to 2010; Caroline International, 2020).

Working Our Way Back To You, 44-disc box set (Snapper Music, June 2023), and our tape source list for it (final version, September 2022).

THE FOUR SEASONS HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Our New Site Is Live: Welcome to The Four Seasons Historical Society

I never thought I would manage to update the Four Seasons UK Appreciation Society site at www.seasonally.co.uk. The design was old and the software it was built with is no longer available. Then, in a discussion with my son Mark, he explained how Claude, an AI assistant, might be able to help.

After some ‘chatting’ with Claude it became clear what was possible. I said I wanted to do this with our existing team, as we still have a lot to add and update, and we agreed to give it a try. And with Frankie, now 92, having stepped back from touring this year, we felt the time was right for a change of name as well. We are now The Four Seasons Historical Society.

How Claude helped

Since 1997 the old site had grown into a mixture of Word ‘web pages’, PDFs and scanned images, much of which could no longer be edited. I sent Claude the old pages and our documents one section at a time. It read them, suggested how each could be laid out, and built new pages in one common design, which I then checked, corrected and passed round the team for comment. Lists that used to be pictures or typed columns are now proper text that you can read and search. Claude also proofread as we went, queried anything that did not add up, and flagged gaps to us rather than guessing. The research, the words and the decisions are all still ours.

What you will find on the new site

Philosophy & Aims. A new page, reached from a button on the home page, on why we keep doing this and how we approach the search.

Origins & About Us. The Society’s people and the story of how we got here, from the 1970s fan club to the new Historical Society, with photos from our tour meet-ups and get-togethers.

The Roll of Honour. The group’s members over the years, up to circa 1995. The old ‘Rock Family Tree’ was a single scanned picture that could not be searched or corrected. It has been rebuilt as a readable page setting out 27 line-ups, era by era, based on the 1992 Record Collector (Japan) chart and corrected against the Snapper Box Set credits.

Our special e-book, ‘The Rise and Fall of The NEW Four Seasons’. The story of the group and the fans from Nick Massi and Charles Calello’s departures to the closing of the formal fan club in 1981, based on research and interviews with former group members. The Introduction, all eleven chapters and a Research Coda on the released and ‘unreleased’ tracks now each have their own page, linked from the book’s cover page and set in one consistent layout. In print it would run to around 280–300 pages.

Our Discographies. The most comprehensive listing of the group’s releases, compiled by George Ingram, Bob Hyde, Tom Cramlington and others. There are now ten references: the early years from 1953, the USA singles and albums through to 2025, the UK releases[still at 2014 edit] the Cash Box and Record World album charts, and the Bob Crewe solo and label discographies. George has edited them up to September 2026 where possible, and they have been re-set as web pages in a common, easier-to-read layout. They will be updated as and when we can.

Our ‘Mega’ CD Discography. All major CD releases from the advent of CDs in the late 1980s to 2010, with sound quality ratings by our late sound engineer adviser Stefan Wriedt. We have kept these pages exactly as Stefan designed them, updating only the contact address and the note on where to find the Dynamic Range meter he used.

Our Newsletter Library. The 68 newsletters produced by George Ingram, with the help of the fan network, covering published articles and release data. New for this site is a searchable, article-by-article index, so you can look up a name or subject across every issue and open the scan where we have one. Not every issue has been scanned yet, so this section will keep growing as more scans come in.

Our new Blog. Casey Chameleon’s ‘Four Seasons Unreleased’ blog is now our main page for news of ‘happenings’ in the world of Four Seasons research.

The Rag Dolls. A link to the story of the female Four Seasons, The Rag Dolls, led by Jean Thomas. Compiled by Ken Charmer and Jean herself, it documents her time as a backing and solo recording artist up to her move into radio commercials in 1966. Jean’s pages have been carried over just as they were.

Sound Tales: Recording The Four Seasons. A Society ‘special’ in four parts plus a bonus, following how the group was recorded from the 2- and 3-track days through 24-track to today’s AI restoration.

The Hit List by Charles Alexander. Click the ‘Admit One’ ticket to find it. Charles has updated his list to a 2026 edition, documenting the 88 recordings by the Four Lovers, The Four Seasons and Frankie Valli solo that charted in the USA and/or the UK between 1956 and 2007. You can now filter the list by artist and by chart peak.

The Session & Master Lists. The most comprehensive existing listing of all ‘known’ Frankie Valli and Four Seasons recordings from 1953 to 1971, in an Introduction and four sections. Depth varies by era, as the earlier sections rely on what paper trail survives. The old lists were typed columns in PDF files that were almost impossible to edit. Each section is now a proper web page that you can search by title, composer or catalogue number.

The Motown Sessions, 1971–1974. Our most complete body of research yet, fully updated to 2026. The recordings, tape sources and unreleased tracks are now set out session by session and cross-referenced against the original Artists Cards held by Universal Motown. Alongside it are two new pages: ‘The Path to the 2023 Snapper CD22’, the story of how the unreleased tracks finally reached the box set, and ‘Current Search Targets’, the 35 titles still waiting to be heard.

The Blog Archive. Our salvaged blogs, the research posts from Typepad (now defunct), are being recovered via the Wayback Machine and reviewed with Claude’s help. They will appear under five topics (The Story, Masters & Sound Quality, Motown Archive & Unreleased Tracks, UK Fan Club & Tours, and Connections & Contributors) and are planned for a December/January site upload. Until then those buttons lead to an ‘under construction’ page.

Get in touch, and what comes next

On the home page you will find a link to our Facebook group, and our e-mail addresses are on the Origins & About Us page. Please use them for any questions, corrections or additional information that you think we can add.

There is also a list of what we are working on next for 2027: AI remixes and unreleased tracks on YouTube, the Snapper box set research with video podcasts and updated collectors’ notes, and TV and live concert clips.

This is an exciting development for us as fans, and we hope for you out there too. We hope Frankie, Bob, all the former Four Seasons and our fellow researchers find it entertaining and informative.

Best Wishes

Ken, Lynn, George, Ray

PS. You may need to clear your browser’s history if you last visited the old web site, so that the new pages load.