Sunset comes to the man for all seasons!

The recent death of Tommy DeVito I think deserves more than the brief mention in the daily news cycle it got a few days back.

Perhaps you know the name, perhaps not, but if your answer is “yes”, then you’ve been around the block a time or two (like me) OR you love 60s music (also like me).

DeVito was a founding member of my favorite 60s act, the amazing Four Seasons along with the great Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio and Nick Massi. He passed away recently at the age of 92 of complications from Covid-19.

DeVito and his mates dominated the music scene in the early 60s with three of their biggest hits, “Sherry”, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and the iconic “Walk Like A Man”, all going No. 1 back to back. Overall the Four Seasons had an amazing 71 chart hits with 40 of those going Top 40, 19 more in the Top 10 and eight going all the way to No. 1. My favorite Four Seasons song “Big Man In Town” didn’t make it to the top, but scored high enough with me to become my most played song by the group because of Valli’s strong lead vocals.

Between 1962-1978, the Seasons sold an amazing 100 million records.

They were so good and so respected they were admitted to the Hall of Fame only five years after it opened.

Incredibly, DeVito had performed with Valli going all the way back to 1954. To put that into perspective, Valli is still performing today, well into his 80s, and from what we are told, hasn’t lost a thing off that indescribable voice.

Clint Eastwood’s film tribute to the Seasons titled “Jersey Nights” wasn’t well received at all (I wonder if it were another situation where critics were panning Eastwood’s politics and ignoring his work), but I have it in my list of my five all-time favorite movies.

One of the film’s key points concerns when DeVito left the group in 1971. The movie notes the breakup occurred because the other three members were upset with Tommy’s heavy gambling and ensuing debts which Valli agreed the group would pay. But DeVito says he left simply because he was tired of performing. Tommy, while not in total agreement with that part along with other things in the movie he indicated he didn’t especially care for, didn’t raise too much fuss though, and admitted he liked the overall movie.

Tommy DeVito deserves his place in American music history. Our condolences to his family.