DeVito, an original member of Four Seasons
Tommy DeVito, a son of New Jersey who became a founding member and lead guitarist for Frankie Valli’s beloved doo wop quartet, The Four Seasons, has died. He was 92.
DeVito died Monday night in Nevada, and a funeral for the baritone singer will be planned in New Jersey, friend Alfredo Nittoli wrote on Facebook.
Earlier this month, DeVito was hospitalized after contracting the coronavirus.
In a statement, Valli and Bob Gaudio, another member of The Four Seasons, expressed “great sadness” over the death of their bandmate.
“We send our love to his family during this most difficult time,” Valli and Gaudio said in the joint statement. “He will be missed by all who loved him.”
Valli, Gaudio and DeVito were inducted collectively into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, along with Nick Massi, the band’s bass guitarist, who died of cancer in 2000.
The Hall of Fame lauded The Four Seasons’ inventive style and string of rollicking hits, which included “Sherry,” “Working My Way Back to You” and the sultry 1967 smash “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.”
The group’s rise from humble origins in the Garden State and its following period of radio dominance were immortalized years later in the Broadway hit “Jersey
Boys.”
In the musical, the character based on DeVito explained: “If you’re from my neighborhood, you got three ways out: You could join the Army. You could get mobbed up. Or — you could become a star.”
DeVito’s character causes trouble at times for the band in “Jersey Boys,” piling up gambling debts. The real-life DeVito said the narrative was about 75 percent true, and he told NJ Advance Media in 2005, “It’s a good story. Who am I to spoil it?” (But he disputed a pair of specific aspects of the musical: that he was a slob and that the mob ran him out of town.)
DeVito was born Gaetano DeVito in Belleville, N.J., in 1928, the son of Italian immigrants and the youngest of nine children. He grew up poor and often got into trouble.
“When I was a kid, I was locked up. I was in six or seven jails. I went to prison one time. But my teenage years were a son of a (expletive). I was a hellraiser,” DeVito once told the Las Vegas ReviewJournal. “I was a menace to everybody.”
But he found purpose in music and taught himself to play guitar. He headed up a small-time band called The Variety Trio. It was DeVito who invited a young Frankie Valli, almost six years his junior, on stage to sing one night.
Valli’s fabulous falsetto became the stuff of legend and powered his singing partners to huge success in the ’60s.
DeVito left the band in 1970. He said he later worked as a cleaner, and he told the Review-Journal in 2009 that he once stunned a client when he informed her of his past.
He settled in the Las Vegas area, living there for decades. He returned to New Jersey each summer.
Bobby Valli, the brother of Frankie Valli, published an all-caps post on social media celebrating the singer. “MUSIC LEGEND!” Bobby Valli said in a Facebook post.
“YOU WERE LOVED,” he added, “AND WILL BE MISSED.”