Robert Stanley Crewe (November 12, 1930 – September 11, 2014) was an American songwriter, dancer, singer, manager, and record producer.
He also had hit recordings with the Rays, Diane Renay, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Freddy Cannon, Lesley Gore, Oliver, Michael Jackson, Bobby Darin, Roberta Flack, Peabo Bryson, Patti LaBelle, Barry Manilow, and his own Bob Crewe Generation.
Born in Newark in 1930[1] and raised in Belleville, New Jersey, Crewe demonstrated an early and apparent gift for both art and music.
[citation needed] Although lacking in formal musical training, he gravitated to learning from many of the great 19th- and 20th-century classical romantic composers as well as giants of jazz and swing, including Stan Kenton, Harry James, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey.
Their collaboration created several hit songs (as well as a small record label, XYZ), for which Crewe performed as the demo singer.
In 1961, Guy "Daddy Cool" Darrell released another single version on the Warwick label, and in 1977, the UK band Darts made the song their first-ever studio recording, scoring a No.
Crewe and Slay also wrote two Top 10 hits - "Tallahassee Lassie" and "Okefenokee" - for Swan's rising star Freddy Cannon.
[6] As a solo singer, Crewe recorded a pair of albums in 1961, one of which included a Ralph Burns-produced swing version of Yale University's signature "The Whiffenpoof Song".
The Crewe-Gaudio collaborations capitalized on the extraordinary and distinctive voice of Frankie Valli, who could effortlessly soar to a piercing, emotionally expressive falsetto that became one of the emblematic and widely imitated sounds of the era.
As the "Four Seasons sound" became more and more defined, other signature touches emerged, including dense but pristine-sounding percussion, such as the military-sounding march cadences and drum-stomps of "Sherry", "Big Girls Don't Cry", and "Walk Like a Man".
The sophisticated harmonic patterns of the Four Seasons punctuated by the distinctive falsetto of Frankie Valli were at once classic and innovative, as was Crewe's use of melancholy harmonica on "Big Man in Town", the space-age organ of "Save It for Me", and the otherworldly glissandos of "Candy Girl".
Under his direction, they scored eleven Top 100 hits, most notably Crewe's powerful and muscular arrangements of "Devil with a Blue Dress On", the group's highest-charting single at No.
Crewe's record label scored another hit with Norma Tanega's off-beat, folksy "Walkin' My Cat Named Dog".
In 1967, Crewe and Gaudio scored one of their greatest successes with "Can't Take My Eyes Off You", recorded by Frankie Valli with the Four Seasons.
Also achieving chart status over the decades were English-language versions by the Lettermen, Maureen McGovern, Boys Town Gang and Lauryn Hill.
Crewe also produced a hit single of Oliver performing the optimistic "Good Morning Starshine" from the rock musical Hair.
The Crewe record label released a series of well-received recordings such as Ben Bagley's Cole Porter Revisited and Rodgers and Hart Revisited featuring vocal performances by such artists as Harold Arlen, Elaine Stritch, Dorothy Loudon, Anthony Perkins, Ann Hampton Callaway, Bobby Short, Jerry Orbach, Tammy Grimes, and Blossom Dearie.
Crewe sang "The Whiffenpoof Song" and was interviewed on The Jack Spector Show and appeared on Dick Clark's ABC-TV programs American Bandstand and Where the Action Is.
The Generation's late 1969 LP Let Me Touch You, including covers of Henry Mancini's "Moon River" and "Two For The Road", arranged by Charles Fox, remains a favorite of lounge music collectors.
In 1977, at the insistence of producer Jerry Wexler, who had been an early mentor of his, Crewe recorded a solo album in Memphis, with Barry Beckett co-producing.
Although the album did not achieve chart success, it included the ballad "Marriage Made In Heaven", a collaboration between Crewe and Kenny Nolan which later became popular with Carolina beach music bands.
"Lady Marmalade", recorded by Labelle, became notorious for its sexually provocative, New Orleans-inflected chorus, "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?"
"Lady Marmalade" has since been used in numerous motion pictures, including Cheech and Chong's The Corsican Brothers, Beethoven, Carlito's Way, The Birdcage, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Semi-Pro.
In 1984, a collaboration by Crewe and writers Jerry Corbetta and Bob Gaudio produced another Billboard Top 100 success with the romantic duet "You're Looking Like Love To Me", sung by Roberta Flack and Peabo Bryson.
[2] "Lady Marmalade" was re-recorded by Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mýa, and Pink for the soundtrack of the 2001 film Moulin Rouge!, and their version stayed at No.
Since 2005, Crewe was featured as a supporting character (played originally by Peter Gregus) in Jersey Boys, the long-running, multiple Tony Award-winning Broadway musical based on the story of Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons.
He used his proceeds from the show to start a foundation supporting gay rights, people with AIDS, and bringing music and art to children in deprived communities.