Francesco Stephen Castelluccio (born May 3, 1934), better known by his stage name Frankie Valli, is an American singer and occasional actor, best known as the lead vocalist of the Four Seasons. He is known for his unusually powerful countertenor voice.
Valli scored 29 top-40 hits with the Four Seasons, one top-40 hit under the Four Seasons alias the Wonder Who?, and nine top-40 hits as a solo artist. As a member of the Four Seasons, Valli's number-one hits include "Sherry" (1962), "Big Girls Don't Cry" (1962), "Walk Like a Man" (1963), "Rag Doll" (1964), and "December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)" (1975). His recording of the song "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" reached number two in 1967. As a solo artist, Valli scored number-one hits with the songs "My Eyes Adored You" (1974) and "Grease" (1978).
Valli, Tommy DeVito, Nick Massi, and Bob Gaudio—the original members of the Four Seasons—were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999. Valli is also a 2010 inductee of the New Jersey Hall of Fame, with the Four Seasons (Gaudio, Massi, DeVito, and Joe Long) inducted separately in 2017 and Valli speaking on Massi's behalf. Valli was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in May 2024, a joint star for both the Four Seasons and him. Valli appeared in person to accept the honor with his wife and two of his sons, and Gaudio sent a recorded acceptance speech. In February 2025, Valli was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, his first-ever Grammy.
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Early life
Valli was born Francesco Castelluccio to an Italian family in Newark, New Jersey; he is the eldest of three sons. Valli's father, Antonio (Anthony) Castelluccio, who was born in Jersey City to parents from Faiano, Salerno, Campania, was a barber and display designer for Lionel model trains; his mother, Donata Maria "Mary" Rinaldi, who immigrated from Avigliano, Potenza, Basilicata, was a homemaker and beer-company employee. His younger brothers are also singers, Alex Castelluccio (who died in 2025) and Bobby Valli, who is 15 years younger than Frankie; Bobby Valli occasionally sang with his brothers and also performed with the Classics IV, The Duprees, Joey Dee and the Starliters and Larry Chance. Valli was inspired to take up a singing career at age seven after Mary took him to see Frank Sinatra at the Paramount Theater in Manhattan, New York City. One of Valli's early favorite singers was "Texas" Jean Valli, from whom Valli took his stage name. Valli worked as a barber until he could support himself with music.
Valli's birth year has been called into question. He never addressed the issue himself until a 2007 posting at the official Frankie Valli site, sponsored by his record label Universal. Much of Valli's previous publicity used 1937 as his birth year, with his bandmates also having their birth dates adjusted later than reality to appeal to a younger demographic. Other sources gave Valli's year of birth as 1934, such as the Bear Family Records release The Four Lovers (BCD 15424) and a 1965 mug shot, available through The Smoking Gun.
Music career
Valli began his singing career in 1951 with the Variety Trio (Nickie DeVito, Tommy DeVito, and Henry "Hank" Majewski), and was mentored in much of his early career by Nick Macioci, who later joined Valli in the Four Seasons, and by "Texas" Jean Valli, a female hillbilly singer, from whom he adopted the "Valli" surname. Geoff Herbert explains, "Frankie said in 2010 that Jean took him to meet music publishers Paul and Dave Kapp, telling them he was her brother. As a result, his first single was listed under 'Frankie Valley', and the name stuck—though he eventually changed it to the same spelling" that Texas Jean used. His desire to sing in public was initially granted when the group offered him a guest spot when they performed. In late 1952, the Variety Trio disbanded and Valli and Tommy DeVito became part of the house band at the Strand in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Valli played bass and sang.
Valli recorded his first single, "My Mother's Eyes", in 1953, a cover of the 1929 George Jessel song from Lucky Boy, with his stage name "Frankie Valley." Around this time, Valli, Majewski, and Tommy DeVito left the house band at the Strand and formed the Variatones with Frank Cottone and Billy Thompson. In 1956, the group impressed New York recording agent Peter Paul, and he got them an audition at RCA Victor a week later.
The group changed its name to the Four Lovers and recorded several singles and an album's worth of tracks. They had a minor hit with "You're the Apple of My Eye" in 1956, which earned them their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. After two years of no further success, DeVito fired his brother and Majewski for insubordination (they had refused to take a gig opening for Tony Bennett) and creative differences, as Majewski's comic persona did not mesh with the group's musical talents. The Four Lovers continued, with Valli, DeVito, and an ad hoc lineup that variously included Macioci (by then also pursuing a solo career as "Nickie Massey"), Charles Calello and Hollywood Playboys keyboardist Hugh Garrity. In 1959, after being introduced at a gig in Baltimore by mutual friend Joe Pesci, Royal Teen Bob Gaudio became a member. By 1960, after several years of session work under numerous stage names, the lineup of Valli, DeVito, Gaudio, and a now-renamed Nick Massi took on the name "The 4 Seasons", taking the name from a bowling alley in Union, New Jersey that had rejected them after an audition.
In 1962, Valli and Gaudio shook hands on a side deal. As Gaudio told Time years later, "'We said, 'Neither one of us knows where we're going to wind up, but maybe we should hedge our bets. You get 50% of me, and I get 50% of you.'" The partners eventually "divided well over $50 million on the strength of their original handshake."
Acting career
Valli has appeared as an actor in Miami Vice (as Mafia boss Frank Doss), Full House, the 1998 TV movie Witness to the Mob (as Frank LoCascio of the Gambino crime family), The Sopranos (as mobster Rusty Millio), and the 2014 film And So It Goes.
On the November 21, 2014, episode of Hawaii Five-0 entitled "Ka Hana malu (Inside Job)", Valli played mysterious lawyer Leonard Cassano, who was engaged to Carol Burnett's character, Aunt Deb.
In 2015, Valli was interviewed on the AMC television series The Making of the Mob: New York.
Personal life
Valli has been married four times. In his early 20s, he married his first wife, Mary, who already had a two-year-old daughter. They had two daughters together and divorced after 13 years in 1971. His stepdaughter and younger daughter both died in separate incidents in 1980. Valli married MaryAnn Hannigan in 1974, and the marriage lasted eight years. He married Randy Clohessy in 1984; they had three sons and divorced in 2004. Valli's surviving daughter later briefly married Four Seasons drummer/vocalist Gerry Polci, and their daughter Olivia Polci, who also adopted the stage surname Valli, is a professional stage actress. She portrayed her grandmother Mary in a Jersey Boys production in 2019. Frankie married Jackie Jacobs on June 26, 2023, in Las Vegas. Valli and Jacobs reside in Encino, California. Valli obtained a restraining order effective until 2027 against his eldest son for threats of violence against his father and brothers.
One issue in Valli's third divorce went up on appeal to the Supreme Court of California, whether a life insurance policy purchased in 2003 was community property. On May 15, 2014, the court unanimously affirmed the trial court's ruling that the policy was community property (and not Clohessy's separate property), in an opinion signed by Associate Justice Joyce Kennard.
