Bob Crewe
b. Stanley Robert Crewe, 12 November 1931, Newark, New Jersey, USA. Bob Crewe was an important songwriter and record producer during the '60s, best known for his work with the Four Seasons. Among the classic pop songs with which he had a hand in writing were the Four Seasons’ Big Girls Don't Cry, Rag Doll, Bye Bye Baby, Let's Hang On and Walk Like A Man, Frankie Valli's solo hits My Eyes Adored You, Can't Take My Eyes Off You and Swearin To God’, Mitch Ryder's Sock It To Me, Baby Freddy Cannon's Tallahassee Lassie, the Rays’ Silhouettes, the Walker Brothers’ The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore and Diane Renay's Navy Blue. Later, in the '70s he worked on Disco Tex And The Sex-O-Lettes’ Get Dancin’ and LaBelle's Lady Marmalade. Crewe also owned the Dyno-Voice and Crewe record labels, production companies and music publishing firms. His first music industry experience was as an aspiring vocalist in Detroit in the '50s. Unsuccessful, he moved to Philadelphia and co-ran XYZ Records, whose major hit was a song he co-wrote, the Rays’ Silhouettes. In the early '60s he began working with the Four Seasons as writer and producer, helping to turn them into one of the most successful American groups of the decade. Although Crewe was not primarily a recording artist under his own name, he did chart with four singles. The first was a 1960 version of The Whiffenpoof Song, the theme song of the Yale University Glee Club. His biggest chart hit under his own name was a 1967 instrumental, Music To Watch Girls By, originally used in a Pepsi commercial. Released on Crewe's Dyno-Voice label by the Bob Crewe Generation, it reached the US Top 20. He had one more minor chart single in 1967 and then rebounded in 1976 with Street Talk, released on 20th Century Fox Records under the name of BCG. It was during this period that Crewe enjoyed his last major impact on the popular music scene, writing and producing hits for LaBelle, Disco Tex And The Sex-O-Lettes, Eleventh Hour and others.