Bob Crewe

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Robert Stanley "Bob" Crewe (born November 12, 1930 in Newark , New Jersey , † September 11, 2014 in Scarborough , Maine ) was an American songwriter , musician , record producer , label owner and artist . He became known for his collaboration with songwriter Bob Gaudio , with whom he wrote a number of hits for The Four Seasons in the 1960s , including Big Girls Don't Cry , Walk Like a Man , Ronnie , Rag Doll , Save It for Me , Bye Bye Baby (Baby, Goodbye) , Let's Hang On and Working My Way Back to You .

Life

Crewe began his career in the early 1950s when he and Frank Slay wrote pieces of music for a variety of artists. Their best-known pieces include the singles Silhouettes and Daddy Cool for The Rays , Lah Dee Dah and Lucky Ladybug for Billy & Lillie, and Tallahassee Lassie and Okefenokee for Freddy Cannon .

From the early 1960s, his own records appeared on Warwick Records . The single Sherry for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, which emerged from the collaboration with Bob Gaudio, became a great hit. Both continued their collaboration in the years that followed and wrote numerous hits for the band. In addition to the compositions for the Four Seasons, Crewe and Gaudio also wrote pieces for The Walker Brothers ( The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore) ) and The Tremeloes ( Silence Is Golden ) .

In 1967 he founded the band The Bob Crewe Generation and landed a chart hit with the instrumental piece Music to Watch Girls By . Together with Charles Fox , he composed the soundtrack for the science fiction film Barbarella in 1968 .

He later managed musicians like Mitch Ryder , whose band, on Crewe's advice, renamed itself Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels . Crewe arranged several of the band's hits such as Jenny Take a Ride , Devil With the Blue Dress On and Sock It to Me Baby .

In the late 1960s he founded his own music label Crewe Records . After producing pieces for music for artists such as Vicki Carr and Bobby Darin , he worked again with Bob Gaudio and the composer Kenny Nolan . In 1974 Franki Valli's hit single My Eyes Adored You and Patti LaBelle's disco classic Lady Marmalade emerged from the collaboration with Nolan . Together with Sir Monti Rock III, Crewe founded the disco formation Disco-Tex and His Sex-O-Lettes in 1974, which had two style-defining disco hits with Get Dancin ' and I Wanna Dance Wit' Choo (Doo Dat Dance) .

Crewe and Gaudio co-produced Roberta Flack's You're Looking Like Love to Me with Jerry Corbetta in 1984 .

In 1985 he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame .

In 2005 Gaudio (music) and Crewe (lyrics) co-wrote the musical Jersey Boys , which is dedicated to the story of The Four Seasons. It ran successfully on Broadway and as part of a US tour and later in London, Las Vegas, Chicago, Toronto, Melbourne and Singapore. The play won four awards at the 2006 Tony Awards , including one for Best Musical . In the 2014 film adaptation of the musical by Clint Eastwood , Crewe was portrayed by Mike Doyle .

Crewe was also active as an artist and designed, among other things, a variety of album covers.

He died in Scarborough, Maine in September 2014 at the age of 83.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Bob Crewe - Biography ( Memento of the original from November 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at songwritershalloffame.org, accessed February 11, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.songwritershalloffame.org
  2. ↑ Jersey Boys ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at tonyawards.com, accessed February 11, 2013  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tonyawards.com
  3. ↑ Bob Crewe, Gay Music Legend, Dead at 82 ( Memento of the original from September 11, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at frontiersla.com, accessed September 12, 2014 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.frontiersla.com
personal data
SURNAME Crewe, Bob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Crewe, Robert Stanley (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American songwriter, musician, record producer, label owner and artist
DATE OF BIRTH November 12, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Newark , New Jersey , United States
DATE OF DEATH September 11, 2014
Place of death Scarborough , Maine