蜜芽传媒

by Bob Stanley

Bob Crewe penned a number of hits for The Four Seasons

was very much an urban songwriter and producer, based initially in New Jersey and later in New York. His first success came with a song he wrote with Texan pianist Frank Slay - Silhouettes was an American hit for the Rays in 1957, and a no.3 in Britain eight years later for Herman's Hermits. The story-song was something Crewe became especially skilled at on a number of hits he wrote with Bob Gaudio for the Four Seasons: Big Girls Don't Cry, Rag Doll and Toy Soldier played like mini-movies - they didn't need videos to come to life.

While the Four Seasons hits get the most airplay in the 21st century, Crewe also had a brace of American hits in 1964 with the cartoonish blonde Diane Renay. Navy Blue - performed by Diane in full sailor suit regalia - was a no.6 hit there at the tail end of the girl group boom and, as if that wasn't camp enough, the follow-up was called Kiss Me Sailor. Renay's voice was better suited to the tough-girl act of the later Watch Out Sally, a finger-snapper with a fuzz guitar break and a tale of a doomed relationship reminiscent of the Shangri La's. Not a hit, but a classic of the genre.

Dee Dee Sharp was usually associated with the softer sounds of Philadelphia (check the beautiful I Really Love You), but her one single with Crewe was a fiercer proposition and a masterpiece - Deep Dark Secret has become a big club hit in the last decade and deserves to be a lot better known, from its piercing brass intro to its rolling drums and Dee Dee's powerful, prowling delivery. Bob Crewe was a master producer, one of the very best, and he adapted his skills for the disco boom in the seventies; as well as the daft but irresistible instrumental Street Talk by BCG (short for Bob Crewe Generation), he scored possibly his greatest hit of all with Labelle's Lady Marmalade in 1975. By all accounts a wise and generous man, he will be greatly missed.