The answer, boys and girls, is four season times 50 years or 200 seasons.
And, as it turns out, today marks the 50th anniversary of the day in 1965 that three of The Four Seasons of “Jersey Boys” fame were arrested beside the stage of the Ohio State Fair in Columbus, hauled to Springfield, then bailed out of jail, never to return again.
The story of Frankie Valli, Tommy DeVito and Bob Gaudio’s fourth, final and involuntary visit to Springfield involves two local businessmen who, in the terminology of their times, were said to have “run a tight ship.”
My former colleague Andy McGinn, whose legendarily goofy personality and outstanding column I still miss, wrote about one of those men five years (20 seasons) ago.
“Iron-fisted” were the words McGinn used to describe Herb McBride, who, with wife, Vivian Ward McBride, and daughter, Diane McBride, managed the Coconut Lounge at Lakewood Beach on Upper Valley Pike in Champaign County.
A few days ago, Greg Ward told me his uncle was a truly intimidating figure on and all over the Lakewood grounds.
“He’d walk in and say ‘You need a haircut before you come back here,’ ” and a stop at the barber shop leaped to the top of the listener’s personal agenda.
“My aunt was just as stern,” Ward added, something reflected by the rules that made the Coconut Lounge a tight ship.
There was “no improper dancing or actions at any time,” girls were told the leave their capris, shorts and slacks at home and encouraged to wear sweaters with their skirts.
Boys could slide in without ties, but the standards required “neat sport shirts, sports coats or sweaters.”
To parents of teens, the lounge rule outlawing alcoholic beverages provided additional comfort because they knew Herb McBride had a special sense for enforcement Greg Ward told McGinn about years ago: “He could smell liquor on your breath six miles away.”
Ward’s wife, Marcia Balmut Ward, who spent many a Saturday night at Coconut Lounge during her years at Graham High School, mentioned two other Herb McBride traits that were crucial to the whole enterprise: “He was a first-class promoter, and he was an entrepreneur.”
With all those attributes at work, beginning April 6, 1963, the Coconut Lounge packed excited, ticket-buying teens next to the stage week after week to see performers from Del Shannon, Lou Christie and Lonnie Mack to The Kingsmen, Jan and Dean and Paul and Paula.
Evidence of the venue’s status survives in an item in the McBride estate, a saxophone the Beach Boys left after a July 21, 1964, appearance — and a letter from the William Morris Agency asking about its whereabouts.
The hard-working reporter he is and was, McGinn discovered that Beach Boys visit came a week after The Four Seasons had been at the lounge to perform their new hit “Rag Doll,” which replaced the Beach Boys’ “I Get Around” as America’s No. 1 hit.
On that, their third visit to Lakewood, The Four Seasons stayed at what was perhaps Springfield’s premier hotel, the Holiday Inn West. Its manager, Ray Guerdat, is the other man in the story man known at the time to run a tight ship.
“A really sharp guy,” in the estimation of Dick Hatfield, Springfield’s Imperial Debubba, Guerdat was “always immaculate in his dress and greeted everybody with open arms.
“But you didn’t cross him,” Hatfield added, which The Four Seasons would discover.
Until the moment of reckoning, however, the performers had no reason to reckon their visits to Springfield anything other than an unqualified success.
Kathy Hatfield, wife of the Imperial Debubba, was Kathy Flanigan when she saw The Four Seasons on the Coconut Lounge stage.
At the time a post-partum nurse in then Mercy Hospital’s maternity department, she went at the request of a young nurse’s aide who had an extra ticket but no one to go with.
“She and I at lunchtime would sing songs together,” Mrs. Hatfield said. “She asked if I would drive her,” something that in those days always pleased Mrs. Hatfield.
Her aqua Corvair not only doubled as a fashion accessory and was fun to drive, but was a special point of pride for Nurse Flanigan because, having bought it herself, “It was the first thing I could call my own.”
A few years older than most of the teeny boppers at the show, “I went out and it was a riot,” she recalled. “We had so much fun. The kids were all dancing and screaming,” and she joined in.
By the time of the 1965 Ohio State Fair, however, that summer had passed and success had changed things both for the Coconut Lounge and The Four Seasons.
Worried about an inability to control the increasingly regional crowds that came to see the national acts they booked, the McBrides closed the lounge after the Jan. 16, 1965, performance by a lesser known Motown group, the Velvettes.
After the closing, Lakewood shifted back to more modest acts aimed at easier to manage young adult and adult audiences.
Meanwhile, simmering tensions in The Four Seasons finally led bassist and singer Nick Massi to quit just before the group was to play a variety show hosted by TV show host Mike Douglas on Labor Day, the final day of the 1965 Ohio State Fair.
The eyewitness account of what brought three of The Four Seasons back to Springfield that day is told by Charlie Calello in the 2007 book “Jersey Boys: The Story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons.”
Until then known as an arranger for the group, Calello that day had his first gig as Massi’s temporary replacement.
“We were playing to about 10,000 people at a race track, and the paddy wagon pulled up alongside the stage; you could see this while we were on.
“To my surprise, the show went off without a hitch. It was a lot of fun: I played bass, and I had blisters on my fingers from not playing for so long, but it was still fun.
“We walked off the stage and the police said, ‘You Frankie Valli?’ ‘Yes.’ They put handcuffs on him.”
After the same thing happened with Tommy DeVito and Bob Gaudio, the police asked Calello if he was Nick Massi.
Since he wasn’t, Calello escaped arrest, but drew another assignment: “I had to collect the money from the promoter and bail them out of jail. It was hysterical.”
The musical “Jersey Boys” doesn’t mention Springfield as the arresting entity. It also has the arrests taking place in Cleveland rather than Columbus, an inaccuracy introduced in an apparent attempt to dramatize The Four Seasons’ glorious returning to Cleveland to be inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Springfield Daily News reports of the time misspelled both DeVito and Gaudio’s last names and mistakenly reported that the group hailed from New York City rather than New Jersey.
But the newspaper did note the three musicians were arrested on charges of defrauding an innkeeper to the tune of about $60 each and that the accused had been released after bond of $500 was posted for each.
The paper also wisely used the word “probably” to qualify a cleverly phrased story reporting that Springfield would “play host to three members of ‘The Four Seasons’ ” at an upcoming but “unscheduled appearance …. in Municipal Court.”
It was wise because the charges eventually were dropped, presumably because the bills were paid, and the accused never appeared in court.
It also reported two other things:
•The charges dated to July of 1964 (coinciding with the group’s appearance at the Coconut Lounge).
•The innkeeper allegedly defrauded was the man who operated Springfield’s Holiday Inn at 1715 W. North St.
And, as we now know, that set the events in a time when the cast of cultural characters included men known to run tight ships.
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