Frankie Valli, original Jersey boy still singing at 88, to play Red Bank, Newark

The original Jersey Boy is coming home.

Frankie Valli, the Newark native singer who rose to global fame more than half a century ago with chart-topping vocal group the Four Seasons, returns for Garden State engagements Thursday, Nov. 10, at the Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, and Friday, Nov. 11, at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark.

“I just love playing both of them,” said Valli, 88. “(And) there’s something very special about playing the downtown area of Newark, since I grew up in Newark.”

Between his work with the Four Seasons and as a solo artist, Valli has logged 50 hit singles in the last 60 years, enough to inspire the Tony-winning musical "Jersey Boys," sell well over 100 million records, earn seven Grammy nominations and be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

Valli explained how in concert he remains in-the-moment with a song such as “Sherry,” a number he must have performed thousands of times since its release in 1962.

“You have to psychologically put it in a place that (is) almost like it’s the first time,” Valli explained. “For the audience that may see you once or twice a year or even less than that, it’s not redundant and it’s not over-done. You’re not performing for yourself when you’re going out and performing in front of an audience. You’re doing it for them.”

Valli returned to his musical roots last year with the new album "A Touch of Jazz," a cozy collection of gems from the great American songbook that includes the likes of Johnny Mercer and Harry Warren's "Jeepers Creepers," and "Try a Little Tenderness," a hit for everyone from Bing Crosby to Otis Redding to Three Dog Night.

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“It was always my first love," Valli said of jazz. "I started out wanting to be a jazz singer and not a pop singer. I was listening to people like the Four Freshmen and the Hi-Lo's, and that’s where I really got to understand vocal groups and get to love the things that they did. And these songs were songs that (when) I (was) coming up, before I had any success at all, as I was working in some of the saloons, these are the songs that I sang.”

"A Touch of Jazz" also afforded Valli the opportunity to work with organist Joey DeFrancesco, who worked Miles Davis, Christian McBride and many others before dying this summer at the age of 51.

DeFrancesco, Valli said, “was probably one of the greatest jazz organists that ever lived.”

“I did (this album) out of love for that kind of music, and the enjoyment that I got out of it," he said. "Some of the great standards will live on way beyond my lifetime. And they deserve to be heard. ... Some of the great writers like Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and all the many other great writers that there were will live on forever.”

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Valli has built a comparably durable body of work during his lifetime, as one pass through this year's 60-track compilation "Four Seasons, Six Decades" proves, allowing the listener to follow along as the sound shifts and evolves across generations.

The Four Seasons' hits, Valli said, "were in a class of their own because they weren’t like anybody else’s songs. We were making music and doing things that we loved to do. Everybody likes to have a hit, but we weren’t listening to the radio and saying, ‘Well, let’s make a record like this,’ or ‘Let’s make a record like that.’ We were doing our own thing, and fortunately the public liked what we were doing.”

The band insisted on evolving, Valli said.

“We didn’t stay in one place and sound the same on everything that we did," he said. "From ‘Sherry’ to ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ (1966) or to ‘Let’s Hang On’ (1965), very, very different, to ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You’ (1967). In a period of time where rock ’n’ roll was really ripping through and very important — ‘Can’t Take My Eyes of You’ still turned out to be a big hit for us.”

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All these years later, "A Touch of Jazz" shows that while Valli's signature North Jersey tenor has matured, it has remained undiminished by time. How does Valli keep his voice in such sturdy shape?

“You have to use it as often as you possibly can," he said. "I sing in the shower every day for at least a half hour. It’s like bodybuilding – if you stop for two months, you have to get back into it. So it’s really just keeping it in shape – and it’s also important that you love doing it. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do than sing.”

Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons at The Basie

• Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, doors at 6:30 p.m. and show at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, Hackensack Meridian Health Theatre, Count Basie Center for the Arts, 99 Monmouth St., Red Bank, $68 to $250; thebasie.org.

Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons at NJ Performing Arts Center

• 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 11, Prudential Hall Betty Wold Johnson Stage, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center St., Newark, $49.50 to $179.50; njpac.org.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Frankie Valli tour coming to Red Bank, Newark NJ