Frankie Valli
Francesco Stephen Castelluccio, better known by his stage name Frankie Valli, is an American singer and occasional actor, best known as the lead vocalist of the Four Seasons. He is known for his unusually powerful countertenor voice.
Valli was born Francesco Castelluccio to an Italian family in Newark, New Jersey; he is the eldest of three sons. Valli's father, Antonio (Anthony) Castelluccio, who was born in Jersey City to parents from Faiano, Salerno, Campania, was a barber and display designer for Lionel model trains; his mother, Donata Maria "Mary" Rinaldi, who immigrated from Avigliano, Potenza, Basilicata, was a homemaker and beer-company employee. His younger brothers are also singers, Alex Castelluccio (who died in 2025) and Bobby Valli, who is 15 years younger than Frankie; Bobby Valli occasionally sang with his brothers and also performed with the Classics IV, The Duprees, Joey Dee and the Starliters and Larry Chance. Valli was inspired to take up a singing career at age seven after Mary took him to see Frank Sinatra at the Paramount Theater in Manhattan, New York City. One of Valli's early favorite singers was "Texas" Jean Valli, from whom Valli took his stage name. Valli worked as a barber until he could support himself with music.
Valli began his singing career in 1951 with the Variety Trio (Nickie DeVito, Tommy DeVito, and Henry "Hank" Majewski), and was mentored in much of his early career by Nick Macioci, who later joined Valli in the Four Seasons, and by "Texas" Jean Valli, a female hillbilly singer, from whom he adopted the "Valli" surname. Geoff Herbert explains, "Frankie said in 2010 that Jean took him to meet music publishers Paul and Dave Kapp, telling them he was her brother. As a result, his first single was listed under 'Frankie Valley', and the name stuck—though he eventually changed it to the same spelling" that Texas Jean used. His desire to sing in public was initially granted when the group offered him a guest spot when they performed. In late 1952, the Variety Trio disbanded and Valli and Tommy DeVito became part of the house band at the Strand in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Valli played bass and sang.
Valli has appeared as an actor in Miami Vice (as Mafia boss Frank Doss), Full House, the 1998 TV movie Witness to the Mob (as Frank LoCascio of the Gambino crime family), The Sopranos (as mobster Rusty Millio), and the 2014 film And So It Goes. On the November 21, 2014, episode of Hawaii Five-0 entitled "Ka Hana malu (Inside Job)", Valli played mysterious lawyer Leonard Cassano, who was engaged to Carol Burnett's character, Aunt Deb. In 2015, Valli was interviewed on the AMC television series The Making of the Mob: New York.
Valli has been married four times. In his early 20s, he married his first wife, Mary, who already had a two-year-old daughter. They had two daughters together and divorced after 13 years in 1971. His stepdaughter and younger daughter both died in separate incidents in 1980. Valli married MaryAnn Hannigan in 1974, and the marriage lasted eight years. He married Randy Clohessy in 1984; they had three sons and divorced in 2004. Valli's surviving daughter later briefly married Four Seasons drummer/vocalist Gerry Polci, and their daughter Olivia Polci, who also adopted the stage surname Valli, is a professional stage actress. She portrayed her grandmother Mary in a Jersey Boys production in 2019. Frankie married Jackie Jacobs on June 26, 2023, in Las Vegas. Valli and Jacobs reside in Encino, California. Valli obtained a restraining order effective until 2027 against his eldest son for threats of violence against his father and brothers.
