Movie Music Monday – The Help

It was on this day in 2011 that The Help was released in theaters. It starred Emma Stone, Sissy Spacek, Cicely Tyson, Bryce Dallas Howard, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer (who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress).

The film is set in the 1960’s and the soundtrack features songs from that era. It includes music from Ray Charles, Webb Pierce, Lloyd Price, Chubby Checker and The Four Seasons. Their #1 hit song, Sherry, was featured on the soundtrack.

Songfacts.com shares:

Bob Gaudio, who was the organist/singer with The Four Seasons, wrote this song and quickly became the group’s primary songwriter. Previously a member of The Royal Teens, he formed The Four Seasons with Frankie Valli the previous year. According to Gaudio, this song came to him very quickly, and he wrote it in less than 15 minutes. He says it took the group longer to decide upon a name for the song than it took him to write it.

This was originally called “Terry.” The group loved it and performed it over the telephone for their producer, Bob Crewe, who liked everything about it but the name. After considering “Jackie” (after Jackie Kennedy), and “Peri” (after a record label Crewe had a stake in), the group changed the name of the song to “Sherry,” after Cheri Spector, the daughter of one of Crewe’s best friends, a DJ named Jack Spector.

In composing songs for The Four Seasons, Gaudio and the group’s arranger Charlie Callello analyzed the hot songs of the era, and tried to incorporate elements of those into “Sherry.” This meant big production, a girl’s name in the title, and a storyline where our hero is begging the girl to come out with him. The result was a very contemporary, commercial sound that provided a template for many future hits for the Four Seasons.

The group was promoted as The Four Seasons with “The Frankie Valli sound.” That sound was basically, Frankie’s falsetto singing. Sherry would go to #1 and stay there for five weeks.