Frankie Valli &
The Four Seasons
After an honorable discharge from the Air Force, Don quickly learned that the recording industry measured time quite differently than most. "At meetings with record company people I'd say, 'It was only two years ago that my group (The Critters) had hits', and I remember someone saying, 'Two YEARS ago? We want to know what you've done in the last two MONTHS!' So, it was a rude awakening for me. Here I was at 25 years old, listening to people refer to my hits as 'oldies' -- I was feeling like a has-been well before my 30th birthday."
Disappointed but not disheartened, Don opened his own lead sheet company. Once again, serendipity stepped in: "There was a writer by the name of Tony Lordi for whom I was doing lead sheets. He was signed to Sunbury Dunbar, which was the publishing company for RCA, and I was RCA's lead sheet guy. Frank Costa, who was in charge of Sunbury Dunbar at the time, asked me if I’d like to meet Tony. We met, and it turned out he'd always liked The Critters. Anyway, a week later I got a phone call from Frankie Valli, who had just had lunch with Tony, asking me to become one of The Four Seasons. So, had I not been turned down by the record companies because in their eyes my writings had been so 'old', I wouldn’t have started the lead sheet company; had I not started the lead sheet company, I wouldn’t have met Tony Lordi, and had I not met Tony Lordi he wouldn’t have dropped my name at a lunch date he had with Frankie Valli."
