We asked the Hit Men’s pianist Lee Shapiro how he came to join a Platinum-record band at only 19, and he told Elmore this unusual story.

When I auditioned for Frankie Valli, it was in the banquet room of the Fountain Restaurant in Belleville, NJ. The band was somewhat in financial straits, and it was kind of a low point in the Seasons’ world. I met Frankie and the rest of the Seasons at the restaurant, and that’s  the first time I heard him sing “Dawn.” He handed me sheet music and said,  “Play this.” So I played the first chord, and he sang, “Pretty as a misummer’s morn, they call her Dawn” and I stopped. He said, “What’s wrong?” I said “Man, you’re the guy from the radio! I can’t believe it.” Everyone had a good laugh, and we started again.

He said, “We like what you do, but the reason we are hiring you is because, on the road, we’re coming back to the East Coast every time we want to do a new song. I really want a keyboard player who can arrange as well. Do you do that?” I said, “Absolutely!” He said, “If I ask you to do something, how soon after can I have it?” So, I said, “Same day, no problem.” I was bullshiting. I had no idea—I just wanted the job.

I was in Manhattan School of Music as a composition major, and I got the offer to be one of the Four Seasons in the middle of my sophomore year. I went to my composition teacher and said, “I have this opportunity with the Four Seasons, who want me to be their musical director, and also their pianist.”

The woman was locked in the classical music world, but she gave me sage wisdom. She said, “Lee, I got to tell you I don’t know who the Four Seasons are, but if you’re telling me they’re going to let you travel, play music and orchestrate, you better take it. You don’t get those kind of offers very often, and you can come back to school anytime you want.” Back then, that was a hell of a thing for a woman of 70 years old to tell me. Every parent in the world would probably shudder at that.

Two days after the audition I get the job, and we’re on our way to the very first gig in Chicago, at a big theater, and Frankie comes to me and says, “Lee, I think we should have a new opening for the show. I’d like you to write something and we’ll play it tonight—a new opening fanfare to say “Here’s the Four Seasons.” Needless to say, I’m flipping out. Not only does he want me to do a new arrangement, I had to do it that night because I told him I could.

So I go to my hotel room. I had no instrument in my hotel room, I just heard it in my head, a kind of a brass-related rock thing—the band Chicago was in fashion—and I wrote it down sitting at a table. I wrote the rhythm chart, I wrote the bass chart, I wrote the trombone part, we had five horns, so I wrote all the orchestration that I worked out in my head. I copied the parts out off the score paper myself—there was no Finale programs or anything like that, everything was by hand. I brought it with me, passed the music out to the guys, did soundcheck and off we went with it; we did it that night. I was panic-stricken until we did it and it came out really great; and from there on in, anything I did in show business was a no-brainer for me. From Frankie’s point of view, after that, I was the Golden Boy. I lived up to what I told him I could do; Frankie threw me in the water and I swam.

We asked Shapiro, Why did Frankie Valli pick you, a kid, for such a famous band; was it the money? “A kid, yes,” Shapiro said, “not to mention a Jewish kid, ’cause it was an Italian band. That isn’t just me—Frankie was notorious for that. They tried out others for the same job, some of them famous and experienced, and they gave me the job instead. I asked him why, was it about money? He said, ‘Because you were the right guy for the job.’ Frankie told me, ‘You were young, and we were looking to rebuild the group.’ Thank God they felt that way because I ended up orchestrating all of his records.”

Today, the Hit Men connect with audiences on a level rarely seen by today’s musical artists; they play interactive sets of music from rock and roll history that are also their personal histories, because these men recorded the music. A short list of acts the band’s members have performed and recorded with: Blood Sweat & Tears, Johnny Winter, Cheap Trick, Lou Reed, Dr. John, Vanilla Fudge, Carly Simon, Cat Stevens, Jim Croce, Rod Stewart, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Sting, the Ramones, LL Cool J, Luther Vandross, Korn, Paula Abdul, Jack Bruce, Eric Burdon and the Animals, Dave Mason, Todd Rundgren, Christopher Cross, the Turtles, Gary Puckett, Mitch Ryder, Barry Manilow, Tony Orlando, Tommy James, the Four Seasons, and (drumroll) Sesame Street.