Perhaps no mind is is better suited to associate sounds with specific events than the mind of a sports fan. I hear the first few syllables of "Do you believe in miracles?" and I can see sticks and arms rising into the air. If someone walked up to me on the street and said, "Iguodala to Curry," I'd probably shout, "Back to Iguodala, up for the layup—oh blocked by James!" while seeing LeBron soar through the sky in my head. So I've always wondered if fans of the 1997 Detroit Red Wings will always associate the moment that their favorite team's 42-year championship drought came to an end with a lightly toasted Frankie Valli squeaking out a lyric about a guy climaxing too quickly during his first sexual encounter.
After Gary Thorne delivered his last call of the 1997 Stanley Cup Final ("Three seconds left, into the zone, the Detroit Red Wings are the Stanley Cup champions!"), an extended goal horn gave way to the sounds within Joe Louis Arena. After a few seconds, a familiar groove and an unmistakable voice pierced through the cheers: "Oh, I, I got a funny feeling / When she walked in the room / And my, as I recall / It ended much too soon."
That was Frankie Valli's contribution to "December 1963 (Oh What A Night)," which was released by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons in December of 1975 and reached the top of the U.S. and U.K. charts in early 1976. It is not a song with a meaning that requires much explanation—it's about a guy, I imagine him as something of a little rascal, having sex for the first time—but here are some additional details.
By the 1970s, most of the original members of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons had given way to newcomers. Valli was getting old and losing his hearing at the time, so drummer Gerry Polci started taking over more of the lead vocals. His voice is the one you hear throughout most of "December 1963 (Oh What A Night)," with Don Ciccone providing some extra falsetto and Valli gutting out the bridge. The song was originally titled "December 1933" and was supposed to be about the end of prohibition, but everyone in the band hated the lyrics that Bob Gaudio had written. That's when Gaudio asked his wife, Judy Parker, to come up with a new set of lyrics. "I had never written a lyric in my life, nor would I think to write a lyric," she told a Dutch television station in 2013. "And then for some reason, I got in my head, what must it be like for a guy's first experience, and I just sat down and wrote it." OK, Judy!
I had forgotten about the fact that the Red Wings' championship moment was so closely associated with a song about a guy humping for the first time until very recently. A Defector staffer who shall remain nameless sang the song at a karaoke outing, and then revealed that a member of the Four Seasons was their middle school band teacher. This unlocked a buried memory: When I was in eighth grade, I had a Computer Lab teacher who would occasionally play "December 1963 (Oh What A Night)," at the end of class, and when we asked him why he said it was because it was the "Red Wings' victory song." Not sure how appropriate that was, in hindsight. "We did get some letters," said Parker in 2013. "From parents who were saying, 'You know, the Four Seasons were such a good, solid All-American group until that Judy Parker comes along.'"
I asked Lauren Theisen, Defector's oldest Detroit sports fan, if she had any thoughts or recollections about this song's association with the Red Wings. "I was two years old when this happened. Let's go Red Wings," she said.
The world is a funny place. One day a woman who had never written a song before sat down and thought, "I wonder what it's like for a guy when he bones for the first time," and from there she not only helped resurrect Frankie Valli's career, but became a part of one of the greatest moments in the history of Detroit sports.
