717 The Four Seasons “Rag Doll” 1964

“Four Seasons member and chief songwriter Bob Gaudio was inspired to create the group’s most memorable hit one day while driving down the West Side Highway leaving New York City through the Holland Tunnel near 10th Avenue when, during a marathon three-minute stoplight, a young woman in tattered clothes came up to clean his windows, hoping for a tip. Finding nothing in his pockets smaller than a five-dollar bill (in some interviews it's a ten-dollar bill), he handed it to her, and, he recalled, ‘I could see her in the rear-view mirror, just standing in disbelief in the middle of the street with the five dollars. And that whole image stayed with me, a rag doll was what she looked like’” (Steve Sullivan, Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, 2013). 

The Four Seasons “Rag Doll”