You're The Apple of My Eye - After "Apple" and "Honey"

After "Apple" and "Honey"

The management or RCA Victor and The Four Lovers were encouraged by the success of "You're the Apple of My Eye" to make arrangements for recording an album for release for Christmas sales. The result, Joyride, had a collection of rhythm-and-blues and western covers, with a few pop standards and a handful of never-before-released songs, complete with a rollicking version of "White Christmas", patterned similar to the Drifters' version from 1955. In addition, RCA was releasing Four Lovers' singles roughly every two weeks, including covers of Hank Williams' "Jambalaya", Faye Adams' "Shake a Hand", and an early vocal version of "Night Train".

Joyride and the last five RCA Victor Four Lovers singles failed to chart and failed to sell. Today, they are collector's items, with the album being worth up to $400 (US) in near mint condition and some of the singles at roughly one-third that. The group's last single, "My Life for You Love"/"Pucker Up", sold so few that the relative handful of existing copies are now selling for up to $3000 each.

By the end of 1957, The Four Lovers had no recording contract and returned to performing in clubs and lounges before being put "on hiatus", albeit briefly before a new artists contract with Bob Crewe's Peri Records gave the group a new purpose for its existence, that of supporting musicians with the occasional opportunity to record songs on their own (which they did — and release under a variety of names between 1958 and 1961). This began a sequence of events which, in four years, resulted in the group becoming The Four Seasons.