Jun 26, 2025 By Brad Hundt 4 min read

Folks who make a living playing music are generally not known as your early-bird-catches-the-worm types.

But it was 8 a.m. on the West Coast one morning earlier this month and Frankie Avalon was already up and at ’em at his California home, ready to check a phone interview off his list of the day’s activities.

Avalon explained, “I’m from South Philadelphia, a European guy, and I lived in a rowhouse, and when summer came around, I was up waiting for everybody to get up so I could play ball.”

Golf has now replaced baseball as Avalon’s preferred sport – he characterizes his interest as “avid” and was due to hit the links shortly after the interview wrapped up – but Avalon is still actively performing and singing his hits, something he has done since he was a clean-cut teenage balladeer almost seven decades ago.

“I still enjoy going out there and working and playing in front of an audience,” he said. “It really keeps me going, and when people say retire, I say, ‘Retire to what?’ I enjoy it.”

Avalon will be 85 in September and now works at a fairly leisurely pace, doing about 20 concerts a year. One of them will be at the Palace Theatre in Greensburg Sunday at 3 p.m. Avalon’s band includes his son, Frankie Avalon Jr., on drums, and Edan Everly, the son of the late Don Everly of the Everly Brothers, on guitar.

“I play the hits,” Avalon said. “I don’t say, ‘Here’s a new song.'”

Some of those hits came while his peers were still in high school. Avalon first appeared on network television when he was 12, playing a trumpet in a sketch on “The Jackie Gleason Show,” and a couple of singles showcasing his trumpet playing followed. His career kicked into a higher gear in 1957, when the single “DeDe Dinah” made it to No. 7 on the Billboard singles chart, and then even higher in 1959, when the singles “Venus” and “Why” reached No. 1. That year, he also had two other songs land in the top 10.

Like a lot of teen idols in those days, Avalon soon branched out into movies. He was cast in John Wayne’s Oscar-nominated epic “The Alamo,” and soon enough was a regular in films released by American International Pictures, the independent studio that put a steady stream of quickly-made, inexpensive B-movies into theaters and drive-ins in the 1950s and 1960s. He was in fare like “Panic in the Year Zero” and “Operation Bikini” before becoming Annette Funicello’s companion in a series of beach party movies, including “Muscle Beach Party,” “Beach Blanket Bingo” and “How to Stuff a Wild Bikini.” In 1965 alone, Avalon was in six movies.

Avalon also did some stage work, appearing in productions of “Pal Joey” and “Grease,” among others. Nowadays, though, Avalon focuses on playing live, as well as Frankie Avalon’s Zero Pain Cream, a roll-on pain reliever. While he said he doesn’t have specific issues with pain, “I’ve always been inquisitive about different things and reading about different ideas and things that have been around for years and years. I just did some research with it.”

In 2015, Avalon also published “Frankie Avalon’s Italian Family Cookbook.”

“I love to cook,” said Avalon, who has eight children with his wife, Kay, and several grandchildren. “And Sunday is a big dinner with lots of friends and family. I have a lot of people around, and people would say, ‘Why don’t you write a book?’ So, finally I did.”

Despite this foray into publishing, Avalon is less enthusiastic about penning a memoir.

“Sometimes I think about it,” he said. “If I would sit down for an hour a day and start writing, I’d need about four books in a row.”

The entertainment business, like the world at large, has changed markedly since Avalon was an up-and-comer in the 1950s. Young performers are “a lot more business- educated than I was and a lot of my peers, too,” he noted. But even if it is “a whole different business” in his estimation, Avalon said some fundamental principles still apply.

“You’ve got to have a passion,” Avalon said. “I don’t care what it is. If you want to be a plumber, a scientist, if you want to be an actor. You just have to have a passion for it and put the time into it.”

He added, “Keep your eyes and ears open.”

Additional information on Frankie Avalon’s appearance at the Palace Theatre in Greensburg can be found at westmorelandculturaltrust.org.