Gene Pitney RIP

You done some great work, fella.

More seriously, one of those people whose influence was greater than his considerable success as a front singer.

Check his song credits!

dude, you're kidding, right?

anyway.... :-(

It was the end of the month, I was a bit skint, and Gene seemed to tour regularly.

Check out Pitney's 'Lips are Redder on You.' It's a brilliant song, always been my favorite of his.

R.I.P.

Gene Pitney was one of my mum's teen-favourites, but fortunately that was one of her rare lapses in bad taste. "It Hurts To Be In Love" and "Town Without Pity" are so classic. And "(I Wanna) Love My Life Away" was practically revolutionary. Great voice, too. RIP.

Yeah, I bet Gene and Harry Nilsson are having a laugh about this right now in pure pop heaven. I've mentioned this before, but Pitney was supposed to be the first to record both "Trains and Boats and Planes" and "What The World Needs Now." However his manager got into a dispute with Bacharach & David and he didn't get to cut them. Of the B&D stuff he did cut, "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" & "Fool Killer" deserve a shout out. and of course, "Hello Mary Lou" then, now, and forever. (somebody nominate this for the 60s poll).

My mom had a 25 greatest hits CD--horrible mastering, but it's fabulous, got me interested in a nascent way in the whole Spector/Brill Bldg thing. "24 Hours" and "Liberty Valance" and especially "Town Without Pity" are utterly amazing. There's lots of others, too. His catalogue is studded with gems, and a lot of them are pretty unalike--he was one of the most versatile journeymen ever. R.I.P.

Best point brought up here... thats pretty weird.

I hardly ever/thank the stars above

Funny you should say that. Recently I played for a friend "Louisiana," a near-hit for Mike Kennedy (the Los Bravos lead singer) that he'd never heard, and his reaction was, "I would have thought this was Gene Pitney."

My favorites: the "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart" duet, and "She's a Heartbreaker," which reads hideously on a lyric sheet but is an adorably spastic performance.

Record: Elton John – ‘The Last Song’
Book: The Giant Book of Mensa Puzzles by Robert Allen
Luxury: Case of Opus One wine.

God, this is so true. How had I never heard of him before? That YouTube clip is pretty great. Does anyone want to assemble a homemade best of/greatest hits and YSI? I would love to hear this stuff.

RIP

http://www.marcalmond.co.uk/boxoffice/genepitney.jpg

Yeah, relistening to the two-disc comp I have made me realize just how much he had to draw on -- it was like he had a burst of ten-year amazingness and then after that he coasted, but maybe he didn't need to do anything more than that. He made his mark in a lot of different ways and then could spend the rest of his days performing his songs and hits, enjoying life. There are much worse fates.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/3681938.stm

It's a clip from just a couple of weeks back on The Big Breakfast where he was the guest, there to promote the tour -- a few standard answers and stories but not wholly so. You do get the sense from his delivery, rather than what he's talking about, that he can be brusque, or worse! But more accurately I think it must be his speaking manner, combined with a classic professionalism -- just going out and getting the job done!

Anyway, by corrobation I mean he talks about how he doesn't get tired of performing the hits because, as he says, there were so many different types of songs he did, that he could pace his shows as he chose and just enjoy performing. Sounds about right.

And there's a great if spoken-over clip of him doing "24 Hours to Tulsa" from the sixties midway through the interview. Fine stuff.

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Goodbye Gene Genius
As a kid I remember watching on our small black and white television the pop-shows of the sixties - 'Ready Steady Go', 'Thank Your Lucky Stars' and those beloved TV music specials that proved so popular in that period.

I particularly loved the distinctive, charismatic singers of the Big Ballads, of which Gene Pitney was one of the greatest. I wanted to be a singer like him and sing those songs of lost chances, loneliness, redemption and the triumph of love. Songs that had huge orchestrations, sweeping strings and almost perfect production values - full of emotion and drama.

Many years later, in the late eighties I was recording the song 'Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart', for my album, a song originally made famous by Gene Pitney. I had decided to record it after seeing Gene perform it live one night at a concert in London's East End. I asked him if he would duet on it with me and to my utter amazement he accepted. So there it was, Gene Pitney guesting on one of his biggest hits that was now being sung by a fan.

It was a mad idea but it worked - Gene loved it as much as I did and perhaps one of the oddest duets ever recorded came to be. Gene and I recorded our vocals separately due to prior commitments, Gene apparently stripping to the waist in the studio to give emotion full flight 'without restraint'.

We actually met for the first time in a neon junkyard just outside Las Vegas for the filming of the video. It was a magic moment, made all the more meaningful as Gene had won a large amount of money in the casino prior to leaving for the shoot (perhaps an omen of good luck for the record). I remember his warmth and immediate generosity of spirit, kind words and restrained professionalism.

The song became one of the biggest selling records of the year, number one in the UK for four weeks and an international hit.

It was during the promotional campaign that I came to know him best, able to share his sense of humour at some of the absurd and surreal TV shows across Europe that we found ourselves appearing on. How strange the twists of fate can be - he had influenced me decades earlier and now I had been able to bring him to a whole new audience, in some small way.

Over the ensuing years we had occasionally planned to perform together again, once for a Burt Bacharach tribute to sing Dusty Springfield's hit 'I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself' and, more recently, on Jools Holland's Hootenanny TV show. Unfortunately it was not to be on either occasion.

After my motorcycle crash he sent me touching messages, expressing his deep concern and wishing me a full recovery.

Our plans to perform together once more had always been something we would get round to eventually, we were both up for it, but it wasn't to be.

A unique and utterly distinctive voice, a great singer of stunning songs. He was charming, classy and incomparable. The voice and the songs will last forever. It was an honour to have been a part of his story and I am eternally grateful that he was part of mine. The late great Gene Pitney.

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He'll also be covering "Backstage" on his upcoming album in tribute -- very good choice of song, perfect for Marc.

Hmm, I guess "cover" was an inaccurate term. (My bad.) I just meant that all his biggest hits were written by others. They'd have to have been previously recorded by others to be proper cover versions, of course. (But the essence of my observation stays the same.)