Music Insights: The Underrated, Supremely Talented Gene Pitney

Gene Pitney is one of the most underrated figures in all of popular music, for while he had a loyal fan following for over forty years, he stopped having hits for the most part once the Sixties were over. But for a period of time, from around 1959 to 1966, he was one of the greats. So much so that among his peers he was known as “The Voice”.

They still play his stuff on the oldies radio stations, songs like “Only Love Can Break A Heart”, as well as “Twenty-Four Hours From Tulsa”, which is one of the great Lost Highway tunes of all time. It‘s my theory that Hal David and Burt Bacharach, who co-wrote the song, stole the idea for “Tulsa” from Marty Robbins‘ “El Paso” – they‘re both cowboy songs about losing one‘s heart and one‘s life to a bar girl. One chance meeting and the guy “can never go home again.” Gene does it justice.

But Gene‘s greatest early achievement was'” Every Breath I Take”, the tune he recorded for Phil Spector when Phil was developing his Wall of Sound technique. The world wasn‘t quite ready for this particular two minute symphony. The song reached number 42 on the Billboard charts and disappeared. Years later Sting rewrote it as “Every Breath You Take”, but it‘s a far better song when sung by Gene. The lyrics Gene sang were written by a young Gerry Goffin – Carole King team, and are a mastery of ironic understatement.

After this spectacular disappointment on the charts, Gene went on to become the chosen singer for the title track of the movie Town Without Pity. It’s a shimmering masterpiece of vocal perfection that is the equal of anything made by Presley or Orbison at the time, and has been covered dozens of times since, but never so well as Gene’s version.

His 1963 hit ‘Mecca” was notable for its exotic sound and unusual instrumentation, and is said to have had a huge influence on The Rolling Stones. This recording was a significant departure from his massive David-Bacharach hit of a year earlier “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”. He had many hits throughout the mid-Sixties, among them “Half-Heaven, Half-Heartache”, “I Must Be Seeing Things” and “I’m Gonna Be Strong”.

He also turned out to be a fine songwriter who wrote “Hello Mary Lou” for Ricky Nelson, and “He‘s A Rebel” for the Crystals. He collaborated with George Jones on two fine country albums in 1965, long before such a thing was fashionable. He made another album with Jones’ regular duet partner, Melba Montgomery, which holds up well today.

Gene wasn’t the only casualty of the late ’60s emergence of folk-rock: Elvis, Roy, Dion, Del Shannon – they all disappeared from the charts. His popularity with British fans never died completely. British singer Marc Almond was responsible for an unlikely resurgence. His 1988 duet with Pitney, “Something’s Got A Hold Of My Heart,” became a number one UK hit — 21 years after Pitney’s previous version went to #5.

I saw Gene perform in Vancouver late in his career, and he was still in great voice. He travelled around the world with a musical director who hired out musicians from local symphony orchestras. The arrangements for piano, strings, and percussion were first-rate, and Gene’s performance was memorable for its intensity. In my view, his time working with Phil Spector and the great songwriting team of Hal David and Burt Bacharach taught him something fundamental, and that is that popular music can also be great music.

He was touring when he died in a hotel in Cardiff, Wales, in 2006 where he had performed that night to a sold-out crowd. His singing that night by all reports was terrific; he went upstairs to his room after the concert, fell asleep, and never woke up. He was sixty-six years old, a touring professional still in love with music, one who continues to be loved by thousand of adoring, somewhat aging fans. Count this writer among them.