Gene Pitney

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and three, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:22

My castaway this week is a singer. Anyone with half an ear on the radio or the gramophone in the 60s will know his greatest hits. He had 40 of them in the UK alone: Town Without Pity, Something Got a Hold of My Heart, and of course, 24 Hours from Tulsa, one of the most successful singles ever released, all delivered in his unique, high-pitched, compelling voice. Success came as something of a surprise to this boy from Rockville, Connecticut, and the family rallied round. His mother even ran his unofficial fan club. He's never strayed far from his roots, even though today, at 62, he's still touring and performing. His enduring popularity is founded on two things: the strength of his material and the power of his performance. Live performing is terrific, he says. On a night when everything works, it's just magic. Here's Jean Pitney. And is it still magic for you, Jean, even after all these years? I mean, 25 concerts I think you did in the UK last year. You must like it some.

Gene Pitney1:20

Ah, yes. I'm very happy that I really love what I'm doing.

Presenter1:23

Mm.

Gene Pitney1:24

I think that you could, you know, wear it thin and and and not like it any more. A lot of things I've been blessed with, like the songs themselves. People say, you know, don't you get sick and tired of of singing like the same songs that were hits? I don't think there's one song that I had that was a hit.

Gene Pitney1:39

That wasn't so well crafted and such a good song that I mind doing it.

Presenter1:44

But what is interesting I'm sure people always want you to sing those old songs,'cause they take us right back. It's the smell, the sound, the feel, everything. We're right back to when we were kind of teenagers.

Speaker 11:53

Yeah.

Presenter1:54

But

Presenter1:55

I think that the audience here is very, very faithful to you, isn't it? It's perhaps even more faithful than your American audience.

Gene Pitney2:01

Oh, absolutely. This is like the kernel of the I don't even want to call it fan club. It's just wonderful people that have supported me throughout the entire career. And I try to reciprocate with that. I mean, I don't go out and come back and just do shows and say, I'm going to sing songs that were hits and you're going to come back and watch me. We try to make it as good as possible when I'm doing that concert. And I work very, very hard at that.

Gene Pitney2:24

And I actually think I'm singing better now than I sang

Gene Pitney2:27

Twenty years ago.

Presenter2:28

Do you?

Gene Pitney2:28

Hmm.

Presenter2:29

Because of course what you captured uh for us all then was that kind of

Presenter2:33

Teenage angst, really, wasn't it? It was young love in a way, although that was Paul Anchor, I know. But but it was that kind of that anguish, I suppose, twenty four hours from Tulsa, you know, that conscious rid conscience ridden stuff.

Presenter2:45

I suppose people imagine when they meet you that you're going to be really sad, you know, that you're really going to be.

Gene Pitney2:49

I know.

Presenter2:50

Miserable.

Gene Pitney2:51

I've had that for a long time, yes, because of the type of a song that it is.

Presenter2:54

It's lost love, isn't it? That's that's what that's what you played into, wasn't everybody's love life, I suppose.

Gene Pitney3:01

Yeah, well I've heard a lot of those as well. I mean, I can't tell you how much virginity got lost in in with the uh with some of those songs.

Presenter3:08

But where did you write them? Give me a picture of Jean Pitney in Rockville, Tennessee, you know, sitting somewhere.

Presenter3:14

Penning these things.

Gene Pitney3:16

Well, I had a very unique situation. I had a nineteen thirty five Ford

Gene Pitney3:20

Cool.

Gene Pitney3:21

That was candy apple red with a white Orland top with a rumble seat. You know what a rumble seat is in the back? It's a a seat that's outside of the car itself. It's in the back and you just turn the crank and pull it down, and it's like room for two people to sit in the back. I used to go and take that and go to Walker's Reservoir,

Speaker 13:26

Back

Gene Pitney3:38

With my guitar.

Gene Pitney3:40

and sit there in the only parking space that was there looking out over the water.

Gene Pitney3:44

and write songs, and some of the big ones actually were developed there.

Gene Pitney3:48

And where I lived it was a tiny, tiny town and completely remote from anything to do with the music business. And I can't tell you how many times the cops stopped me.

Gene Pitney3:58

And came and said, you know, What are you doing here? And I you know, you tell him, I'm writing songs with my guitar in a nineteen thirty five Ford Yeah, all right So it was easier after I had some success.

Presenter4:09

Okay, I want to hear more, but let's hear the first record you're going to play on this desert island of yours. What is it?

Gene Pitney4:15

The first one is a Elton John song. It's from The One album.

Gene Pitney4:20

And I think it relates to a a son dying of AIDS and reconciling with his father who uh he never thought would acknowledge him.

Gene Pitney4:27

and console him when he was near the end. And the lyric and performance is superb and uh it really sends the message home.

Speaker 44:33

Yesterday.

Speaker 44:36

You came to lift me up

Speaker 44:41

As light astrolog and brittle as a bird.

Speaker 44:48

Things that were never spoken, that kind of understanding.

Speaker 14:51

Uh

Speaker 44:56

Set me free'cause I know

Presenter5:04

Elton John and The Last Song. That's right up your street, really, isn't it, Julia? When it gets to that poem.

Gene Pitney5:07

When it gets to that hook, when it gets to that chorus, I want to go in and sing a harmony with them, yes.

Presenter5:11

Do you sing at? Do you do it in your concerts?

Gene Pitney5:14

No, I haven't, but it's not a bad idea.

Presenter5:16

But you do sort of Robbie Williams, Angels, and that sort of thing.

Gene Pitney5:19

Yeah, and we're looking for things right now for the new tours. I like to change the show every time out there.

Presenter5:23

Hmm.

Gene Pitney5:24

This would be a great song. That's a very good idea. Thank you.

Presenter5:27

Yeah.

Presenter5:28

But it's lyrical ballads. I mean, that's what we look to you for, isn't it? I'm Killing Me Softly. It's so singable. Yeah, yeah.

Gene Pitney5:31

And it's so singable. Yeah, yeah. It's so emotional.

Presenter5:34

But was it obvious back in Rockville, Connecticut, you know, that you had a musical talent and were going to be a star, right from the word go?

Gene Pitney5:42

No, I don't think so at all. I mean, the last thing I ever thought I would ever be was a singer.

Gene Pitney5:47

I mean, I sang all the time. I sang in church, I sang in the choir, I sang in the glee club.

Gene Pitney5:52

And I used to sit on the the front porch. I found this out years and years later. I used to buy this you know the magazines that they have that have the lyrics of the hits of the day in them? Well, I used to buy those and sit out there and just sing a cappella the the songs. And I found out years and years later that the neighbors used to sit out and listen to me, but they used to hide.

Gene Pitney6:11

'Cause they knew that I was a real quiet shy kid and that that would have been the end of it if they ever caught me.

Presenter6:15

You were very shy and therefore wouldn't have sung in public. Is that what you're saying?

Gene Pitney6:19

No, I didn't ever, ever, ever want to be. If you had ever told me I was going to be out in front of millions and millions of people, you would have seen the back side of me going f far far away from you.

Presenter6:28

But didn't you sing at school in the choir or

Gene Pitney6:29

I sang the first time I ever sang live was with the Glee Club.

Gene Pitney6:34

At a high school recital.

Gene Pitney6:37

And I remember that I had to sing the solo after the intermission, so when the curtain went back up again I was brought out in front of the entire choir.

Gene Pitney6:46

And the song was called Turtledove.

Gene Pitney6:49

And good old Miss Lewis was up there the way that they do, looking at you with a big smile on her face, knowing that I was petrified. And it really should have been Ver thee well, my dear, I must be gone and it came out, Ver thee well, my and sh and she just kept, you know, with a big smile and conducting and saying, Yes, yes, yes and it got better. I got stronger and stronger as it went along, and the second half of the song was okay.

Presenter7:15

What about at home? Was there music in the house? Did your mother or father play it?

Gene Pitney7:19

My mother was uh a very natural, talented woman who could sit down and play she could hear something and sit down and play it on piano without ever taking a lesson at all. My dad, though,

Gene Pitney7:29

I heard him sing oh three or four years before he died at a at Christmas. I was playing Christmas carols, and he had a couple of belts, and he loosened up and he was singing like Silent Night or something, and he had a beautiful voice, but very, very seldom ever sang. Almost like my own kids, the same thing.

Speaker 17:43

Yeah.

Presenter7:43

Almost like my own

Gene Pitney7:45

Apparently they all sing great, the three boys. But you'll never ever hear them sing.

Presenter7:50

Why not?

Gene Pitney7:50

Well, I think it's like, you know, let's see if you sound like daddy type thing, you know? And it it puts them off.

Presenter7:50

Well, I think

Presenter7:54

Okay.

Presenter7:56

It's all a bit intimidating. But it was obviously there. It's in the gene somewhere, this natural. You've got to pluck up the courage to do it, huh?

Gene Pitney8:00

I think so.

Gene Pitney8:03

Yeah. Boom.

Presenter8:04

Tell me about your second record.

Gene Pitney8:06

Second song is uh kinda unique. Chuck Willis is the singer and the song is C C Rider. I don't I don't know where that actually comes from. But when I had my high school band there was a a dance craze called A Stroll. You remember that at all?

Speaker 48:21

Mm.

Gene Pitney8:21

And you had to go around the line and come back in the middle again with it? Well, this was kind of the anthem for the stroll, and it's called CC Rider.

Speaker 48:31

T-Rider.

Speaker 48:34

Go see what you have done. That's yes it CC Rider

Speaker 48:43

See what you have done.

Speaker 48:49

Girl, you made me love you!

Speaker 48:53

Now you man has come.

Presenter8:59

Chuck Willis with C C Rider Music for the Stroll back in Rockville, Connecticut.

Gene Pitney9:03

Mockville, Connecticut.

Presenter9:05

What about the family? How did your mother and father make a living?

Gene Pitney9:08

The little town that I lived in, Rockville, was a mill town had fourteen woollen mills primarily is what they were.

Gene Pitney9:13

And he worked um on one of the machines, a weaving machine.

Gene Pitney9:18

until they had one of these awful things happen where somebody came in and said, We're going to unionize the city and the company told everybody, uh if you do this, we're going to move out of here to a place where there there is no union and they said, Oh, they can't do that I watched them as a little kid roll out of town with flatbed trucks with fourteen factories full of machines. But it kind of broke an awful lot of people in the town.

Presenter9:42

So, money obviously was a bit of a problem in the house, actually.

Gene Pitney9:45

Yeah, we weren't poor, but we lived by my dad's paycheck from week to week.

Presenter9:49

Yeah.

Gene Pitney9:49

Definitely.

Presenter9:50

So what happened when you first came home? You know, later on when you were successful, you came home with a kind of fistful of dollars. They

Gene Pitney9:56

Well, that's one of my famous stories that I couldn't believe it. It was the shock of my life. I finally sold four songs.

Presenter9:56

That's the thing.

Gene Pitney10:03

Uh I'm not even sure they weren't that great. I think the guy was actually being nice to me when when he did it.

Gene Pitney10:08

But he gave me an advance on the songs I was in New York, and I came home at about two or three o'clock in the morning, and as mothers do, she always sat in a rocking chair and waited for me, no matter what time it was to get there.

Gene Pitney10:19

And they'd been helping me out for a long, long time, and I had eight fifty dollar bills, which I had never ever seen in my life, and I knew that she'd never ever seen in her life.

Presenter10:26

In cash, in your hand.

Gene Pitney10:27

In cash, right.

Gene Pitney10:29

And I walked over to her and I said, I want you to have this.

Gene Pitney10:32

And she looked at it, had it in her hand, and she looked up at me and she said, You take that back to wherever you got it from. And I didn't know how to take that. I didn't know exactly what that meant. But I realized later on that

Gene Pitney10:44

They had a very hard time

Gene Pitney10:47

thinking that I could possibly do something that could be successful enough to to earn money with music.

Gene Pitney10:53

And it took a long time for that to sink in.

Presenter10:55

But had they paid for piano lessons for you or anything? Had they paid for music lessons?

Gene Pitney10:59

Well, the guitar was the key to everything. I came home from ice skating one afternoon.

Gene Pitney11:03

'Cause it was starting to snow and I didn't have any snow tires.

Gene Pitney11:06

and I went by this little shop that's still there to day, De Baldo's Music Shop.

Gene Pitney11:11

And I'm not an impulsive person. I don't really know why I did did this, but if I didn't do it, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you right now. I just stopped, pulled in, and signed up for guitar instructions.

Gene Pitney11:23

And that led to everything else. I took the guitar lessons, started a band in high school, and to condense everything we were playing one night at a record hop, which was the rage at that time, and the proverbial fat man with a cigar walked up and he said, Do you want to make a record? and that's really how how it all started.

Presenter11:38

If you wrote that story, no one would believe you really. I know. It wasn't planned. That's how it happened. Absolutely classic, isn't it?

Gene Pitney11:40

I know. It wasn't planned. That's how it happened.

Presenter11:44

Tell me about record number three.

Gene Pitney11:46

Ah, well, back to the band again. And the next song is by uh the master himself, Chuck Berry. We close with it, and the song has so much energy and the incredible ability he has of writing and and singing this type of a song. The lyrics is meshed as a part of the melody. Each syllable is a note of the music, so when singing it, the words have to fall off the tip of your tongue for it to be right. And I could do it pretty good.

Presenter12:09

Go on.

Gene Pitney12:10

Well, I'm a writer little letter goin' to mail it to my local DJ

Gene Pitney12:14

I got a rockin' little record that I want my Jockey to play.

Gene Pitney12:18

Let's see if I sound like it.

Speaker 412:19

Write a little letter, I'm gonna mail it to my local DJ

Speaker 412:24

Yeah, it's a jumpin' little record. I want my jockey to play.

Speaker 412:30

Roll over Beethoven! I gotta hear it again today!

Speaker 412:35

You know my temperature rising, the two parts blowing the fuse.

Speaker 412:40

My heart beat in rhythm and my soul keep a singing to blue.

Speaker 412:45

I roll over Beethoven and tell Schaikowski the news.

Presenter12:49

Rollover Beethoven, Chuck Berry, of course. It's interesting, Gene Pitney, that your only problem, as I understand it, was that the fat man with the cigar who discovered you didn't want you to be Gene Pitney in the genials, did he?

Gene Pitney13:00

No, nobody wanted me to be Jean Pitney, and I really didn't know any better. Uh if if it's your own name you don't realize whether it's good or bad, you know. I mean, the first thing that they did was put me with a girl, and I became Jamie of Jamie and Jane.

Gene Pitney13:13

Thank God it was Jamie.

Gene Pitney13:16

And then uh some really creative person called me Billy Bryan after that.

Gene Pitney13:21

And then they wanted to do A Name of the Century. Homer Muzzie was a name, and I said that's it.

Gene Pitney13:27

That's the end right now. I'm not going through life with a handle like that. So that's you

Presenter13:31

Wouldn't you have done anything to be a star to make records? Because that's what you wanted to do by then, wasn't it?

Gene Pitney13:35

No, I was going to be Gene Pitney no matter why, I didn't didn't really care.

Presenter13:38

Hmm.

Gene Pitney13:38

Yeah.

Presenter13:39

And in the end Gene Pitney found himself a publisher. That was really the key, wasn't it?

Gene Pitney13:44

Well, I think we found each other. The publisher was looking for a vehicle to um to build his publishing company. And he heard me when I walked in and sat down at the piano, and I think he thought that I was it. I was looking for a place to find an outlet with somebody who could make some success with the songs that I was writing. So it uh it worked out well for both.

Presenter14:04

So, not necessarily you singing them. You would be happy if you just sold your songs. It was a kind of two-way deal.

Gene Pitney14:09

Yeah, prior to meeting him, I had banged on doors trying to get people to record me for like a year without an awful lot of success. I think they heard that high-pitched sound that I have and I could tell by looking at A ⁇ R men's eyes, you know, that they weren't really sure whether that was a selling sound or or not. So this was like a a side door where I thought if I could make demonstration records, they call them, where you just make a record to present to someone to sing your song.

Gene Pitney14:35

that somebody had to hear me on there.

Presenter14:36

But presumably you were writing them in the wrong key for other people because your voice is so much higher pitched.

Gene Pitney14:40

Well, that was that was one of the problems in the beginning. That was one of the problems with the the type of song that I was writing as well. They said to me, This is a great song and it's terrific, but nobody out there is gonna sing it. So we gotta switch this. And that's when I started writing more contemporary um

Gene Pitney14:54

Up tempo songs, things like rubber balls and things like that which were which had success.

Presenter14:58

The Bobby V thing. Uh would s would your publisher what was his name? The pub?

Gene Pitney15:02

Baron Schroeder.

Presenter15:03

Aaron Schroeder, would he go out and just sell these things without your knowing, and would you suddenly discover then that that they'd been bought or somebody recorded?

Gene Pitney15:09

Yeah.

Presenter15:10

Yeah.

Gene Pitney15:10

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I just learned recently about what he did to get Rick Nelson to sing Hello Mary Lou. I was reading about how he went to California. Rick Nelson's dad, Ozzie Nelson, was a very shrewd businessman. So in order for Schroeder to go and retain the publishing on this song, I thought, how did he pull that off? Well, he even went so far as to play tennis with Ozzie. So I don't know what it came down to. Maybe they made a bet or something in the end. I don't know.

Presenter15:34

BAAAAAAA

Presenter15:34

Well, I hope you got your cut on Hello Mary Lou.

Gene Pitney15:37

Oh, yes, that's that is probably the most this is now forty years later or something like that after that song. I could still live on that one song alone, quite happily. It's that big a copyright all over the world.

Presenter15:47

Good God.

Gene Pitney15:48

Hmm.

Presenter15:48

And rubber ball as well, I presume.

Gene Pitney15:50

Rubber ball as well. He's a rebel as well, yeah. Not bad.

Presenter15:54

Uh

Presenter15:54

But what was the one that made it for Jean Pitney a as a as a singer?

Gene Pitney15:59

It was a song called I Want to Love My Life Away. It was the first hit that I had.

Presenter16:02

You but I mean, I remember it, but I'm not going to sing it. Give us a quick blast just to rem remind people.

Gene Pitney16:06

Yeah, I wanna love my life away. I wanna love my life away. I wanna love, love, love.

Presenter16:14

I'll love my life away with you. Great stuff. Record number four.

Gene Pitney16:18

The next song is kinda unique and I don't think a very well-known artist uh in the UK: Gillian Welch.

Gene Pitney16:26

Uh she's

Gene Pitney16:28

I I would describe her as being bluegrass, I think. It's got a dobro and it's got uh either a a Wiesenborn or a Wiesenborn, I don't know how you pronounce it, on the session, which is the thing that's gonna come in and go boom right after the beginning of the song.

Speaker 416:43

No, don't lose my head.

Speaker 416:47

No flowers on my to

Speaker 416:50

No gold paint

Speaker 416:54

Name Marble Tiller Every one thing I want

Speaker 417:01

They lay me in the grass

Speaker 417:04

When I die.

Speaker 417:06

Here I still have that

Presenter17:12

Gillian Welch with Tear My Stillhouse Down. You mentioned Gene Pitney He's a Rebel, which you wrote for The Crystals, didn't you? It went to number one, I think. Now they were they were produced by Phil Spector. You di you knew him quite well, didn't you?

Gene Pitney17:18

Right.

Gene Pitney17:26

Yes, I had uh I had dinner with Phil the very first day he arrived in New York from Los Angeles. And you know, people always say to me, you know, is he as screwy as uh you know, as we've heard, you know. And Phil was uh and is a very eccentric man.

Presenter17:39

Did you go on seeing him through the seventies and on after? Because he produced some of your records.

Gene Pitney17:44

He produced one of my uh one of my favorite songs called Every Breath I Take. But no, we didn't stay uh close and I actually saw him about a year ago when I was inducted into the uh the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He went walking by and I was gonna say hello, and then I looked and I thought, Mm no, there's just something something strange about those eyes, so I just let it I let it go.

Presenter18:01

Something

Gene Pitney18:04

Uh

Presenter18:04

What was your reaction then when you saw he was charged with murder the other day?

Gene Pitney18:08

I'm hoping that my theory is correct on what happened. I mean, I met a friend of his that night who was Marvin Mitchenson. Do you know that name? He's a Palamoni attorney, a big Palamoni attorney. I didn't realize he was with Phil. He's a very close friend of Phil's. And I've seen him recently on television talking about what happened. And he said, you know, this doesn't fit anything. He said, Phil has been so good.

Gene Pitney18:30

For the last several years he said he's absolutely stable and all that eccentricity thing where it went to a you know extreme. He said it's stopped.

Gene Pitney18:39

And then I read that that night when this happened that he had gone to a bar and the bartender said that he had a daiquiri, whereas he drinks diet coke.

Gene Pitney18:49

Then he went to the House of Blues, where he had a bottle of champagne with Bourbon Chasers.

Gene Pitney18:55

Now I think that if the thing that straightened him out were a bunch of psychotic

Gene Pitney19:00

Drugs and then you go and drop that on top of it. I have a feeling that he didn't even know what he was doing.

Presenter19:05

Hm terrible story, though, isn't it so far?

Gene Pitney19:06

Yeah.

Presenter19:08

Yeah. But how how do we know what happened?

Gene Pitney19:10

No, don't yet, no.

Presenter19:11

Yeah.

Presenter19:12

But it does seem to me, reading about you, that i you didn't in the way and you knew the Rolling Stones as well, you knew also but you didn't seem to embrace the sixties culture in quite the same way as the other. You always kept one foot at home in Rockville, didn't you?

Gene Pitney19:26

That was the key, and I did it on purpose, and I'm really glad that I did. But I found out later on I watched a lot of people that moved into New York. Let's say somebody came from a little town in Montana somewhere, and

Gene Pitney19:39

They were writing uniquely as as far as a songwriter. And a lot of them used to go to this place called the Turf Bar and Grill, which was underneath the Brill building on Broadway. And they all seemed to take from each other what they had and the uniqueness went away.

Gene Pitney19:53

And I saw that, and I thought, Stay where you are, stay up in that little town, you know, stay in Rockville.

Presenter19:55

Stay up in a

Presenter19:58

Hang on to who you are.

Gene Pitney19:58

You are.

Gene Pitney19:59

Yeah, and it it also forced me to like bring my feet back down on the ground. I mean these are the people I pump gas for, you know, pick peas for and all those things.

Presenter20:09

What you also did then, of course, is that you wore suits, which you know, not when it was particularly fashionable. I don't know whether it was a kind of fashion statement of your own or what, but I always remember you being quite sort of neat and tidy and well turned out, boy, huh?

Gene Pitney20:20

Thank you. No, I just love doing it that way. And I found out that when the whole British invasion, if you want to call it that, happened, everybody had long hair and the whole thing. And I had short hair, a suit and a tie. And I stood out like a sore thumb. I was the odd man out at that time.

Presenter20:20

Uh

Presenter20:34

But we knew who you were.

Presenter20:37

Record number five.

Gene Pitney20:38

It's a guy called Let's See If I Can Do It.

Gene Pitney20:41

Israel

Gene Pitney20:43

Kamakai wo ole, but he was known as Iz in Hawaii, and when he died the boaters did a vigil at the lagoon where he wrote and sang, and they scattered his ashes over the ocean. And he was said to be the Elvis of Hawaii.

Speaker 420:58

Who sounded well?

Speaker 421:04

The rainbow

Speaker 421:07

Way a high

Speaker 421:13

No

Speaker 421:14

Dreams that you dream of once in a love.

Speaker 421:20

The bite.

Speaker 421:23

Ah

Presenter21:26

Israel Kamakai Wole

Gene Pitney21:29

All right. That's a tough one.

Presenter21:31

The Elvis of Hawaii, with Over the Rainbow and What a Wonderful World from the motion picture soundtrack of the film Finding Forrester. It's undoubtedly twenty four hours from Tulsa that you know the mass of people remember you for, Jean. That was a a Baccarat song, wasn't it?

Gene Pitney21:44

Backrack and David, yes.

Presenter21:45

Yeah. Did he write it specially for you?

Gene Pitney21:47

I think that that was one of the ones that he that he had already written for me,'cause it with the Dearest, darling, with the ah that little thing coming out there. I got to tell you something about him as well. When Bert played you a song that he wrote, you would do it and you would learn it and put your guts into it when you're doing a recording, and then wonder why it really didn't sound as good as when he played it for you on the piano.

Presenter22:07

But also he wrote he was very good, wasn't he, at writing for people? Yes, he knew. He would try to find your strength.

Gene Pitney22:11

Yes, he knew he would try to find your strengths and your weaknesses as well. And write a song that would fit you.

Gene Pitney22:18

The best he possibly could. They started to do that after. I don't know whether Tulsa was the first one or not.

Presenter22:24

Interesting that Tarsa was a hit though. That's sort of country and western ballads style thing. When when, you know, the Beatles were hitting the scene and everything. It's amazing.

Gene Pitney22:28

Yeah.

Gene Pitney22:31

It didn't fit in the period of time at all. It sounded fresh because of it,'cause it was so unique, I guess.

Presenter22:36

But were you all working together? One has this sort of image of you all, you know, in the Brill building or somewhere on Broadway, this whole music scene with Carol King, Bert Bacharag, you, all these people rubbing shoulders is that how it was?

Gene Pitney22:48

Yes. The music business was in a little nucleus of of an area between, let's say, Forty third Street and Fifty Sixth Street or something like that.

Gene Pitney22:58

It was a time where, if there was somebody doing a recording session and you met them on the street, they'd say, Hey, you know, stop in and listen to what we're doing or listen to what we're going to record tonight.

Presenter23:08

So there are all sorts of little known facts about people actually being in the background on other people's recordings. I mean, as I say, you I think you and Phil Spector are on the back of a Rolling Stones recording, aren't you?

Gene Pitney23:17

Yeah, well, that was that was a very unique session. That was I was in Paris, I'm not sure doing what, but I was I stopped in London for one day on the way back home.

Gene Pitney23:26

And Andrew Lou Goldham, who was my publicist and their manager at the time, he called me and he said, You gotta help me. He said they need a new record and he said they're not even talking to each other. He said they all hate each other today, let alone singing together. So the guy that I was traveling with, we concocted, we took one of the fifths of cognac that we were bringing back, duty-free, and we took it to the studio and we made up this story that it was my birthday and that it was a tradition that everybody drank a water glass full of cognac.

Gene Pitney23:54

So everybody had a water glass full of cognac, and it broke the ice. It it worked and it the session came off a little bit drunken, but it was uh the Not Fade Away session.

Gene Pitney24:02

Phil Spector showed up um in a big black limo, and I had to laugh because they give him credit of playing maracas, playing percuss percussion, and maracas was his instrument. He was playing an empty cognac bottle with an American half dollar. That was his instrument.

Presenter24:16

Then was a Zeus

Presenter24:19

Record number six.

Gene Pitney24:20

Ah, what a great voice This lady has got such an effortless approach to singing. Her name is Norah Jones. She just approaches the notes and does it straight through and sings with the true, beautiful voice that she has, and the song is called Nightingale.

Speaker 424:36

Nottingham

Speaker 424:39

Sing us a song.

Speaker 424:44

I've allowed little once belong

Speaker 424:49

Nottingham

Speaker 424:52

Tell me you take

Speaker 424:57

Was your journey far too long?

Speaker 425:02

Does it seem like I'm look

Presenter25:06

Nora Jones, Ravishanka's daughter, singing Nightingale. You stayed in the charts here in the UK, Jean, well into the seventies, and you did lots of gruelling tours and so on. But in the meantime, you'd married a local Rockville girl and you'd produced three sons. And you live to day, what, just a few miles from where you were born, don't you?

Gene Pitney25:24

About eight miles.

Presenter25:24

And what sort of house? Describe your house to me.

Gene Pitney25:27

My house is a rambling, massive house now because the kids are all gone. It's called a Dutch Colonial, and it was built in the middle of an old apple orchard.

Gene Pitney25:35

Uh when I moved in it had seventy apple trees.

Gene Pitney25:39

I I mean, people always ask me, I have no idea what the square footage is, but it's a very, very big house, which I still love to have. I mean, there's only two of us in it now, but I need a lot of space, and it it still still fits my needs very well.

Presenter25:51

What about your mum and dad? Were you able to see them right before they died?

Gene Pitney25:54

Yes, but unlike a lot of mom and dads, they didn't want to move from where they were.

Presenter25:59

But you made them more comfortable for them.

Gene Pitney26:00

Oh yeah, definitely, yeah, they lived well.

Presenter26:02

And you've got a studio in this place. I mean, I I I I gather you're a bit of a tech head. You like sort of m multi-track recording and putting it all together.

Gene Pitney26:11

It's scary what you can have now,'cause if you go back to when we first started talking, when I made those first demos, state of the art was four track recording.

Gene Pitney26:19

My studio is it's it's small. It's only a thirty two track. But of those thirty two tracks, when you put it in for the computer now, you can do symphony orchestras if you want to, you can do anything.

Presenter26:29

So when are you going to compose another lyrical, melodious ballad that's going to go to number one?

Gene Pitney26:35

We're still working on it right now, and it's a real challenge. I have to write for now.

Gene Pitney26:40

You can't write a great sixties song because it's not going to relate at all. So there's certain people that I've been trying to emulate a little bit because they fit what I like, the David Grays and Dido's and people like that, and Creed and people like that, that are still writing melodic songs and good lyrics. So we're working on it.

Presenter26:58

Still dry.

Gene Pitney26:58

Don't sell me short here.

Presenter27:01

Record number seven.

Gene Pitney27:02

This is a group.

Gene Pitney27:03

That I really think is great, and I think, you know, pretty different from anything that we've played so far. The guy that cuts my hair.

Gene Pitney27:10

had this on a turntable of C D's one day, and I was sitting there having a haircut, and I kept hearing this thing come around each time the turntable would come around. I finally said to him, You've got to tell me what that is. And it was um

Gene Pitney27:22

The Gipsy Kings, and the song I believe is called Qua da terqui.

Speaker 427:29

I'm all

Speaker 427:31

Oh dear my tower.

Speaker 427:39

¿Qué compalabra ten singa naio.

Presenter27:53

Kaida Tea Aki by the Gypsy Kings. Well, now Gene Pitney on a desert island, you know, 24 hours from civilization. Oh, I forgot where I was. Exactly.

Gene Pitney27:59

Oh, I forgot where I was. That's right.

Presenter28:01

You can cope,'cause you were brought up in the great outdoors, weren't you?

Gene Pitney28:05

Yes. Um I was asked, you know, would you be a good person to be with, you know, on a desert island? And I I definitely have to pat myself on the back. I would say yes, I would be the survivor.

Presenter28:13

'Cause you were a trapper, you were a boy who went out with his fishing rod, you know how to do it.

Gene Pitney28:18

I did all that stuff, lived in the woods, um

Gene Pitney28:21

Myself and my trapping partner, his name was Kazimer Kanoff. We uh found a skunk. We didn't even catch it, and it was it was dead, it was frozen, and we thought we would keep the pelt, so we brought it home on a Sunday and nobody was home in my house.

Gene Pitney28:36

And we started to to skin it and

Gene Pitney28:39

They have are they called pole cats in the UK?

Speaker 128:42

Mm.

Gene Pitney28:43

Well, the smell is so strong that once you cut that sack, within seconds your sense of smell is gone. And my parents came home like, say, five, six o'clock in the evening, and

Gene Pitney28:55

Casimir went home. They made him sleep in the barn, and they burned all of his clothes.

Gene Pitney29:00

My mother bought two cases of airwick, which was the big air freshener at that time. And when I went to school that was a Sunday, when I went to school on the Monday, we had a very small supply of music books. You had to sit with someone else, you had to double up in the class. And the poor kid that sat with me put his hand up and went outdoors with the nun out into the hallway. And she came back in and she said, We think that you should go home for the rest of the week and come back next Monday.

Presenter29:24

And create.

Speaker 129:25

Come on.

Gene Pitney29:27

I stunked the high events, and that was the last polecat I ever trapped.

Presenter29:28

So that was the last

Presenter29:30

Trapped.

Presenter29:31

But other than that, you're going to do well on this well, nobody'll smell you all alone on a desert anyway. Um but as long as you're in charge, I'm told, which you will be on your own, you like to be in control, don't you?

Gene Pitney29:35

Yeah, right.

Gene Pitney29:41

If somebody has to be in control, I want to be the one, yes.

Presenter29:44

You like to do it your way, as they say.

Presenter29:46

I see. Okay. Well, that's fine, as long as you're on your own, isn't it?

Gene Pitney29:51

Yeah, right. No one's going to argue with it if I'm on my own.

Presenter29:54

Tell me about the last record.

Gene Pitney29:56

The last record is a my kind of a song, songs that I call a bravo songs. This is where whenever I had a a very melodic song in Italy,

Gene Pitney30:06

and you would hit the the real rousing chorus of the song.

Gene Pitney30:10

The audience would all as one leap in the air and give you a Bravo, Peetney Bravo

Gene Pitney30:18

And this is definitely one of those when it gets to the chorus. It's a beautiful song. Time to say goodbye. Conte par tiero. I get chills whenever I hear that soaring melodic chorus.

Speaker 430:35

Soon I'll keep everybody!

Speaker 430:40

Who's for the first time?

Presenter30:57

Conte parti ro Time to say goodbye, sung by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman. Now if you were stuck on this desert island, Jean, and you could only, having struggled to choose those eight, if you could only have one of the eight, which one would you choose?

Gene Pitney31:09

One of the songs?

Presenter31:10

Yeah.

Gene Pitney31:10

Ooh, now you now you're really making a tough

Presenter31:12

Oh no, squeeze timers.

Gene Pitney31:16

Um I'm gonna take the Elton John.

Presenter31:18

Okay, the last song, Walton John.

Gene Pitney31:20

Right.

Presenter31:21

Now what about your book? We give you the Bible and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare, so you've got, you know, plenty to read while you're there. But is there one book you'd like to take as well?

Gene Pitney31:29

The Giant Book of Mensa Puzzles by Robert Allen

Gene Pitney31:33

I love the Mensa things, the way that they make you think and the demand that they put on you to come up with the answers. I haven't taken the Mensa test. I am not a member of Mensa, but I do love and do enjoy doing that type of a thing.

Presenter31:46

Well we have to

Gene Pitney31:48

Well, we have to go to the next part of it and then I'll tell you what it was.

Presenter31:52

Oh, okay. So well, my next part is tell me about your luxury, is it Lynx then?

Gene Pitney31:56

Right. My luxury was a case of Opus I wine, which is a wonderful wine. It's a uh a collaboration of the Mandavi and Rothschild third generation family, and it's just a lovely, lovely, lovely, fine, wonderful wine.

Gene Pitney32:13

But my wife said

Gene Pitney32:15

When I told her what the book was, she said that sounds about right, because she said is there a tree on the island?

Gene Pitney32:23

And I said, I'm not sure. I didn't know if it was just an island with sand or if there was a tree. She said, You better get a tree, because she said, If you have that book.

Gene Pitney32:31

I know you, and if you can't get the answer to some of the Mensa puzzles and you drink the case of wine you're going to want to hang yourself.

Presenter32:39

Jean Pitney, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert islanders.

Speaker 432:42

Uh

Gene Pitney32:42

The Desert Island is a very good thing.

Speaker 132:51

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.