Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A singer who had many 1960s hit singles, including '24 Hours from Tulsa', 'Town Without Pity', and 'Something Got a Hold of My Heart'.
On the island
Eight records
The Last SongFavourite
I think it relates to a a son dying of AIDS and reconciling with his father who uh he never thought would acknowledge him. and console him when he was near the end. And the lyric and performance is superb and uh it really sends the message home.
when I had my high school band there was a a dance craze called A Stroll. You remember that at all? ... Well, this was kind of the anthem for the stroll, and it's called CC Rider.
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.
The next song is kinda unique and I don't think a very well-known artist uh in the UK: Gillian Welch. ... I I would describe her as being bluegrass, I think.
Israel 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.
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
The guy that cuts my hair. 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.
Andrea Bocelli & Sarah Brightman
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, and you would hit the the real rousing chorus of the song. The audience would all as one leap in the air and give you a Bravo
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:22Is it still magic for you, Gene, even after all these years?
Ah, yes. I'm very happy that I really love what I'm doing. ... 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. That wasn't so well crafted and such a good song that I mind doing it.
Presenter asks
3:08Where did you write [your songs]? Give me a picture of Gene Pitney in Rockville.
Well, I had a very unique situation. I had a nineteen thirty five Ford ... That was candy apple red with a white Orland top with a rumble seat. ... I used to go and take that and go to Walker's Reservoir, ... with my guitar. and sit there in the only parking space that was there looking out over the water. and write songs, and some of the big ones actually were developed there.
Presenter asks
5:34Was 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?
No, I don't think so at all. I mean, the last thing I ever thought I would ever be was a singer. I mean, I sang all the time. I sang in church, I sang in the choir, I sang in the glee club. ... And I found out years and years later that the neighbors used to sit out and listen to me, but they used to hide. '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.
The keepsakes
The book
The Giant Book of Mensa Puzzles
Robert Allen
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.
The luxury
It's a collaboration of the Mandavi and Rothschild third generation family, and it's just a lovely, lovely, lovely, fine, wonderful wine.
Presenter asks
7:15What about at home? Was there music in the house? Did your mother or father play it?
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, I heard him sing oh three or four years before he died at a at Christmas. ... and he had a beautiful voice, but very, very seldom ever sang.
Presenter asks
9:05How did your mother and father make a living?
The little town that I lived in, Rockville, was a mill town had fourteen woollen mills primarily is what they were. And he worked um on one of the machines, a weaving machine. 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 ... 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.
Presenter asks
9:50What happened when you first came home [with money]?
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. ... And I walked over to her and I said, I want you to have this. 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. ... I realized later on that they had a very hard time thinking that I could possibly do something that could be successful enough to to earn money with music.
“I'm very happy that I really love what I'm doing.”
“I actually think I'm singing better now than I sang Twenty years ago.”
“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.”
“If somebody has to be in control, I want to be the one, yes.”