Gene Pitney

I mean, he's got a little bit of like musical soundtrack, you know, Walt Disney type thing going on in a couple.

Others are kind of more like the big beat ballads, you know, Gene Pitney or maybe, you know, Scott Walker later on.

Of course, Scott Walker's a big influence on Bowie.

So that was great.

We had Mercury, Smash, Phillips, Fontana.

We had Musicor, you know, Gene Pitney.

I mean, I got to meet these artists that would come to Chicago.

They would give you every bit of energy they could give you, you know.

I think it's just 'cause it's one of the first CDs we ever owned as a family.

And I, that and Gene Pitney, and I just played them to death.

Ooh, Gene Pitney had a great voice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Should be.

But Gene Pitney.

He's in.

John Coltrane.

that paves the way to the time when we send greetings out to our good friend Leslie and play her request.

And this week, Leslie wants to hear a track from the great Gene Pitney.

Good afternoon to you, Leslie.

This is for you.

only had time

What a voice.

Gene Pitney's rendition there of If Only I Had Time.

I wasn't aware he sang that song, but thanks to Leslie, I am now.

I mean, I'm in the tribute scene.

So one artist I absolutely love and that we do a tribute of is Gene Pitney.

And when I was putting this show together, it was amazing how many songs he actually had.

Yeah.

Rebecca, we've covered the story of Darlene Love a little on Today in History with the Retrospectors, so I'm going to pretend now not to know the answer to this question, but tell us a bit about Darlene Love, who she was and why it's important.

yeah so this week that documentary had its premiere at the toronto international film festival it's been getting good reviews and it's about the woman who was the voice and occasionally the name behind many of your favorite 1960s girl group hits she was the lead singer in the in the 60s of a los angeles girl group called the blossoms who were signed to phil spector's label And in 1962, they recorded a cover version of Gene Pitney's He's a Rebel, which ended up going to number one.

However, the song was actually credited to a different girl group, the New York-based group The Crystals, another one of Spectre's stable.

They apparently didn't even know this had happened until they heard their song on the radio.

And I always thought our next artist was, but I guess he didn't appear on the strip till the early 2000s.

We're going to hear Gene Pitney, a version of his 1967 hit, Something's Got a Hold of My Heart.

And this is a version he recorded with Soft Sales Mark Armand back in 1989.

And you're going to hear it here on Digging the Crates, cjsw.com.

If you go away If you go away If you go away If you go away As I know you must There'd be nothing left In this world to trust Just an empty room full of empty space Like the empty look I see on your face And I'd have been the shadow of your shadow If you might have kept me by your side If you go away If you go away If you go

away

At the top, we had soft sales of Mark Armand with one of the most idiosyncratic vocal stylists of the 60s, Mr. Gene Pitney, and their 989 camp run-through of track Pitney recorded in 1967.

Something's got a hold of my heart.