Early Years
Pitney was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and grew up in Rockville, now part of Vernon, Connecticut. His early influences were Clyde McPhatter, country-blues singer Moon Mullican and doo-wop groups like The Crows. He attended Rockville High School, at which he was named "the Rockville Rocket", and where he formed his first band, Gene & the Genials. He made records as part of a duo called Jamie and Jane with Ginny Arnell (who in late 1963 had a solo hit, "Dumb Head"), and in 1959 recorded a single as Billy Bryan. The first of the two Decca 45s as Jamie and Jane was "Snuggle Up, Baby," a cover of a song Charlie Gracie recorded at Cameo 1957 or early 1958, which remained unreleased until London Records released Gracie's original version in Europe in 1978.
Read more about this topic: Gene Pitney
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)