Search - Gene Pitney :: Golden Greats/This Is Gene Pitney

This does not have these two albums

Deborah MacGillivray | US & UK | 12/23/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I love Gene Pitney, as a long term fan I have both the albums they are implying. Sorry, there are missing a bunch of songs. This is Gene Pitney has nearly 30 songs on it alone, and the other had 13. That is 43 songs, and this only has 25? What happened to the other 18, especially the poignant Civil War Ballad, "I'm afraid to go home."



There are plenty other good collections of Pitney. This is not one of them."

Two albums of well-chosen covers

Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 03/14/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Gene Pitney originally established his reputation as a songwriter - he wrote Hello Mary Lou for Ricky Nelson - then as a hit-maker, but he later recorded several albums of covers. Two of them can be found here.



The first, from 1967, is a collection of songs that had been American hits for others in the sixties, although Jay and the Americans' version of Cara Mia was itself a cover. Unlike Cara Mia, several of the songs were also hits in Britain and elsewhere around the world. These include Bus stop (Hollies), Stop in the name of love (Supremes), Baby I need your loving (Four tops, but it was the Fourmost who had the British hit), A groovy kind of love (Mindbenders), The green green grass of home (originally a country hit for Porter Wagoner, it became an international pop hit when Tom Jones covered it), You've lost that loving feeling (Righteous brothers) and Crying (Roy Orbison). The other three songs - Count me in, Time won't let me and Mission bell - are less well known, but still enjoyable.



The second album, from 1969, is a Platters tribute album. The Platters sometimes had hits with covers, so some of the songs are much older than the fifties, but all these songs are now regarded as Platters songs. So you get Gene's versions of Harbor lights and Smoke gets in your eyes, both originally from the thirties, as well as their own classics, including The great pretender, Twilight time, I'm sorry and Only you.



As if these two outstanding albums were not enough, there are four bonus tracks, including a wonderful version of Petula's Beautiful sounds, as well as I just can't help myself, a UK A-side single from 1971.



ETA - another reviewer points out that there used to be a compilation with a similar titele to one of the albums featured here (This is Gene Pitney) and was clearly expecting this twofer to be a reissue of that compilation. Well, it isn't. It's part of a long series of re-issues of Gene's original albums."