Gene Pitney

摘要

Ageing pop-singers are not meant to die. The waist thickens and the lush dark hair turns white; the tan grows more improbable, the trouser legs more short; yet the voice, given a bit of a run at them, can still reach those high notes, and the warbling now comes smoky with experience. There may be no hopes left of chart appearances, but an audience can still be found, climbing slowly out of the tour buses into one or another sherbet-coloured theatre in Branson, Missouri. Gene Pitney never inhabited one of Branson's living mausoleums. Well past middle age he trod the boards in Europe, mostly in Britain, taking his ancient hits to the likes of Peterborough, Birmingham and Glasgow. He died unexpectedly in Cardiff, of heart disease, after another sellout show.