Clean cut, All-American crooner Gene Pitney was a massive star in the 1960s—and remained popular in Europe—but he is all but forgotten today in the country of his birth. Pitney possessed one of the most distinctive male voices of the 60s, a high pitched, quavering vibrato that made his songs of unrequited love and losers promising to prove themselves to their women particularly moving.

Starting off as a songwriter—Pitney wrote “He’s a Rebel” for the Crystals and “Hello Mary Lou” for Rick Nelson—and recording engineer, Pitney racked up sixteen top forty hits. Along with but a small handful of American performers (Roy Orbison, Beach Boys, The Supremes) Gene Pitney not only survived the British invasion, but practically became an honorary member of it. In fact, Pitney played piano on the first Rolling Stones album. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards reciprocated by gifting him with “That Girl Belongs to Yesterday,” a top ten hit in Britain.

By the 1970s, Pitney’s fortunes sagged in the US, but he was still about to play to packed houses in England and Italy. In 1989, Pitney scored a month-long British #1 with a duet of his “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart” recorded with Marc Almond. The pair famously appeared on Terry Wogan’s program, Almond sporting black leather and Pitney, a white tux (Nick Cave also did a killer version of this song on his Kicking Against the Pricks covers album).

In 2002, Gene Pitney was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He died in Cardiff, Wales in 2006 after a performance there.