I was saddened to hear of Gene Pitney’s passing; he died Wednesday after performing in Cardiff, of all places, at the age of 65. He supposedly died quietly in his sleep but to those who remember him, it is hard to imagine him doing anything quietly. He had one of those voices — a great, gulping adolescent voice that could slip into a soprano almost as easily as Roy Orbison’s or into something that sounded like crying (shades of Johnny Ray).

To me he meant the world before the Beatles: It was my sister Pat who had the Beatle albums that we played ad infinitum but before them she had some Pitney and I dug hearing that slippery vocal echo around the house. “Town without Pity” would float my boat but I think I loved “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” even more, being still a child and having not put away childish things. Like guns and John Wayne fixations. (For those who remember the movie, the Duke played the man who really shot the bad LV, played by Lee Marvin, while Jimmy Stewart took the credit.)

I heard the other day that Gene was in the studio recording Liberty Valance when Burt Bacharach, who had written it, came in to say that the studio had released the movie before the song was finished. That didn’t stop the song from being a hit just as the British Invasion didn’t stop Pitney from recording. He famously campaigned to get himself into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and made it just under the wire. He kept singing until he died on the road.

Cardiff was the site of one of history’s great hoaxes but Pitney was the real deal, a survivor in a business that eats most people alive. No giant, maybe, but no fluke either.