| Gene Pitney's Big Sixteen, Volume Two | ||||
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| Compilation album by Gene Pitney | ||||
| Released | 1965 | |||
| Recorded | 1962-1965 | |||
| Genre | Pop | |||
| Length | 38:44 | |||
| Label | Musicor (United States) Stateside (United Kingdom) | |||
| Gene Pitney chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| allmusic.com |   |
Gene Pitney's Big Sixteen, Volume Two is American singer Gene Pitney's tenth album, released on the Musicor label in the United States in 1965. The album was released as Gene Pitney's More Big Sixteen on the Stateside label in the United Kingdom.
Gene Francis Alan Pitney was an American singer-songwriter, musician, and sound engineer.
Musicor Records was a New York City-based record label, active during the 1960s and 1970s. The label was founded by songwriter Aaron Schroeder and distributed by United Artists Records. In 1965, UA employee and A&R man Art Talmadge started his own Talmadge Productions company and, along with fellow UA employee/A&R man Harold "Pappy" Daily, bought the Musicor label from UA.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Contents
The compilation album featured Pitney's two most recent hit singles - "It Hurts to Be in Love" and "I'm Gonna Be Strong" - together with a range of lesser hits and album-only tracks from earlier releases and one new track, "Fool Killer".
"It Hurts to Be in Love" is a song written by Howard Greenfield and Helen Miller which was a Top Ten hit in 1964 for Gene Pitney. The song was one in a long line of successful "Brill Building Sound" hits created by composers and arrangers working in New York City's Brill Building at 1619 Broadway. Although not characteristic of Pitney's pop sound, as heard in "Town Without Pity" and "(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance," Allmusic noted that "It Hurts to Be in Love" "was about as close as any of his major hits came to straight-ahead rock & roll."
"I'm Gonna Be Strong" is a song written by the famed songwriting duo Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. It was first recorded by Frankie Laine in 1963 and released as a single on Columbia Records. However, the song did not become a major hit until 1964, when Gene Pitney released his version as a single. It was also a single released by the 1980 band Blue Angel, with lead vocals provided by future star Cyndi Lauper. This release was prior to Lauper's solo career; however, Lauper re-recorded the track and released it as a single in 1994. The song was also featured on 1982's Quiet Lies album by Grammy winner Juice Newton. Though Newton never released the song as a single, her remake was later added as a bonus track to her first Greatest Hits collection.
