Eugene Pitt born 6 November 1937

Eugene Pitt (November 6, 1937 – June 29, 2018) was a black American musician and the founding member of The Jive Five who endured the long past doo-wop’s heyday by mingling their sound with ascendant genres like funk, disco and soul. 

Eugene “Sampson” Pitt was born in Brooklyn on Nov. 6, 1937, to Christal C. Pitt and Mammie Obye Pitt. His mother died when he was young, and his father, a longshoreman and gospel singer, taught Eugene and his many siblings how to sing and harmonize. Some of them performed as a gospel group in local churches when they were children, and Mr. Pitt’s brothers Frank and Herbert joined him in a later edition of the Jive Five. Pitt began singing secular music on Brooklyn street corners before he graduated from Boys High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant. He sang in local groups, the Top Notes, the Zip-Tones and the Akrons before leading his own. 

In 1959, he, together with Jerome Hanna, Richard Harris, Norman Johnson, and Billy Prophet formed The Jive Five. They performed on the streets of Brooklyn and like many young vocalists of the era, they sang doo-wop, the romantic, harmonic brand of pop music that became popular alongside early rock ’n’ roll and contributed to the sound of soul. Their first and biggest hit was “My True Story,” a lament of lost love written by Oscar Waltzer and Mr. Pitt and punctuated by Mr. Pitt’s keening repetition of the word “cry.” 

In 1961 the song reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 3 on the pop chart. It became the Jive Five’s signature for the next five decades. They also recorded a fascinating version of “Lily Marlene,” a song more identified with cabaret in Berlin than street-corner harmony in Brooklyn. 

Mr. Pitt’s rich, rangy voice became the group’s centrepiece, sometimes soaring to a falsetto over the deeper harmonies of the others. The group was often billed, on record and in concert, as Eugene Pitt and the Jive Five or the Jive Five featuring Eugene Pitt, and Mr. Pitt remained the leader, and sometimes the only original member, as others came and went. 

                             

Interest in doo-wop had begun to wane by the early 1960s, but the Jive Five remained popular throughout the decade with soulful songs like “A Bench in the Park” and “What Time Is It?” They reached the Top 40 in 1965 with the single “I’m a Happy Man.” The group also toured the United States, sharing bills with acts like Tom Jones, the Shirelles and Chubby Checker. “The Jive Five at that time was the only group that survived through the British invasion,” Mr. Pitt said in an interview for the website Soul Express Online in 2009. 

In the 1970s Mr. Pitt, with the Jive Five and others, recorded funky songs like “I Want You to Be My Baby” and disco numbers like “Samson” — sometimes under variations of the Jive Five name, like Jyve Fyve, and sometimes under different names altogether, like Ebony, Ivory & Jade. “We changed our name, because we figured that Jive Five was an old doo-wop name, and we wanted to come out fresh,” Mr. Pitt said. Pitt and Casey Spencer sang backing vocals on Gloria Gaynor's 1974 hit on MGM 14748 "Never Can Say Goodbye" and on her 1975 Lp. of the same name on MGM  M3g-4982. 

In 1982 and 84, Pitt and a new Jive Five line-up recorded two albums for the Ambient Sound label, titled Here We Are! and Way Back. Their 1982 album featured songs with a classic rock sound like “Hey Sam,” upbeat soul songs like “He’s Just a Lucky Man” and a crooning cover of Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen” that amplified its wistfulness. In 1985, they sang doo wop on the children's cable television network Nickelodeon. Pitt and The Jive Five were introduced to New York-based MTV Networks (now Paramount Media Networks) branding consultants Fred Seibert and Alan Goodman by his latest producer, Ambient Sound's Marty Pekar. Together, they embarked on an almost 10-year relationship, creating and singing the a cappella signature sound of the children's television network. Terry Stewart, President & CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, called Pitt "the most underrated soul singer in America". 

In 2009 Pitt released a solo CD, “Steppin’ Out in Front ‘I Love Beach Music.’ His most high-profile record in recent years was a 2013 album of doo-wop hits, sung by Aaron Neville and produced by Don Was and the Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, on which Mr. Pitt sang backup. The album, titled “My True Story,” included a cover of Mr. Pitt’s biggest hit.  Pitt sang at the Doo-wop Weekend in Long Island in 2014 and 2016  and appeared alongside Herb Cox and Bobby Lewis at Viva Las Vegas in 2015. At the 2016 doo-wop show, at which Eugene and the Jive Five sang My True Story, What Time Is It? and I'm A Happy Man.

On June 29, 2018, in Newbury, South Carolina,  Pitt died at the age of 80 due to complications from diabetes. 

(Edited from The New York Times, Wikipedia & The Vinyl Word)