Gene Pitney

After more than thirty years in show business, Gene still has millions of fans around the world and continues to perform on the most high-profile stages in the world's greatest cities.

With a string of hits to his name such as Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa and Town without Pity, he's performed all over the world, including New York's Carnegie Hall, the Palladium in London, and the Opera House in Sydney.

But as he revealed on Breakfast this morning, it could have been a very different story.

When his career began in the late fifties, Gene's agents tried to change his name - several times.

"For some reason, they didn't like the name Gene Pitney," he told Dermot and Natasha.

Luckily, one of the suggestions, Homer Muzzy, didn't stick - and so it was under his own name that Gene became a star.

click here to watch Breakfast's interview in full with Gene Pitney

Gene was born on 17 February 1941 in Hartford, Connecticut. He initially did not have any real ambitions to be a singer. He was more at home collecting stamps and coins, trapping mink and muskrat - hence the name Muzzy.

However, he played in his own local band called "Gene Pitney & The Genials"; Gene's spare time was devoted to music, but when his songwriting began interfering with his electronics theory classes, he soon realised that music was taking over his life.

In 1959, he began singing with a young girl named Ginny Arnell and, shortly afterwards, made his first single recording called Classical Rock and Roll.

His initial success came as a songwriter. He provided some memorable hits - the Kalin Twins with "Loneliness", Roy Orbison with "Today's Teardrops" and Bobby Vee with "Rubber Ball".

His solo recording career took off in 1961 with the multi-tracked "I Wanna Love My Life Away" and the dramatic film themes "Town Without Pity" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance".