Young and Warm and Wonderful

This was one of Gene Pitney's more unusual albums, in that it was neither hooked around a hit single, nor did it yield a hit among its dozen tracks. But as a result, it's also one of his more musically consistent albums — there is no one obvious pop/rock hit to overshadow the rest of it, which is mostly comprised of Pitney's pleasant if undemanding covers of standards, including "Golden Earrings," "South of the Border," "Two Sleepy People," all nicely dressed up in the best mid-'60s pop-style orchestrations. Actually, "Til the End of Time" or "I'll Be Seeing You" could have been singles off of this LP, either showing off Pitney's singing and sound to powerful advantage (though how either would have fared in a marketplace that was already making room for songs like "Penny Lane," "Strawberry Fields Forever," etc. is anyone's guess). But the very fact that this LP yielded no hits makes it of special interest to Pitney fans who are mostly familiar with his 45 sides — here are a dozen songs that are probably not known to most of them, and from a time pretty close to his prime period, too. And the deeply atmospheric "Two Sleepy People" is a wonderfully powerful and subtle tour de force by the singer.