Bill Pitman (102) – Wrecking Crew – was born in Belleville, New Jersey on Feb 12, 1920 and grew up in Manhattan. He developed an interest in music at a young age when his father worked as a bass player on staff at NBC in Rockefeller Center. During the Great Depression, Pitman’s father had steady income doing freelance work, radio shows, and movie soundtracks while he was still employed at the network.
When he was five years old, Pitman knew he wanted to be a musician. He tried several different instruments, including the piano and trumpet, before finally settling on the guitar. He received lessons from John Cali and Allan Reuss, teaching him fundamentals and techniques on the first guitar he ever owned, a D’Angelico. When Pitman applied for his Local 802 union card, he easily passed the test before they recognized his surname, saying “Oh, Keith Pitman’s son. Well okay.”
While in high school, Pitman would travel to 52nd Street to listen to jazz artists such as Charlie Parker. Pitman was strongly influenced by guitarists Charlie Christian and Eddie Lang, and soon befriended Shorty Rogers, Shelly Manne, and Eddie Bert, with whom he frequently played.
By 1951, when the younger Pitman got out of the military, he moved to Los Angeles, where he became a student-teacher at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music intending to get a degree. Married, with a child on the way, he instead was forced to take a job at a factory to help make ends meet.
Pitman had grown confident that he could play as well as many of the guitarists in the jazz clubs of Los Angeles. While visiting a nightclub where Peggy Lee was performing, Pitman had a chance meeting with guitar virtuoso Laurindo Almeida, who was playing in her band. Their talk led to an audition, landing Pitman a job with Lee that launched his professional music career.
After three years with Lee’s band, Pitman accepted an offer to play on a radio program called The Rusty Draper Show. His three-year stint on that broadcast led to studio work when guitar player Tony Rizzi asked Pitman to sit in for him on a Capitol Records date. As word got around, musicians like Howard Roberts, Al Hendrickson, and Bob Bain would ask Pitman to play on sessions they were unable to attend. Eventually, the referrals led to producers calling Pitman directly to fill a guitar chair, resulting in lucrative studio work that eventually would last for decades.
During the latter part of the 1950s, Pitman in his thirties now sat in on sessions for established recording artists like Mel Tormé, Buddy Rich, and Red Callender. However, rock and roll was gaining popularity, and a chance encounter with Phil Spector placed Pitman among the earliest members of an elite group of session players.
In 1957, Spector’s mother Bertha asked Pitman if he would teach her son how to play jazz guitar. After three months of lessons, Phil Spector continued to struggle with the concept of meter, leading both student and teacher to conclude that Phil was probably not cut out to be a musician.
The following year, Spector cut a demo for a song he had written, and then asked Pitman if he would play it for his colleagues on The Rusty Draper Show. The song, called “To Know Him Is to Love Him“, generated considerable interest, and was eventually financed for recording. Shortly thereafter, Pitman received a call from one of Spector’s representatives asking him to play on a recording session for the song at Gold Star Studios. The record became a huge hit, causing Pitman to be invited to all future Phil Spector recording dates. When Spector produced the enormously popular record “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes in 1963, he named the jam session on the flip side “Tedesco and Pitman”, after two of his favorite guitar players: Tommy Tedesco and Bill Pitman.
Bill Pitman, from then on became a first call guitarist who played on such mega hit recordings as the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man”, the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” and Nancy Sinatra’s “The Boots are made for walking” and many other hits with the Los Angeles-based session musicians known as The Wrecking Crew.
In 1965, when Columbia Records was cutting the Byrds’ debut album, the label used session musicians from The Wrecking Crew including drummer Hal Blaine, keyboard player Leon Russell, and Pitman, among others, to accompany Roger McGuinn’s 12-string Rickenbacker guitar on “Mr. Tambourine Man.” The single reached #1 on the Hot 100.
The Wrecking Crew of Los Angeles session musicians was responsible for the sound of countless songs, from Elvis to Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra, The Beach Boys, The Monkees, Sonny & Cher.
Pitman subsequently played his famous Danelectro guitar on scores of recordings. He also performed music for the TV series The Wild Wild West for five years. “That was fun because I really got to play the instrument the way I envisioned when I bought it,” he said.
Despite his contributions to chart-topping records by the Mamas & the Papas, the Everly Brothers, and Jan and Dean, Pitman found the rock music he was asked to play unmemorable; expressing genuine surprise when some of the tunes became wildly successful. Producers jokingly claimed that if Pitman thought a record was terrible, then they probably had a hit on their hands.
His enduring legacy is one of an accomplished guitarist who played on some of the twentieth century’s most popular recordings.
Pitman was also accomplished on bass guitar, banjo and ukulele (which he used on B.J. Thomas’ “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” used in the film ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’.
Bill Pitman died on August 11, 2022 from com[lications of a previous fall. His wife, Janet Pitman, said he died after several weeks of hospice care in Palm Springs following a fall that left him with a fractured spine.
In his tribute, Denny Tedesco, Tommy Tedesco’s son wrote, “Growing up, as a little kid, I always knew who Bill Pitman was. He was my dad’s friend who played guitar and golf with him. It wasn’t until I got older did I understand the impact that he made.”
