We’re tempted to call this a Pitney obitney, but that would be wrong. So we’ll just say that the world now is, sadly, a town without Pitney. Connecticut-born ’60s singer-songwriter Gene Pitney, on tour across the UK, was found dead in his hotel room in Cardiff, Wales, after performing the night before. He was 65 and the cause of death has not been determined. Pitney had two hits on the charts by the time he was 20 – “Town Without Pity” and “(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance” – and his big croony voice continued to score hits into the ’70s, including “Only Love Can Break a Heart.” He wrote Ricky Nelson’s “Hello Mary Lou” and the Crystals’ “He’s a Rebel” and in 1964 recorded a Jagger-Richards song, “That Girl Belongs to Yesterday,” which made the pop charts months before the Stones had their first US hit with “Tell Me.”