Bill Pitman, a guitarist whose work as part of the legendary recording session group The Wrecking Crew made an invaluable contribution to countless radio hits, TV series and films, died yesterday at his home in La Quinta, California. He was 102.

His death was announced to The New York Times by wife Janet Pitman, who told the publication her husband died after four weeks of hospice care following a fall that fractured his spine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/12/arts/music/bill-pitman-dead.html

Pitman’s guitar playing was ubiquitous, if largely anonymous, for decades beginning in the 1950s. Just a sampling of the songs he played on: The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night,” Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were, The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and The Monkees’ “Papa Gene’s Blues.” He played the ukelele on the B.J. Thomas hit “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the loping bass line for the memorable theme of late-1960s TV Western The Wild Wild West and even composed music for early episodes of Star Trek.

Another important posting, mig73!

One by one, The Wrecking Crew is wrecked--and wracked--by mortality.

(Though I would hope, should I somehow manage to emulate the late Pitman and make 102--just 35 years to go, home stretch now!--I'll not nonetheless feel shortchanged by never seeing 103.*)

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
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* On the other hand, why aim so low? After all, pioneering environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas--and namesake of the high school site of the Second St. Valentine's Day Massacre--survived to 108 !

mig73alle...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

> Bill Pitman, a guitarist whose work as part of the legendary recording session group The Wrecking Crew made an invaluable contribution to countless radio hits, TV series and films, died yesterday at his home in La Quinta, California. He was 102.

He couldn't have been a very creative or inventive guitarist if he managed to
live to be 102. Everyone knows that truly artistic people die young. The guitar
is a string instrument and I'm guessing Bill was strung out on life. But now all
vibration has ceased as the strings of his git box as well of those of his heart
have been stilled by the song of death.