23 Facts About Bill Pitman

William Keith Pitman was an American guitarist and session musician.

Bill Pitman was born in Belleville, New Jersey and grew up in Manhattan.

Bill Pitman developed an interest in music at a young age when his father worked as a bass player on staff at NBC in Rockefeller Center.

When he was five years old, Bill Pitman knew he wanted to be a musician.

Bill Pitman tried several different instruments, including the piano and trumpet, before finally settling on the guitar.

Bill Pitman received lessons from John Cali and Allan Reuss, teaching him fundamentals and techniques on the first guitar he ever owned, a D'Angelico.

Bill 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.

Shortly thereafter, Bill 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 Bill Pitman to be invited to all future Phil Spector recording dates.

Bill Pitman worked as a freelance musician, employing an answering service to help him schedule recording dates.

Producers jokingly claimed that if Bill Pitman thought a record was terrible, then they probably had a hit on their hands.

The indifference Bill Pitman felt toward rock and roll was more than matched by an enthusiasm for jazz recording sessions led by composers and arrangers such as Marty Paich, Dave Grusin, and Johnny Mandel.

Bill Pitman derived a great deal of satisfaction from the technical demands of jazz and its complex array of harmonic changes and improvised solos.

Bill Pitman's playing on The Guitars Inc and Marty Paich's Dek-Tette albums eclipsed, on a personal level, anything he ever did on a Top 40 record.

Notwithstanding the constraints, Bill Pitman wrote a couple of arrangements for Buddy DeFranco, and a stack of charts for a short-lived octet he put together with Buddy Childers.

Bill Pitman earned composition credits for a few episodes of the original Star Trek series; a pair of jazz tunes on the 1956 release Marty Paich Quartet featuring Art Pepper; and an improvised tune called "San Fernando" that producers needed to fill out a 1968 album titled Do You Know the Way to San Jose by the Baja Marimba Band.

Bill Pitman tuned the mandolin and banjo like a guitar, and was careful to warn producers that he could only play those two instruments in the guitar range.

The Danelectro guitar work for which Bill Pitman became famous started when he saw the instrument at a music shop shortly after its introduction.

Bill Pitman's practicing caught the attention of Ernie Freeman who asked him to play the Dano on a recording date.

Bill Pitman was married to Mildred Hurty from 1947 until their divorce in the 1960s; they had three children.

Bill Pitman married Janet Valentine in 1985 and adopted her daughter from a prior relationship.

Bill Pitman spent his retirement playing golf at the local country club, and occasionally participated in panel discussions of The Wrecking Crew documentary film.

Bill Pitman died under hospice care at his home on August 11,2022, aged 102, from complications of a fall.