Lou Christie, the singer-songwriter who reached No. 1 on the Billboard Scorching 100 in 1966 with the plush “Lightnin’ Strikes” and had one other high 20 hit that yr with the (for its time) sexually express “Rhapsody within the Rain,” died Wednesday. He was 82.
Christie died at his residence in his native Pittsburgh after a brief sickness, his spouse, Francesca, advised The Hollywood Reporter.
Together with his signature falsetto, Christie broke out with two songs in 1963 that he penned with longtime collaborator Twyla Herbert — “The Gypsy Cried” and “Two Faces Have I” — and he made it into the highest 10 once more with “I’m Gonna Make You Mine” in 1969.
“Lightnin’ Strikes,” organized, carried out and produced by Charles Calello and that includes backing vocals from Bernadette Carroll, Peggy Santiglia and Denise Ferri of The Delicates, was launched on MGM Information in December 1965 and made it to No. 1 two months afterward Christie’s twenty third birthday.
In a 2016 examination of the tune — it’s sung from the angle of a man who’s not trustworthy — the web site Rebeat famous that “When Christie spots ‘lips begging to be kissed,’ his voice mutates right into a shrill eager, fully unrecognizable from the charmer he posed as simply seconds earlier. The change from his teen idol croon to the manic, eerie falsetto signifies that he has remodeled into some unknown factor incapable of being managed.”
Lugee Alfredo Giovanni Sacco was born on Feb. 19, 1943, in Glenwillard, Pennsylvania, close to Pittsburgh. As a 15-year-old ninth-grader at Moon Space Excessive Faculty, he turned associates with Herbert — a classically skilled musician who was almost 22 years older — and they might write a whole lot of songs collectively within the ensuing a long time.
“I by no means labored with anybody else who was that gifted, that authentic, that thrilling,” he advised Goldmine journal in 2005. “She was simply weird, and I used to be twice as weird as her.”
After graduating from highschool in 1961, he moved to New York, labored as a session vocalist and was given his stage identify by Pittsburgh music exec Nick Cenci, who produced “The Gypsy Cried.” The tune made it to No. 24 on the Scorching 100 in March 1963, and “Two Faces Have I” peaked at No. 6 three months later.
Christie’s success received him a coveted place on certainly one of Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars excursions alongside Diana Ross and others — he did 32 one-nighters in a row, typically sleeping on the bus — however then spent two years within the U.S. Military.
When he and Herbert offered MGM Information with “Lightnin’ Strikes,” label head Lenny Shear “threw it within the wastebasket and stated it was a chunk of crap!” he recalled. “So we put up our personal cash to get it performed across the nation, and it began taking off as soon as it received performed.”
Christie adopted in spring 1966 with “Rhapsody within the Rain,” about a teen having intercourse within the backseat of a automotive throughout a rainstorm with the windshield wipers going. That one jumped to No. 16 on the Scorching 100, although many radio stations banned it due to the road “our love went a lot too far.” (A “cleaner” model would observe.)
With backing vocals by Lesley Gore and others, Christie scored once more at No. 10 in October 1969 with “I’m Gonna Make You Mine,” and he had one more hit in 1974 with a model of “Past the Blue Horizon” after going nation.
Christie, whose résumé additionally included “Exterior the Gates of Heaven,” “Are You Getting Any Sunshine?,” “Large Time” and “She Offered Me Magic,” recorded his final album in 2004 and extra not too long ago toured with Frankie Avalon and Fabian as a member of Dick Fox’s Golden Boys.
Along with his spouse, a onetime British magnificence queen whom he married in 1971, survivors embrace their daughter, Bianca. Their son, Christopher, died in 2014 at age 46 in a motorbike crash.