Billy Mays, 'Hendrix' of Pitchmen, Is Buried

By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 3, 2009 1:15 PM CDT
Billy Mays, 'Hendrix' of Pitchmen, Is Buried
Pallbearers carry the coffin of television pitchman Billy Mays.   (AP Photo)

TV pitchman Billy Mays was laid to rest today in his hardscrabble hometown of McKees Rocks, Pa., the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. Friends described his determined rise from the mill town to the malls of New Jersey to the hallowed heights of the Home Shopping Network. “If there was a Jimi Hendrix of the guitar, there was a Billy Mays of the pitchmen,” a colleague said.

Mays’ iconoclastic style and booming voice were fondly remembered. A rival recalled a what-not-to-do training video. “They showed Billy Mays,” he said. “They actually used that at QVC.” All agreed he was a consummate professional who lived for his job. “He was there—he was a pitchman at heart,” said a worker on Mays’ Discovery Channel show. “He was on, never off.” (More Billy Mays stories.)

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