Living Together, Polling Together — it's the BURT BACHARACH SONGBOOK Ballot Poll

The lyrics to "Wives and Lovers" still make me cringe, though.

I know it via Goodfellas--I'm blanking out on the scene, but whatever it is, it works.

I checked out BB's memoir, Anyone Who Had a Heart, from the library today and Burt is refreshingly crude early on. By 2013, when this was published, he had no reason to give a fuck about offending anyone. In high school he came in second in a piano competition, winning 15 lessons from jazz pianist Joe Bushkin. "Although I never got high with him, Joe did show me how to roll a joint. He also told me how to go down on a girl." On Paula Stewart, his first wife: "The attraction between us was physical, because she was really good looking and had great tits, which back then could not be prefabricated."

TS: Burt & Hal David's "Only Love Can Break a Heart" vs. Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart"

Second beats every other song ever written (more or less).

WmC let me know if he's diplomatic about Angie D

The lyrics to "Wives and Lovers" were tailormade for Lounge Bill Murray

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBLMbJnN69c

some favorites from today's listening:

patti labelle - always something there to remind me (starts out heartbreakingly beautiful, ends up being kind of a wild ride !)
soul incorporated - my proposal (just some rare soul)
walter jackson - they don't give medals (enjoy the production -- real crisp guitar -- and vocal delivery)
the litter - little red book (killer heavy psych re-working of the tune)
conjunto académico joão paulo - i just don't know what to do with myself (this one is so goofy i just had to share it)
wynton kelly - walk on by (excellent bop workout from '66)
the free design - the windows of the world (nice ethereal version produced by enoch light)
willie bobo - the look of love (dang this version kills; the congas sound really sexy drenched in echo)
dorothy ashby - the look of love (dorothy rules; if you like deeply funky / polyrhythmic / earthy psych vibes + soaring harp runs, this one's for you)
dusty springfield - the land of make believe (a truly beautiful rendition; the sparse arrangement really suits the super-delicate vocals)

Morbs, I can tell you when they first met they bonded over baseball. That's as far as I am in the book right now, but it's a very short book.

when i saw Burt play, his patter included the agent calling every year to see if they wanted to do the Martini & Rossi spot again.

the year they split it was "...nope."

heh.

btw burt bacharach's official website is called "a house is not a homepage"

Thanks for those links, budo jeru -- lots of great versions there.

Hey, he has a concert coming up on June 14th in Rancho Cucamonga if anyone wants to shell out for that.

There were only six people at the wedding — me and Carole; Neil Diamond and his wife, Marcia; and Neil and Joyce Bogart. We all had an ample amount to drink and I smoked some dope. Then this guy who I guess was a judge in Santa Monica said, "Do you, Burt Bacharach, take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?" I said, "I'll try," and Neil Diamond said, "Holy shit!"

Very diplomatic about Angie, Morbs, and takes the blame for every fracture with her, with Hal David, with Dionne.

LX on BB — The Box Tops, "Trains and Boats and Planes" — https://youtu.be/-gNB-6WNk7E

I just found this pretty handy site: https://www.whosampled.com/Burt-Bacharach/covered/

"The Look of Love" has 150 covers, "Walk On By" has 86, lol

i cannot reveal my source who dealt professionally w/ BB and C.B.S. after they married, and calls her "Carole Bayer Aspirin" for the tsuris she caused

Today's find: the first recording, by Tom Jones, of 'Us' (written by Bobby Russell and BB) from 1975 - not easily Googleable so here is the Spotify link. A toss up for me whether to vote for this or Burt's version on his Futures album, with a stunning lead vocal by Jo Armstead, but think I slightly prefer the melodrama of the arrangement in the Jones version.

so the rollout is for songs, but for each of those you give the breakdown as to which versions contributed how many points to the total?

This is how the results will roll out, btw. After they're done I'm sure I'll do a one-post data dump with a ranking of the individual versions.

Everybody keep listening and voting!

I don't know much about Bacharach. I haven't participated in many ballot polls lately because they tend to ruin the artist for me, but maybe I'll join up for this one because he's such a blind spot for me.

For my part, here's Bobby Van doing Question Me an Answer from Lost Horizon, just because that's always what I think about when I hear his name.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfs62HWRjyA

I do hope you'll vote! The great thing about Bacharach is there are so many artists involved you probably won't burn out on any one.

If the votes are for songs only presumably the carpenters bacharach / David medley counts as a song in its own right in voting terms?

i am not gonna be able to listen to 200 recordings, or even relisten to most, but ive been hearing the songs since i was 5 or 6

xp - sure, you can vote for the Carpenters Bacharach/David medley. As far as its contribution to the composition standings, since it's a medley of 6 songs, each song will get 1/6 of the points a single song would get in the same spot on your ballot. For example, 6th place on a ballot gets 60 points. If you put the medley there, each of those songs will get 10 points toward the overall songbook standings. I'll round up to an integer if it's in a spot on the ballot where the points aren't divisible by 6.

Everybody still listening and putting their ballot together?
https://media.giphy.com/media/l0NwPo3VHujpJDI4w/giphy.gif

I thought I would be finished with my latest work deadline this week and would have free time next week to tabulate votes, create graphics and roll out results, but my work client is dealing with newly-discovered cancer and I have no idea what this is going to do to my schedule.

Think I'm done researching now, just need to whittle down to 30

i won't participate but i am psyched for the results. bacharach is more or less a blind spot in my music knowledge.

Without voters, there won't be any results; cross your fingers.

D Warwick's Check Out Time keeps ascending further up my list with each listen. I hadn't knowingly heard it before this exercise but I certainly should have.

I'm enjoying your playlist. Have to recommend the Woody Herman and His Thundering Herd irrepressibly jaunty instrumental of 'Say a Little Prayer'

still here / still voting

fwiw

will post more links when i have time and get a ballot in by the deadline in the op (although i’m not opposed to extending it if it means more votes).

how many ballots in so far ?

a whopping 3 ballots

I may have to push back the deadline for work reasons as well as to try to get more voters.

I'll be voting. Been enjoying the playlist except for multiple versions of this guy/girl in love with you. That's a song that seems to inhibit interpretation. Aretha tries to soul it but gets twisted up by the melody along the way.

my work life is crazy, i'd like to put a vote in over the weekend tho

VOTED

Got it!

I had misremembered the sample spreadsheet with ballot weighting that finefinemusic had done many years ago as having 20 spots, which is why I ginned up a new point system for a 30-track ballot. But it turns out her spreadsheet had been for 30 ballots after all, so I could use that point system that goes from 40 points for #1 down to 2 points for #30. Or I could stick with my new system (1159 total points per ballot lol). I'll probably use the latter.

NV, I do hope you'll take a few minutes to vote.

30 places on the ballot, not 30 ballots

I will try to vote too

I have settled on 30, more or less. I feel like my provisional list came too easily. So this has mainly been a process of deciding whether seemingly "obvious" selections should be displaced.

Planning to vote in this, not sure when I will have the time though

My big dilemma right now is choosing which version of my #1.

TS: Burt's "Pacific Coast Highway" vs. Sonic Youth's "Pacific Coast Highway"

I've started tabulating and there are 6 songs on everybody's ballot so far.

What is the deadline for submissions wmc?

This coming Tuesday, May 7th.

Seeing on FB that Lou Johnson was passed on.

<has>

Ah, RIP

Here's a challop -- I don't really like Aretha's "I Say a Little Prayer." I don't like how she lays out in the choruses and lets the backup singers do the work.

Finished my ballot, with a few days to ponder it before I call it final.

xp
I getcha. But. Counterpoint: those hand-offs to the backing singers work really well in the verses.