OPO: Burt Bacharach

Come & Get Me by Jackie DeShannon
I love the chorus of this. She sounds heartbreaking.

only picked one commercial.

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

Best Halloween song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCtcgI4BcIQ

Lovecraftian horror version of same. IE, a ten hour edit.

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

Over the last month, I've taken to using this song to wake my eight year-old daughter up for school.

Sometimes it feels like it takes ten hours.

90 today!

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

going to a movie
only makes me sad
parties
make me feel as bad
(cuz i'm not w you)
i just don't know what to do.

^otm

Perhaps "Make It Easy On Yourself", but the Jackie Trent rendition. That particular orchestral arrangement is somehow more affecting than the Walker Brothers'

Cool interview: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-ol-patt-morrison-burt-bacharach-school-shootings-20180925-htmlstory.html

RIP.

Burt Bacharach, the composer and Oscar winner who delighted millions with the quirky arrangements and unforgettable melodies of "Walk on By," "Do You Know the Way to San Jose" and dozens of other hits, has died at 94. https://t.co/YaOIjozgSr

— The Associated Press (@AP) February 9, 2023

ugh. a true legend, we'll never see his like again.

Can anyone tell me the relationship between what he did and Brian Wilson? Which came first? Were they fans of one another? Where did that style of Baroque, complex, weird pop come from?

tin pan alley

Beach Boys covered "Walk On By". I think it's fair to say Brian was a big fan.

This is sad. But a long, greatly fulfilled life.

I think Elvis Costello is about to release a new edition of PAINTED FROM MEMORY, which I have always liked more than any other later EC.

I have long thought of Bacharach as one of the absolute greats of pop, and I'm glad that, with another ilx poster, I was able to see him play in concert.

xpost For sure. But I always understood Brian to be a sort of self-made, untrained savant, whereas Burt was formally trained. Did Brian hear Burt and say, wow, I want to do that, how do I do that, and force himself into that mold/mode?

I gotta say, Warwick was up for any melodic challenge that Bacharach offered her. The first time I did last night after watching the new doc was put on one of her comps and -- well, my god. As fruitful and fulfilling as any artist/producer combination you can think of.

time = thing

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

always loved 'the dells sing dionne warwick's greatest hits,' some inspired arrangements of burt's best tunes in there

Anyway, here's my OPO:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMDMODdfr7w

speaking of brian wilson and burt bacharach, there are clear traces of "are you there" that made their way into "let's go away for a while"

I think it was you, Soto, that pointed out the shocking ease with which Warwick navigates all that weirdness. That shit is hard to sing. Heard "Promises, Promises" recently, and it's like Sondheim.

R.I.P.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56E2gHwdKvk

alfred that was the first song i played when i heard the news too.

RIP

My actual OPO:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZWWuJ7Ept8

what a career and body of work, RIP

Burt: It all stays in the same time signature.
Dionne: I don't believe you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv62rtEdVAk

Good comment from Neil Kulkarni:

One of the first things that bought me, Sarah Laughton, Michael John Fitzgerald and Jon Moonbear together in our current Moonbears formation was rehearsing and playing Burt Bacharach songs for a BB night in Coventry. We quickly learned how deceptive these songs were - we’d all sung them our whole lives but learning the structures and the rhythms that went into these elemental high points of pop was tough - what we all rapidly realised is that like an actor doing Shakespeare you don’t have To - in fact you explicitly shouldn’t - DO anything to a Bacharach song. It’s all there, in those melodies, in those lines, they’re songs but they’re also spells that speak in a grown up way about love and loss and longing, songs that miraculously seem to pipe West Coast width and sun and sky into every cell whenever you hear them or play them. RIPower to one of the very very greatest to ever write pop songs, and thank you for letting us Moonbears come together as 4 acting as 1 xxxx

Dionne: I don't believe you.

Re that part about "those lines": so many of those tunes have little horn or percussion hooks and, if those goes missing, it just doesn't sound right, so almost all versions will have them as well.

May have been pointed out elsewhere: Carole King's birthday today, so apropos.

(Should be a national holiday henceforth.)

He had an amazingly long life but I'm still very emotional about this.

I had dinner with him once. He was around-enough and old-enough and Hollywood-enough to have been hanging out with Stravinsky. Told a lot of amazing stories about Bernard Herrmann. Was excited about his granddaughter's horsebackriding pursuits. He did an amazing tour ten years ago, with three touring vocal interpreters (Burt did sing two songs himself, which was always my favourite thing). He was so wonderfully gracious in everything he did and this is very sad.

labelle & mcdonald's "on my own" has always been a guilty pleasure for me, but i never had any idea that it was a bacharach/sager composition!

Nothing guilty about that pleasure!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3RlIjj8l-Q

sybil "don't make me over"

r.i.p.

Sad news. The Dionne Warwick Collection is usually my go-to album when I want to hear Bacharach. So many great songs.

A song I haven't seen mentioned is "Through the Eye of a Needle" by Cliff Richard.
It's an obscurity but it's one of my favourite Bacharach/David songs. Beautifully chilly.
It was written for Cliff, one of three Bacharach/David songs he recorded in New York in 1964.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3xpvLppihs

Dionne Warwick - Check Out Time

Part of me agrees with Alfred re OPO. But here's an alternate one that I've been foisting on people since about the time of the big BB poll. The Youtube commenters are still almost the only evidence I've seen that anyone else digs it much, however!

love love love “check out time”

Agreed, I discovered “Check Out Time” on The Look of Love box. It’s one of biggest orchestras he scored for IIRC.

That rehearsal session for “Loneliness Remebers What Happiness Forgets” is absolutely incredible.

Ninety-four is great. But I’m really going to miss him.

discovered “check out time” thanks to one tupac shakur

jk that’s a different song

Beach Boys covered "Walk On By". I think it's fair to say Brian was a big fan.

This is not a knock on Burt Bacharach, believe me, just an observation connected to something I'm always interested in. I had a period of music today with some Grade 6s, so I played parts of a few Bacharach songs. Pulled out all the stops: "Walk on By," Aretha's "Say a Little Prayer," "What the World Needs Now," "Close To You," "Raindrops," "This Guy's in Love with You." Except for the Aretha (a TV performance from '74), they just went about their work and didn't seem to react. Often students do engage with older music I play for them, but maybe those songs really are locked away in some other world. Which is fine by me.

There was an FB post from Brian (and his people but still probably really Brian) about what a fan he was.

Burt’s transition is like losing a family member. These words I’ve been asked to write are being written with sadness over the loss of my Dear Friend and my Musical Partner. On the lighter side we laughed a lot and had our run ins, but

— Dionne Warwick (@dionnewarwick) February 9, 2023

always found a way to let each other know our family, like roots, were the most important part of our relationship. My heartfelt condolences go out to his family, letting them know he is now peacefully resting and I too will miss him.

— Dionne Warwick (@dionnewarwick) February 9, 2023

pic.twitter.com/oJ3xmbcvDY

— Dionne Warwick (@dionnewarwick) February 9, 2023

Actually I did have a weird interaction with one discography nut but he was more a self-styled cut and paste music "historian" rather than a Bacharach guy, which is in part why I got into the argument.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcbq62P48K4

FWIW, here's a track from the "Taken from Life" disc that's on both the two-CD and super deluxe editions of The Songs of Bacharach & Costello:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPD9t1rit7g

I don't have the liner notes, but I think this is for the Broadway musical that never came to be. I'm not sure if this is a demo, but it sounds like it could be and with a little more oomph, this could really kill on stage.

(To clarify, it's a song from Painted from Memory but I'm guessing it was to be incorporated into the musical.)