OPO: Burt Bacharach

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

Elvis Costello started his ten-show residency tonight at the Gramercy Theatre ("100 songs across 100 nights"), and the evening's setlist was planned around the beginning of his career, but he made time to pay a beautiful tribute to Bacharach. Given Bacharach's age and accomplishments and how well he had lived, Costello mentioned that he saw quite a few people say it was a great time to go, but disagreed saying, "it's never a great time to say goodbye when you love someone, and I'm not afraid to say that I loved that man." He then performed "Baby It's You" on acoustic guitar (which he covered on record with Nick Lowe in the '80s), then later performed "Anyone Who Had a Heart" and then during the encore, sat behind the piano and played a gorgeous arrangement of "Please Stay." When the show finished, he led the audience into singing along to the first few lines of "What the World Needs Now Is Love" as they played Jackie DeShannon's recording. (Earlier, he took the New York Times to task for publishing an obituary that had numerous sloppy errors. The most egregious was calling Bacharach an "apolitical" songwriter when had written a song like "What the World Needs Now Is Love." I'll also add the obituary incorrectly claimed that Bacharach appeared in Austin Powers to perform that song - they played an excerpt of the record in the first movie when Myers is catching up on world events via archival news footage, but Bacharach didn't actually appear until the second movie when he played a completely different song, accompanying Costello.)

typo: "100 songs across 10 nights"

He's in the first one--played it today for the same class.

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

Alec Cumming of the Rhino Box Set is doing a tribute right now on WPKN.

https://wpkn.org/listen-live/

xxp Thanks clemenza - now *I* stand corrected!

Now we have to fact check your EC report; in fact you were at home scrounging the dark web and had to make an excuse.

Ah you got me. I was eating mustard packets at home while fabricating details around what I gathered from setlist.fm.

Video (not mine obviously)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00YyqUAZG3k

I love the person nearby who hadn't realized he died!

Haven’t clicked on the video, is it from tonight?

It is indeed.

FWIW, I've been going to his shows since 2011 and it's too bad I didn't go this time because then I could say it might have the best one I've ever seen, so much that I would've bought tickets to more shows had I been more confident that it was going to be this good.

I trust you mean Elvis. Burt had to cancel all his dates.

Who else would he mean?

Sorry to bust in here like Bruce Thomas at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and make trouble.

Bless Costello for keeping him busy in his later years, God Give Me Strength is just tremendous, for anyone, nevermind pushing 70, does anyone know what he got up to post Painted from Memory?

Also had no idea he co-wrote On My Own, unbelievable, what a treasure, songwriting MVP fuck off to beautiful music heaven Burt Bacharach

He’s up there in the green room right now being stared out from behind a potted plant à la Laugh-In’s Arte Johnson by Tom Verlaine.

I'm confused - did poster 'birdistheword' go to see EC?

I'm very touched to hear of EC's tribute to BB.

Bacharach & Verlaine would have been a good collaboration.

Watched EC's video. His spirit when talking is classic EC, but his singing is possibly the worst I have ever heard from EC.

Bacharach & Verlaine would have been a good collaboration.

What do you get when you fall
When you fall
Into the arms of the Venus de Milo

Take a message to Richard

birdistheword is actually Elvis Costello

No way, his posting style is way too concise.

Where's all the "clever" wordplay from birdistheword?

Yes, exactly.

Bless Costello for keeping him busy in his later years, God Give Me Strength is just tremendous, for anyone, nevermind pushing 70, does anyone know what he got up to post Painted from Memory?

Also had no idea he co-wrote On My Own, unbelievable, what a treasure, songwriting MVP fuck off to beautiful music heaven Burt Bacharach

I don't really share the view that the first track towers over the rest of PAINTED FROM MEMORY. I think the best song may be 'the sweetest punch'. Extraordinary. But I think the whole LP is pretty even in quality.

re: what BB did later, he released AT THIS TIME, which I looked at in a record shop but never bought. My recollection is that it included attacks on the (very bad) US government of the time; one or two collaborations with Costello; a song with the promising title 'Go Ask Shakespeare'. I rather wish I'd bought it now and got to know it.

“Go Ask Shakespeare”? Sung by Rufus Wainwright? Heard it for the first time last night on the radio tribute by Alec Cumming. Pretty good!

The Look of Love box is still probably the best way to listen to Burt and one of the greatest boxed sets ever produced.

^^This. In the foreword, the producer mentions that the project started out as a 1-disc hits package that grew into a double-disc anthology and finally the three-disc set we know and love simply because they keep finding more and more songs to include. It's a fine capper to the whole Bacharach renaissance of the time, formed through Loungecore and up through films like Austin Powers, Grace of My Heart (which is where "God Give Me Strength" came from), and My Best Friend's Wedding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c74BSImG4xM

Here I am - Isley meets Bacharach from 2003 sounds good . Ron Isley, Burt, and an orchestra take on Bacharach/ David classics

Absolutely love the Isley record.

anyone have a favorite set of burt singing his own songs?