Spitball Army

Burt Bacharach with Dionne Warwick.

I almost started this blog post by stating that Burt Bacharach is one of the greatest songwriters living today. That would be untrue, technically, if the accepted definition of songwriter is “one who writes words and music.” Bacharach doesn’t write the words.

But, if that definition were to be altered slightly to read “one who crafts words and music together,” I could get away with it. As it is, I feel completely confident stating that Burt Bacharach is one of the greatest – if not the greatest – composers of pop songs living today. Go ahead, name someone better.

As you can see by the dates of the songs on today’s playlist, Burt Bacharach’s heyday was in the 1960s. The majority of his songs were written in partnership with lyricist Hal David. And, for most of their time writing songs together, their muse – the singer who would most often introduce their work to the listening world – was Dionne Warwick. Get this: on the Rhino Records compilation CD entitled The Dionne Warwick Collection: Her All-Time Greatest Hits, only two of the 24 songs were not written by Bacharach/David. That’s some long, successful track record. There may be only a few of the songs on this playlist that were never recorded by Warwick, even though she is represented here by only two of her own recordings. That just gives you an idea of the composer’s reach.

I have heard it said that Bacharach’s songs are as difficult to perform as Mozart’s classical music. Alluring, deceptively simple to the casual ear, a landmine to manuever in performance: the mark of two musical geniuses. I’ll buy that. As proof, check out that undulating time signature in “Promises, Promises,” if you can catch up with it.

Approximate playing time: 79 minutes.

1. Cher  “Alfie”  (1966)
2. Jill O’Hara  “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again”  (1968)
3. Aretha Franklin  “I Say a Little Prayer”  (1968)
4. The Turbans  “Three Friends (Two Lovers)”  (1961)
5. Isaac Hayes  “Walk on By”  (1969)
6. Herb Alpert  “This Guy’s in Love with You”  (1968)
7. The 5th Dimension  “One Less Bell to Answer”  (1970)
8. Gene Pitney  “Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa”  (1963)
9. Dionne Warwick  “Promises, Promises”  (1968)
10. The Walker Brothers  “Make It Easy on Yourself”  (1965)
11. Luther Vandross  “A House Is Not a Home”  (1981)
12. Tom Jones  “What’s New, Pussycat?”  (1965)
13. Dionne Warwick  “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?”  (1968)
14. The Shirelles  “Baby, It’s You”  (1961)
15. Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66  “The Look of Love”  (1968)
16. Adam Wade  “Rain from the Skies”  (1963)
17. B.J. Thomas  “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”  (1969)
18. Elvis Costello  “God Give Me Strength”  (1998)
19. Carpenters  “(They Long to Be) Close to You”  (1970)
20. Jackie DeShannon  “What the World Needs Now Is Love”  (1965)

Some notes on the songs:

• I have said, for quite a long time now, that “Alfie” is one of my all-time top three songs. It’s true. This, despite the fact that I still manage to screw up the lyric – “If only fools are kind, Alfie, then I guess it is wise to be cruel” – every time I attempt to sing it (out of public earshot, of course). The version above, sung by Cher, played over the credits of the 1966 film of the same name. But this was not the first version of the song that was released. That honor belongs to the hit version (below) by Brian Epstein-managed singer Cilla Black, whose reluctance to record the song at all makes for an hilarious tale that can be read here.
  [audio:Cilla_Black___Alfie.mp3]
• Burt Bacharach and his usual songwriting partner Hal David wrote a musical called Promises, Promises in 1968. The show was based on the 1960 Billy Wilder film The Apartment, and was further pedigreed by having its book penned by playwright Neil Simon. If you recall the gin rummy scene between Jack Lemmon’s C.C. Baxter and Shirley MacLaine’s Fran Kubelik from the film, and then imagine it as a musical conversation between two love-weary souls, you will have “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” In this playlist, it is sung with touching harmony by Jill O’Hara and Jerry Orbach, the originators of the Broadway roles of Baxter and Fran.
• Good luck getting past the Aretha Franklin version of “I Say a Little Prayer” to the rest of this playlist. I kept it on repeat this morning for at least five run-throughs. It really kicks some musical arse, especially when it shifts gears and becomes a revved-up gospel-tinged throwdown.
• Speaking of throwdowns, Isaac Hayes shaped Bacharach’s “Walk on By” into an epic slow jam that has rarely been equaled since its release 42 years ago. If this is your first time hearing this version and you recognize something in it, it may be that “wah wah” chorus that appears once at the very beginning of the song. It was sampled in the band Hooverphonic’s 1995 “2 Wicky” (below), which itself has been featured in countless television commercials. It was also prominent on the soundtrack to Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1996 film Stealing Beauty.
  [audio:Hooverphonic___2Wicky.mp3]
• My mother bought the 45 RPM single of “This Guy’s in Love with You” upon hearing it on the radio in the late ’60s, and played it often. It’s been so long ingrained in my consciousness that I can feel my DNA wriggle whenever it is played.
• Jackie DeShannon’s version of “What the World Needs Now” is, by now, iconic. It was given a slight boost to that elevated status by having its arrangement featured in a remix by Los Angeles disc jockey Tom Clay. His “What the World Needs Now Is Love / Abraham, Martin and John” (below) entwined the two songs with excerpts of speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, the Ted Kennedy eulogy after RFK’s assassination, soundbites of news coverage of each one’s assassination, and a short interview with a young child. It was a #8 Billboard hit in 1971.
  [audio:Tom_Clay___What_the_World_Needs_Now_Abraham_Martin_and_John.mp3]
• Burt Bacharach made a comeback of sorts in the late 1990s, when he wrote a batch of new songs with admiring lyricist Elvis Costello. Their collaboration was begun with a commission by filmmaker Allison Anders, whose movie Grace of My Heart featured “God Give Me Strength,” as sung on-screen by actress Ileana Douglas. The resulting bundle of pop songs by Bacharach and Costello formed the Grammy-winning album Painted from Memory.