Burt Bacharach

Burt Bacharach

Burt Bacharach performing in a concert in 2008
Background information
Birth name Burt F. Bacharach
Born May 12, 1928 (1928-05-12) (age 83)
Origin Kansas City, Missouri, US
Genres Pop, vocal
Occupations Composer, pianist, singer
Instruments Piano
Years active 1954–present
Associated acts Hal David, Elvis Costello, Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, Marlene Dietrich, Cilla Black, Dr. Dre, Ronan Keating

Burt F. Bacharach ( /ˈbækəræk/ bak-ə-rak; born May 12, 1928) is an American pianist, composer and music producer. He is known for his popular hit songs and compositions from the mid-1950s through the 1980s, with lyrics written by Hal David. Many of their hits were produced specifically for, and performed by, Dionne Warwick. Following on with the initial success of this collaboration, Bacharach went on to produce hits with Dusty Springfield, Bobbie Gentry, Jackie DeShannon and others.

As of 2006, Bacharach had written 70 Top 40 hits in the US, and 52 Top 40 hits in the UK.[1]

Contents

Biography

Origins

Burt Bacharach was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but grew up in the Forest Hills section of New York City, graduating from Forest Hills High School in 1946. He is the son of Irma (née Freeman) and Bert Bacharach, a well-known syndicated newspaper columnist,[2] and is of German-Jewish descent.[3] Bacharach studied music at McGill University, under Helmut Blume, at the Mannes School of Music, and at the Music Academy of the West in Montecito, California. His composition teachers included Darius Milhaud, Henry Cowell,[4] and Bohuslav Martinů. Following service in the Army, Bacharach worked as a pianist, both as a solo player and as an accompanist for singers such as Vic Damone, Polly Bergen, Steve Lawrence, the Ames Brothers and Paula Stewart (who became his first wife). For some years he was musical arranger for Marlene Dietrich as well as touring with her.

Early songwriting work

In 1957, Bacharach and lyricist Hal David were introduced while at the Brill Building in New York City, and began their writing partnership. Almost a year later, they received a significant career break when their song "The Story of My Life" was recorded by Marty Robbins for Columbia Records, becoming a No. 1 hit on the U.S. country music charts[4] in late 1957. Soon after, "Magic Moments" was recorded by Perry Como for RCA Records, and became a No. 4 U.S. hit in February of that year. These two songs were back-to-back No. 1 singles in the UK ("The Story of My Life" in a version by Michael Holliday), giving Bacharach and David the honor of being the first songwriters to have written consecutive No. 1 UK singles. In 1959, their song "Make Room for the Joy" was featured in Columbia's film musical Jukebox Rhythm, sung by Jack Jones.

In the early 1960s, Bacharach wrote well over 100 songs with David. The two were associated throughout the '60s with Dionne Warwick, a conservatory-trained vocalist.[4] Bacharach and David started writing a portion of their work with Warwick in mind, leading to one of the most successful teams in popular music history.[5]

Over a 20-year period, beginning in the early 1960s, Warwick charted 38 singles co-written or produced by Bacharach and David, including 22 Top-40, 12 Top-20, and nine Top-10 hits on the American Billboard Hot 100 charts. During the early '60s, Bacharach also collaborated with Bob Hilliard on a number of songs, including "Please Stay" and "Mexican Divorce" for The Drifters, "Any Day Now" for Chuck Jackson, "Tower of Strength" for Gene McDaniels, and "Dreamin' All the Time" and "Pick Up the Pieces" for Jack Jones.

Other singers of Bacharach songs in the '60s and '70s included Bobby Vinton ("Blue on Blue"); Dusty Springfield ("The Look of Love" from Casino Royale), (a cover of Dionne Warwick's "Wishin' and Hopin'"); Cilla Black (a cover of Dionne Warwick's "Anyone Who Had a Heart"), Cher ("Alfie"); The Shirelles, The Beatles ("Baby, It's You"); The Carpenters ("(They Long to Be) Close to You"); Aretha Franklin ("I Say a Little Prayer"); Isaac Hayes ("Walk on By", from the Hot Buttered Soul album); B. J. Thomas ("Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head", "Everybody's Out of Town"); Tom Jones ("What's New, Pussycat?"); Engelbert Humperdinck ("I'm a Better Man"); Sandie Shaw ("(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me"); Jack Jones ("Wives and Lovers"); Jackie DeShannon ("What the World Needs Now Is Love"); Gene Pitney ("Only Love Can Break a Heart", "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", "24 Hours from Tulsa" and "True Love Never Runs Smooth"); Herb Alpert, ("This Guy's in Love with You");[4] Liz Damon's Orient Express ("Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets); Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 ("The Look of Love"); Jerry Butler, the Walker Brothers ("Make It Easy on Yourself"); and the Fifth Dimension ("One Less Bell to Answer").

Bacharach songs were adapted by jazz artists of the time, such as Stan Getz, Cal Tjader and Wes Montgomery. The Bacharach/David composition "My Little Red Book", originally recorded by Manfred Mann for the film What's New, Pussycat?, and promptly covered by Love in 1966, has become a rock standard; however, according to Robin Platts' book "Burt Bacharach and Hal David", the composer did not like Love's version.[6] The title of the song is likely a tongue-in-cheek reference to Mao Zedong's Little Red Book, which was first published by the Communist Party of China in April 1964.

Bacharach composed and arranged the soundtrack of the 1967 film Casino Royale, which included "The Look of Love", performed by Dusty Springfield, and the title song, an instrumental Top 40 single for Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Bacharach and David also collaborated with Broadway producer David Merrick on the 1968 musical Promises, Promises, which yielded two hits, the title tune and "I'll Never Fall in Love Again", for Dionne Warwick. The year 1969 marked, perhaps, the most successful Bacharach-David collaboration, the Oscar-winning "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head", written for and prominently featured in the acclaimed film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Style

Bacharach's music is characterized by unusual chord progressions, striking syncopated rhythmic patterns, irregular phrasing, frequent modulation, and odd, changing meters. Bacharach has arranged, conducted, and co-produced much of his recorded output.

An example of his distinctive use of changing meter is found in "Promises, Promises" (from his score for the musical of the same name). His style is sometimes also associated with particular instrumental combinations he is assumed to favor or to have favored, including the prominent use of the flugelhorn in such works as "Walk on By", "Nikki", and "Toledo".

1970s and 1980s

In 1970, Johnny Mathis issued a double-LP album set, "Sings the Music of Bacharach & Kaempfert," for Columbia. It consisted of 21 tracks in a heavyweight gatefold picture sleeve. The Bert Kaempfert tracks were done in the arrangement style of the German composer and orchestra leader, and the Bacharach tracks were in the American's upbeat style.

In 1973, Bacharach and David were commissioned to score the Ross Hunter-produced revival of the 1937 film, "Lost Horizon" for Columbia Pictures. The result was a critical and commercial disaster, and resulted in a flurry of lawsuits between the composer and the lyricist, as well as from Warwick. She reportedly felt abandoned when Bacharach and David refused to work together. Bacharach tried several solo projects (including the 1977 album Futures), but the projects failed to yield hits.

By the early 1980s, Bacharach's marriage to Angie Dickinson had ended, but a new partnership with lyricist Carole Bayer Sager proved rewarding, both commercially and personally. The two married and collaborated on several major hits during the decade, including "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)" (Christopher Cross), co-written with Cross and Peter Allen; "Heartlight" (Neil Diamond); "Making Love" (Roberta Flack); "On My Own" (Patti LaBelle with Michael McDonald), and perhaps most memorably, "That's What Friends Are For" in 1985, actually the second single which reunited Bacharach and singer Warwick. The profits for the latter song were given to AIDS research. Bacharach's 1980s tunes showed a new sound.

Other artists continued to revive Bacharach's earlier hits, giving them a new audience in the 1980s and 1990s. Examples included Luther Vandross' recording of "A House is Not a Home"; Naked Eyes' 1983 pop hit version of "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me", and Ronnie Milsap's 1982 country version of "Any Day Now". Bacharach continued a concert career, appearing at auditoriums throughout the world, often featuring large orchestras as accompaniment. He occasionally joined with Warwick, appearing in sold-out concerts in New York, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.

1990s and beyond

In 1990, Deacon Blue charted number 2 in the UK singles chart with an EP entitled "4 Bacharach & David Songs", with the first track, "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" receiving extensive media coverage. In 1996, jazz pianist McCoy Tyner recorded an album of nine Bacharach standards that featured Tyner's trio with an orchestra arranged and conducted by John Clayton. In 1998, Bacharach co-wrote and recorded a Grammy-winning album with Elvis Costello, Painted from Memory, on which the compositions began to take on the sound of his earlier work. In 2006, he recorded a jazz album with Trijntje Oosterhuis and the Metropole Orchestra called The Look of Love (Burt Bacharach Songbook) which was released in November that year.[7] Bacharach collaborated with Cathy Dennis in 2002 to write an original song for the Pop Idol winner Will Young. This was "What's in Goodbye", and it appears on Young's debut album From Now On. During July 2002, Young was a guest vocalist at two of Bacharach's concerts, one at the Hammersmith Apollo and the other at Liverpool Pops.

Another star treatment of his compositions was the 2003 album Here I Am featuring Ronald Isley, revisiting a number of his 1960s compositions, and also the Vandross arrangement of A House Is Not a Home.

Bacharach's 2005 solo album At This Time saw a departure from past works in that Bacharach penned his own lyrics, some of which dealt with political themes. Guest stars on some tracks included Elvis Costello, Rufus Wainwright, and hip-hop producer Dr. Dre.

On October 24, 2008, Bacharach opened the BBC Electric Proms at The Roundhouse in London, performing with the BBC Concert Orchestra accompanied by guest vocalists Adele, Beth Rowley and Jamie Cullum. The concert was a retrospective look back at his unparalleled six-decade career, including classics such as "Walk On By", "The Look of Love", "I Say a Little Prayer", "What The World Needs Now", "Anyone Who Had A Heart", "Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa" and "Make It Easy on Yourself", featuring Jamie Cullum.

In early 2009 Bacharach worked with Italian soul singer Karima Ammar and produced her debut single Come in Ogni Ora. The song has been heard during the 59th Sanremo Music Festival and also features him playing piano.

Film and television

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Bacharach was featured in a dozen TV musical and variety specials videotaped in the UK for ITC, several were nominated for Emmy awards for direction (by Dwight Hemion). The guests included artists such as Joel Grey, Dusty Springfield, Dionne Warwick, and Barbra Streisand. Bacharach and David did the score for a short-lived ABC-TV series, ABC Stage 67, for a show titled On the Flip Side, starring Rick Nelson as a faded pop star trying for a comeback. While the series' ratings were dismal, the soundtrack showcased Bacharach's abilities to try different kinds of musical styles, ranging from (almost) 1960s rock, to pop, ballads, and Latin-tinged dance numbers.

In 1969, Harry Betts arranged Bacharach's instrumental composition "Nikki" (named for Bacharach's daughter) into a new theme for the ABC Movie of the Week, a TV series which ran on the U.S. network until 1976. The arrangement by Betts is published by MCA Duchess Music Corporation (BMI).

During the 1970s, Bacharach and then-wife Angie Dickinson appeared in several TV commercials for Martini & Rossi beverages, and even penned a short jingle ("Say Yes") for the spots. Bacharach also occasionally appeared on TV/variety shows, such as The Merv Griffin Show, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and many others.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Bacharach had cameo roles in Hollywood movies including all three Austin Powers movies. His music is credited as providing inspiration for these movies, partially stemming from Bacharach's score for the 1967 James Bond film Casino Royale. During subsequent Bacharach concert tours, each show would open with a very brief video clip from the movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, with Mike Myers (as Austin Powers) uttering "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Burt Bacharach."

Bacharach appeared as a celebrity performer and guest vocal coach for contestants on the television show, "American Idol" during the 2006 season, during which an entire episode was dedicated to his music. In late 2006, Bacharach appeared as the celebrity in a Geico auto insurance commercial, where he sings and plays the piano. He translates the customer's story through song ("I was hit...in the rear!")

In 2008, Bacharach featured in the BBC Electric Proms at The Roundhouse with the BBC Concert Orchestra.[8] He performed similar shows in the same year at the Walt Disney Concert Hall[9] and with the Sydney Symphony.

Legacy and influence

Personal life

Bacharach has been married four times. His first marriage was to Paula Stewart, which lasted five years (1953–58). His second marriage was to actress Angie Dickinson, which lasted fifteen years (1965–80).[2] Bacharach and Dickinson had a daughter, Nikki, who committed suicide in 2007 at age 40.[22] His third marriage was to lyricist Carole Bayer Sager, which lasted nine years (1982–91). Bacharach and Bayer Sager collaborated on a number of musical pieces, and had a son, Cristopher. Bacharach married his current wife, Jane Hansen, in 1993; they have two children.

Television and film appearances

Discography

Albums

Singles

Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, 1965.
This song was also recorded much later by Oasis' Noel Gallagher in tribute to Bacharach on his 70th Birthday. According to Robin Platts' book What The World Needs Now the song was not written with Alpert, a non-singer with limited range, in mind, but was altered to suit him. Originally written as "This Girl's in Love With You" and recorded with that title by Dionne Warwick);.
This song was originally written for the movie Night Shift and performed on the soundtrack by Rod Stewart. In 1986, a version by Dionne Warwick, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, and Elton John became the Billboard's no. 1 song of the year, raising millions for AIDS charities. The song also won the Grammy for "Song of the Year" and was a Grammy nominee for "Record of the Year");

Broadway works

Other recordings

As arranger, conductor
As composer
Tribute albums

References

  1. ^ "Burt Bacharach: A House Is Not A Homepage". Bacharachonline.com. http://www.bacharachonline.com/bacharach_bio.html. Retrieved May 19, 2011. 
  2. ^ a b "Burt Bacharach Biography (1928?-)". Filmreference.com. http://www.filmreference.com/film/5/Burt-Bacharach.html. Retrieved May 19, 2011. 
  3. ^ Brian Boyd (October 10, 2005). "He'll Say A Little Prayer For You". The Irish Times. http://www.irishtimes.com/theticket/articles/2005/1028/1130314565347.html. Retrieved May 19, 2011. 
  4. ^ a b c d "Show 24: The Music Men-Part 2". Written, Narrated and Produced by John Gilliland; Chester Coleman, Associate Producer. John Gilliland's The Pop Chronicles. February 1969. Retrieved on May 19, 2011.
  5. ^ The Look of Love: The Burt Bacharach Collection-Liner Notes, Rhino/WEA, November 3, 1998 
  6. ^ Robin Platts (2003). Burt Bacharach & Hal David: What the World Needs Now. Collector's Guide Publishing. ISBN 978-1-896522-77-7. 
  7. ^ PlatoMania.nl Scheduled Dutch album releases. Retrieved: October 25, 2006
  8. ^ "BBC Electric Proms 2008". BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/electricproms/2008/schedule/. Retrieved May 19, 2011. 
  9. ^ "Close To You: Burt Bacharach In Concert". npr.org. July 3, 2008. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92182050. Retrieved May 19, 2011. 
  10. ^ Later...with Jools Holland. YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40xZIEvDhE0. Retrieved May 18, 2011. 
  11. ^ "Bio". lauranyro.com. http://www.lauranyro.com/bio.htm. Retrieved May 19, 2011. 
  12. ^ Alan McGee (April 9, 2008). "Wherefore art thou Mark Hollis?". The Guardian (UK). http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2008/apr/09/markhollis. Retrieved May 19, 2011. 
  13. ^ "Five Minutes with Donald Fagen". Performing Songwriter (performingsongwriter.com). Mar/Apr 2006. http://performingsongwriter.com/articles-interviews/5-minutes-interviews/donald-fagen/. Retrieved May 19, 2011. 
  14. ^ Stewart Oskenhorn (December 22, 2007). "At 79, Bacharach proves he’s got staying power". Aspen Times Weekly. http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20071222/ASPENWEEKLY03/275401891. Retrieved May 18, 2011. 
  15. ^ Chris Taylor (July 2, 2006). "Noel Gallagher Fesses Up To Bacharach Rip". Gigwise.com. http://www.gigwise.com/article.php?contentid=19195. Retrieved May 19, 2011. 
  16. ^ Brenna Sanchez. "Swing Out Sister Biography". musicianguide.com. http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608003533/Swing-Out-Sister.html. Retrieved May 19, 2011. 
  17. ^ "Biography". The Sound and Music of Mary Edwards. http://maryedwardsmusic.com/biography.html. Retrieved May 19, 2011. 
  18. ^ Ernesto Lechner (June 29 May 2006). "The Angelic Attitude Of Saint Etienne". savoyjazz.com. http://www.savoyjazz.com/sites/savoy/sjNews/etienne19.asp. Retrieved May 19, 2011. 
  19. ^ Skip Heller (May 15, 2000). "Burt Bacharach Re-Examined, 1995". Adventures In Sound. http://wlt4.home.mindspring.com/adventures/articles/bacharach.htm. Retrieved May 19, 2011. 
  20. ^ Matt Bell (January 2002). "Super Furry Animals". SoundOnSound.com. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Jan02/articles/superfurry.asp. Retrieved June 10, 2011. 
  21. ^ "A Fireside Chat With Bill Cunliffe". AllAboutJazz.com. February 29, 2004. http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=1231. Retrieved June 7, 2010. "When I was a kid, I was listening mostly to classical music because my dad had a lot of it in the house. I listened to all the stuff that was on the radio in the Sixties and Seventies." 
  22. ^ Gavin Martin (October 17, 2008). "Burt Bacharach – Meet the maestro". Daily Mirror (UK). http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv-entertainment/music/2008/10/17/burt-bacharach-meet-the-maestro-115875-20810632/. Retrieved May 19, 2011. 
  23. ^ "Promises, Promises- Opening Night Production Credits". Internet Broadway Database. http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=3438. Retrieved 2011-05-18. 

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Al Carmines / Burt Bacharach (1969) · Stephen Sondheim/Kurt Weill (1970) · Stephen Sondheim (1971) · Galt MacDermot (1972) · Stephen Sondheim (1973) · Al Carmines (1974) · Charlie Smalls (1975)
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