The American composer, arranger, songwriter, record producer and singer who wrote hundreds of songs will always be remembered for the influence he had on popular music of the 20th century, as Michael Darvell reports…
It is difficult to imagine what the popular music industry would have been like if it hadn’t had Burt Bacharach’s contributions to the global music culture of the 20th century. The music charts to begin with would have been poorer for his absence because who else but Bacharach, and his lyricist writing partner, Hal David (1921-2012), could have provided those massive hits for the likes of Dionne Warwick, Tom Jones, Herb Alpert, Marty Robbins, Perry Como, Gene Pitney, The Carpenters, Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield and many more besides.
In all it is reckoned that Bacharach wrote over 500 songs, perhaps even many more. He contributed to films, television and the theatre, released more than 40 albums and won six Grammys, three Academy Awards and an Emmy. Among his most famous songs are ‘I Say a Little Prayer for Me’, ‘Walk on By’, ‘What the World Needs Now’, ‘Alfie’, ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’, ‘The Look of Love’, ‘This Guy’s In Love With You’, ‘A House is Not a Home’, ‘Don’t Make Me Over’, ‘Close to You’, ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’ etc. And that’s just for starters. More than a thousand musicians – solo singers and groups – have performed his music, and he has had over 70 US chart hits and more than 50 UK Top 40 hits. The man was a music machine as well as being a genius.
Burt Freeman Bacharach was born on 12 May 1928 in Kansas City, Missouri to professional footballer turned journalist Bertram Bacharach and his wife Irma, an amateur songwriter and artist. However, soon after Burt was born the family moved to Long Island in New York where young Burt was brought up and where he started taking music lessons at the behest of his mother. He studied piano, cello and drums but actually preferred going to nightclubs to listen to jazz musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk who later were to be an influence on his songwriting.
However, he also attended music schools in New York and Montreal and received tuition from modern classical composers such as Henry Cowell, Bohuslav Martinu and Darius Milhaud, the last one having the most influence on Bacharach’s writing. He took formal studies in all kinds of music including jazz harmony, the results of which gave his music its own characteristically different sound redolent of jazz improvisations.
In the early 1950s he served in the US Army in Germany where he met the singer Vic Damone with whom he worked, along with other vocalists on his return to civilian life in America. At just the tender age of 28 Bacharach managed to become the musical director for Marlene Dietrich and he toured the world with her into the 1960s. They appeared in a memorable season in London in 1964, which then was the hottest ticket in town. At the time he appeared to be the ideal accompanist, supporting the legend that was Dietrich with impeccable taste and superb musicianship.
He also worked as a musical director for other actors and singers including Joel Grey, Steve Lawrence, Polly Bergen and Paula Stewart who he eventually married. It was in 1957 that Bacharach first met Hal David who was to became his main lyric-writing partner. Their first hit was ‘The Story of My Life’ which was recorded by Marty Robbins and went to No. 1 in the US charts. The British singer Michael Holliday’s cover version also hit number one in the UK.
By 1963 Bacharach and David had formed a writing partnership and for the song ‘Make It Easy on Yourself’’Bacharach began to supervise the recording sessions. After that the partnership produced more than 100 songs for artists including several for Dionne Warwick – ‘Don’t Make Me Over’, ‘Walk on By’, ‘I Say a Little Prayer’, ‘I’ll Never Fall in Love Again’ etc.
Other jazz artists also began to play the songs from Bacharach and David, including Stan Getz, Wes Montgomery, Manfred Mann and many others. And then the cinema came along to provide more hits such as the title number from What’s New Pussycat?, a big hit for Tom Jones, ‘The Look of Love’ from Casino Royale, sung by Dusty Springfield, and that film’s title song played by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass who also had a hit with ‘This Guy’s In Love With You’. The movie songs were quite different in themselves, compared to, say, any of the numbers written to fit the Bond franchise.
Burt Bacharach during his collaboration with Steven Sater
Of course their biggest film hit was ‘Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head’ written for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which turned out to be, with Paul Newman and Robert Redford starring, the hit film of 1969, winning four Oscars, two of which went to Bacharach for his original score and Bacharach and David for the song, an enormous hit for singer B J Thomas. The music also won awards from ASCAP, BAFTA, the Golden Globes and a Grammy. In 1972 Bacharach was inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame.
He continued to write songs, sometimes with other lyricists such as Bob Hilliard with whom he wrote hits for The Drifters, Gene McDaniels, Chuck Jackson and Dick Van Dyke. He launched his first solo album in 1965 called Hit Maker! which included the popular ‘Trains and Boats and Planes’ which was released as a hit single. Bacharach become more visible to the general public by appearing on television and in concerts. He also made guest appearances in Mike Myers’ three Austin Powers spoof comedies. He also appeared in his own TV specials with guests including Dionne Warwick, Barbra Streisand, Joel Grey and Dusty Springfield. He was a man truly well in demand.
In 1968 Bacharach and David turned the Billy Wilder film The Apartment into a Broadway and West End musical called Promises, Promises from which the hit song was ‘I’ll Never Fall in Love Again’ and that became a chart hit for Dionne Warwick. Bacharach contributed to other theatre shows including An Evening With Diana Ross in 1976, Andre DeShields’ Haarlem Nocturne in 1984, The Look of Love in 2003, The Boy from Oz in 2003-2004, Baby, It’s You in 2011 and Holler If Ya Hear Me in 2014.
The only commercial failure that Bacharach and David had was the music for the 1973 remake of the 1937 film Lost Horizon, with Peter Finch, Liv Ullmann, John Gielgud, Michael York, Charles Boyer and George Kennedy among the cast of luminaries. The score was fine and some of the numbers, such as ‘The World is a Circle’, worked as songs in themselves but not as part of a musical film. It seemed to be the wrong project at the wrong time, and for Bacharach it was an immense disappointment that virtually ended his partnership with Hal David, although they later reunited for a Motown album with Stephanie Mills.
Bacharach’s career continued as he toured the world and sometimes played concerts with Dionne Warwick in Las Vegas, Los Angeles and New York. He later worked with Elvis Costello, Ronald Isley, Rufus Wainwright, Dr Dre and other artists. In 2008 he opened the Electric Proms at the Roundhouse in London, working with the BBC Concert Orchestra, Adele, Jamie Cullum and Beth Rowley. In 2016, towards the end of his career, aged 88 years old, he composed an original score for A Boy Called Po, John Asher’s film about a widower left with an autistic son. He was working almost up to his death but died before the release of his last collaboration with Evis Costello, The Songs of Bacharach and Costello, which is due out during 2023.
On a personal level Bacharach had four wives, actress Paula Stewart from 1953 to 1958, then actress Angie Dickinson from 1965 to 1980, lyricist Carole Bayer Sager from 1982 to 1991, with whom he wrote some songs, and Jane Hansen from 1993 until his death, with whom he had a son, Oliver, and a daughter, Raleigh. With Angie Dickinson he also had a daughter called Nikki, who had Asperger’s syndrome and who committed suicide at age 40. With Carole Bayer Sager he adopted a son called Cristopher. Bacharach published his autobiography, Anyone Who Had a Heart; My Life and Music in 2013.
Whatever Burt Bacharach had as a composer and arranger of songs, his talent was unbeatable. Not for him the standard way of writing a popular song, for he used jazz harmonies, syncopated rhythms and unusual phrasing to achieve what he wanted. If he can be accused of producing middle-of-the-road output, in many ways he was creating the complete antithesis of easy listening – call it uneasy listening if you like – even though the results were beautifully modulated, musical interpretations of his lyricist’s words. There will never be another songwriter like him, but his work will live for ever. That will be his lasting legacy.
Burt Bacharach: born Kansas City, 12 May 1928; died Los Angeles, 8 February 2023. R.I.P.
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