Havana Cuba. – Burt Bacharach, one of the most influential composers of pop music of the second half of the 20th century, has died at the age of 94.
It would be an understatement if we said that Bacharach’s songs and orchestrations were to the music of the 1960s what those of David Foster or Carole Bayer Seger were to the music of the 1970s and 1980s. They set the course for Anglo-Saxon pop music between 1961 and 1970.
Born in 1928 in Kansas City, in the mid-1950s Burt Bacharach was the pianist and arranger for Marlene Dietrich. Starting in 1957, Bacharach, who was an excellent orchestrator, began working with lyricist Hal David, with whom he would form one of the most fruitful songwriting pairings in pop music, second only to Lennon-McCartney.
Between 1957 and 1961, Bacharach-David songs were popularized by Marty Robbins, Perry Como, and Johnny Mathis. But the height of popularity of Bacharach and David’s songs came after, in 1962, the two songwriters discovered singer Dionne Warwick and began writing songs tailored for her around her vocal characteristics.
The Bacharach-David-Warwick team was unbeatable. His first hits, in 1964, were “Don’t make me over”, “Anyone who had a heart” and “Walk on by”.
Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, dozens of Bacharach songs such as “The look of love”, “Always something there’s to remind you”, “Baby it’s you”, “Alfie”, “Do you know the way to San Jose?”, “Close to you”, “I’ll never fall in love again”, “I say a little prayer for you”, “This guy’s in love with you”, “What the world needs now is love ” and “Raindrops keep falling in head” became very popular with performances not only by Dionne Warwick, but also by Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Herb Alpert, Tom Jones, Dusty Springfield, The Carpenters, Jack Jones, Jackie de Shannon, Stan Getz, José Feliciano, The Drifters, BJ Thomas, Sergio Méndez and many more.
Bacharach was the author of the music for successful films of the 60s, such as Alfie1966, Royal Casinofrom 1967, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kidsfrom 1969. Thanks to the latter, Raindrops keep falling in my headinterpreted by BJ Thomas, won an Oscar in the category of best song from a soundtrack in 1970.
In the 1970s, after a dispute with Dionne Warwick and the breakup of the partnership with Hal David, Bacharach’s career would go through a impasse which would last until 1981, when he began working with singer-songwriter Carole Bayer Seger, whom he had married after divorcing actress Angie Dickinson.
During the 1980s, in association with Bayer Seger, he revived Bacharach’s ability to write hits and film music.
From that time date, among others, such popular songs as “Best you can do”, the theme of the film Arthur, played by Christopher Cross; “Heartligth” by Neil Diamond, from the film ET; “Making love” by Roberta Flack; “On my own” by Patty La Belle and Michael McDonald, and mainly, in 1985, “That’s what friends are for”, performed by Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight and Dionne Warwick, which won a Grammy (the sixth in the Bacharach career) and whose proceeds were donated to the fight against AIDS.
In 1992, after divorcing Carole Bayer Seger, Bacharach returned to work with Hal David to compose some of the songs for a Dionne Warwick album.
In 2008, Bacharach, who was about to turn 80, recorded an album that included his performance at the Opera House in Sydney, Australia.
Personally, the music of Burt Bacharach, due to the memories of youth that it evokes in me, is endearing. He not only enjoyed the songs he wrote that he heard on the radio, but also the beautiful versions of some of them made by the Prague Radio Orchestra that were contained in a record that he still has, entitled Music from the airfrom the Supraphon label, which I bought back in 1971 at the Czech House of Culture, and which had songs from the musical on side A Hair and on the B side those of Bacharach.
As at that time my record collection was very limited -I only had the unforgettable by Nat King Cole, the Hard day’s night of the Beatles and the first album of the Rolling Stones I had gotten in exchange for a fishing rod—I used to listen to the Czech record with the instrumental versions of Burt Bacharach’s songs very often, both to relax and on romantic occasions.
OPINION ARTICLE
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