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Burt Bacharach is playing the piano as the well-known arrangement for the second half of “A House Is Not A Home” erupts on the stage at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills in December 2019. The maestro stands to conduct the mini orchestra, just as he always had, going back to his early days when Bacharach was conducting and writing arrangements for Marlene Dietrich’s live shows. The orchestra rises to an extended level and the small vocal group sings the heartbreaking last verse of the song once and then a second time, before a horn solo, a key component in many of Bacharach’s songs, winds down the tune. Bacharach is still conducting to the end, carefully studying the score on the piano stand, still looking to create perfection in his music.
The evening performance was the last of over fifteen shows Bacharach performed in 2019, both in the U.S. and Europe, still a hefty schedule for the legendary artist who turned ninety-one earlier that year. The tux he wore in his 1970s live shows was replaced with a suit jacket and sneakers, and the thick, wavy hair he sported on TV specials from the same era had changed to a mop of gray. But Bacharach appeared to be just as focused and precise as he was in his hit-making days. A driven artist who never seemed to slow down. The pandemic stopped the live shows, but he still continued to put out new music: Blue Umbrella, a collection of songs co-written with songwriter Daniel Tashian, released in 2020, and Some Lovers in 2021, the first album release of the musical play, initially performed ten years earlier. And in 2022, he added another new single with Daniel Tashian: “Moon over Wichita” b/w “Heartbreak Storms.” On February 8, 2023, Bacharach passed away at age 94 after a long and prolific musical career. Hopefully, in his last days, he could still do what he was passionate about: sitting at the piano, composing and arranging.
It’s easy to think of Burt Bacharach as just a songwriter. With many top 40 hits and the continuous use of his songs in TV shows and movies, the rest of his accomplishments almost seem forgotten. His resume included film composer, songwriter, conductor, collaborator, concert performer, TV personality and celebrity. But, more than anything else, Burt Bacharach was an arranger, who created exquisite orchestration for his songs. His arrangements achieved a unique style all their own, different from other orchestrated charts, though now easily identifiable when you hear one. With lyricist Hal David, Bacharach wrote some of the world’s most popular songs, well-crafted tunes that will continue to be interpreted by singers of different musical styles and genres until the end of time. On the exceptional solo records Bacharach released in the sixties and early seventies, he pieced together complex arrangements for these songs; many that gave deeper meaning to the lyrics, even though they were mostly instrumental. In Bacharach’s world of composing, the song and the arrangement are one and the same. The drama in the words matches the stylistic mood that flows through his music. When you listen to a Burt Bacharach arrangement, it feels as if he was putting his own personal emotions into each chart, whether it’s about love or heartbreak. And there’s plenty of heartbreak. In so many of the songs he wrote with Hal David, someone’s heart is being broken.
If you’d have asked me at ten years old—this was in 1971—to name my favorite musical artist, I would have replied Burt Bacharach with no hesitation. 1971 is considered by many to be the best year for rock and soul album releases: What’s Going On, Sticky Fingers, Every Picture Tells a Story, Tapestry, Blue, There’s a Riot Goin’ On, Who’s Next—I listened to none of these. Growing up, popular music, primarily rock music, wasn’t allowed in our family home and my sister, brothers and I were not supposed to be listening to it on the radio. My father was from the pre-rock era and he not only believed that rock music was bad, it was also bad for you. Still, our house was always filled with records and music, even though it was only the music my parents liked: classical, show tunes, standards. Dad was a record collector—actually more of a record owner—with an ever-growing collection he started in the early 1950s. My siblings and I also had our own individual collections of LPs, each one having gone through a strict approval process. In the late sixties and early seventies, Burt Bacharach’s music fit into the “easy listening” category, a genre that an older generation, who never quite connected with rock ‘n’ roll, adopted as their own. Luckily for me, Burt Bacharach was deemed acceptable in our home.
Bacharach’s music was first introduced to me though his recordings and his TV specials. By the early seventies, I had five of his albums in my personal stack of records. His solo releases were bold and creative, with many interesting sounds provided by more instruments than I could identify. I would listen intensely to each track, desperately trying to figure out what was being played with each song. His television specials answered many of these questions, with full orchestra performances that spotlighted the individual players and focused on instrument solos. The flügelhorn, a type of trumpet with a gentle tone, is an essential instrument in Bacharach’s arrangements, along with dynamic strings and the broad influence of Latin music. I only caught on later, when I became enamored with samba and bossa nova, just how much Bacharach borrowed from Brazilian music. And the heartache and love loss in his songs was strangely appealing. “Make It Easy On Yourself,” “Walk On By,” “Anyone Who Had A Heart,” and especially “A House Is Not A Home.” I was only a kid but eagerly drawn to the sadness in these song lyrics, something I’ve carried into adulthood. At ten years old, Burt Bacharach was my pop star.
In his TV specials, Bacharach showed his relentless passion for his craft. Between 1969-1974, he hosted one or two specials each year with a variety show format and guest stars. The shows introduced his handsome looks, soft-spoken voice and ultra easy-going style. The programs were typical for the time, with song and dance numbers, bad jokes, Bacharach performing duets with his guests, and appearances by popular non-singing celebrities. There were also segments with just him and his orchestra and “behind the scenes” looks at Bacharach, the arranger. On An Evening With Burt Bacharach, broadcast in 1970, Burt and singer Dionne Warwick share an intimate segment, where Bacharach teaches Warwick a new song: “Loneliness Remembers (What Happiness Forgets).” Their process is fascinating, and it seems as if Bacharach can hear all the parts of the arrangement in his head as he coaches Warwick through the tune. They partially run through the song with Bacharach describing the guitar, the strings, the backing vocals and “the shaker” parts, at one point pounding on the piano where he expects to bring in the drums. As they go through it a second and third time, Bacharach is almost giddy with the excitement of a child. The scene then shifts to a full orchestra in a studio with Bacharach wildly conducting the musicians and Warwick finishing the vocals of the song. The segment is magical and mesmerizing. “Loneliness Remembers (What Happiness Forgets)” has an upbeat, vibrate arrangement, but a closer look at the lyrics reveals a sad and painful story. This is the essence of a Burt Bacharach/Hal David song
In Bacharach’s story, films were an ongoing factor in the ups and downs of his musical life. A theme song for a 1965 film gave him one of his earliest hit singles and his first Academy Award nomination. And a score for a 1969 movie, along with a popular song taken from the film, made Bacharach a superstar and earned him two Oscars. But another score for a 1973 film would break up his long-standing songwriting partnership, put an end to another alliance with a key collaborator, and almost finish his career, resulting in many years out of the public eye. Still, his appearance in a blockbuster 1997 film would make him a celebrity again, recognized by children on the street. And a collaborative song for a 1998 film re-awakened Bacharach’s gift as an arranger and brought him back to making breathtaking music again. Film work was only one part of Burt Bacharach’s varied musical accomplishments, but its impact on the direction he followed can’t be overstated. It would often serve as the inspiration for many of his greatest songs and his biggest hits.
With Bacharach’s enormous creative talent, you might conclude that he had dreamed of being a composer or concert pianist from a very young age. Burt’s mother, who listened to classical music, insisted that her young son take piano lessons, but he didn’t like to practice much, preferring sports over the music. He grew up an only child in Forest Hills, New York and he had more interest in becoming a standout athlete, like his father had in college (the elder Mr. Bacharach, first name Bert with an “e”, worked in men’s clothing and wrote a newspaper column). Still, he continued the piano lessons, and they became more important when he first discovered jazz as a teenager. Burt became hooked after seeing Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie perform, and at age 15, he started his own jazz band he named Happy Baxter. After high school, Burt pursued a music education at McGill University in Montreal and at the Music Academy of the West in California. After college, he was drafted into the army during the Korean War in the early 1950s. With his piano playing skills, he avoided being sent to Korea, instead assigned to a touring group that entertained troops in Germany and at an officers’ club on Governor’s Island in New York. During his time in the service, Bacharach would write some of his first song arrangements for the military group to play.
After being discharged from the army, he accepted his first job playing piano and conducting for singer Vic Damone. His time with Damone was short, only lasting a few weeks, but it led to stints playing piano with The Ames Brother, and later, touring with Marlene Dietrich. In 1953, Burt married his first wife, actress/singer Paula Stewart, and though the marriage only lasted three years, she was instrumental in helping him get his first songwriting job, working for Famous Music in the Brill Building in New York. Bacharach’s early years as a songwriter were unsuccessful, which kept him out on the road, playing dates with Joel Grey, Polly Bergen and Steve Lawrence. But, by 1956, things began to look up after Bacharach met and began writing with lyricist Hal David. They wrote a few hits early on: “The Story of My Life” for Marty Robbins in 1957 and “Magic Moments” for Perry Como in 1958, but it would still take a few more years before the songwriting team would really catch fire. And then, in the early sixties, when Dionne Warwick entered the picture as their primary song interpreter, Burt Bacharach and Hal David became unstoppable.
Bacharach and David were not an exclusive team at first—Burt still worked with other writers in the Brill Building, including lyricist Bob Hilliard (“Any Day Now,” “Mexican Divorce”) and Hal’s brother Mack David (“Baby, It’s You”). And Bacharach continued to tour with Marlene Dietrich from 1958 to 1962 when he wasn’t back at the Brill Building working on new compositions. Bacharach would often take part in the sessions for his songs, but he did not always have control of the finished product, a frustrating result he was eager to change. This finally happened with a 1962 Jerry Butler recording of the Bacharach/David song “Make It Easy On Yourself,” Burt’s first recording session where he had total control of the musicians and the chart. The song became a top 20 pop hit, and it set the groundwork for what would soon follow. Around the same time, Burt met Dionne Warwick at a session for the Drifters. She was a backing singer for the vocal group and had been a temporary replacement singer in the Shirelles. Bacharach and David were searching for the right person to sing their songs and they offered her a chance to record some demos. Their initial single with Warwick, “Don’t Make Me Over” became a top 5 R&B hit and went to #21 on the pop charts. And Warwick’s next two hits with Bacharach arrangements showed why she became the ideal singer for their music: “Anyone Who Had A Heart” and “Walk On By,” two top 10 pop hits in 1963 and 1964. With Burt on piano and a stirring string arrangement, “Anyone Who Had A Heart” is devastating, with Warwick giving an intense, heartsick vocal performance. “Walk On By” is even better with the use of the familiar flügelhorn that would become so prominent in Bacharach music. “Anyone Who Had a Heart” and “Walk On By” are two of Bacharach/David’s saddest songs and Warwick became the singer they had been looking for—the right voice to express the strong emotional content in their music. After these hits, Bacharach and David brought all their new material to Warwick to record first. The songwriting team signed a deal with Scepter Records to write and produce albums for Warwick, a partnership that would continue into the early seventies. There would be more hits and Grammy nominations with two awards for “Do You Know The Way To San Jose” and “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again.” Warwick would include many Bacharach/David compositions on her albums—some not as well-known—and Bacharach would re-make several of these on his own albums, though, with much more elaborate arrangements.
Bacharach started his own solo recording career in 1965, releasing his first album titled Hit Maker! on Kapp Records. The record sold very well in England, with the track, “Trains and Boats and Planes,” becoming a top 5 British hit. The album didn’t do as well in The States until being re-released a year later as Burt Bacharach Plays His Hits. This is the red-colored album with a young lady in a mini-dress on the front cover, the same record later used as a prop in the first Austin Powers movie. I received a copy of Plays His Hits as a Christmas gift in 1970 and I played the album endlessly. Plays His Hits dropped three songs from the original Hit Maker! album and replaced them with vocal cuts of “What’s New Pussycat” and “My Little Red Book.” I didn’t care for either of those tracks (still don’t), but the rest—well, the rest are magnificent. The songs on Hit Maker!/Plays His Hits introduced the foundation for Burt Bacharach’s solo recordings: an instrumental opening, with the lead switching between different instruments (horns, sax, flute, keyboards, strings), and then a slow buildup of the orchestra to dramatic heights, with either wordless vocals or lyrics partially sung by a vocal group. Most times, the only words sung are the key lines of the song or just the closing lyrics. Burt’s new arrangements for “Don’t Make Me Over” and “Walk On By” are exhilarating and “Anyone Who Had a Heart” takes on a more somber tone, still conveying the heartbreak and despair in Warwick’s original. And you can’t help gushing over “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” the only all-vocal track with a bossa nova-tinged arrangement. The songs on these albums are some of Bacharach and David’s earliest co-writes and there’s a common thread in the track list—some in just the titles alone—that capture the empty feelings of a broken relationship. It makes you wonder what inspired these two seemingly content songwriters to create music with such desperate and heavyhearted themes.
The years 1965 to 1971 were a fruitful period for the songwriting partners. Bacharach wrote the score for the film What’s New Pussycat and the theme song, with its punchy Tom Jones vocals, earned Bacharach/David their first Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. This led to more soundtrack work, scoring two more British comedies: After The Fox in 1966 and Casino Royale in 1967. The latter James Bond spoof film would include another classic Bacharach/David song: “The Look of Love,” sung by Dusty Springfield. The songwriting team would continue to write additional movie songs of note: “Alfie,” written for the 1966 picture but not used in the film, and the theme song for The April Fools in 1969. “I Say A Little Prayer” was also included in The April Fools and it has become one of Bacharach/David’s most beloved songs.
Bacharach began recording albums for A&M Records in 1967, the label owned by Herb Alpert of the popular group Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. Albert had played on Burt’s groovy instrumental theme song for Casino Royale and had a hit singing another Bacharach/David favorite “This Guy’s In Love With You.” Albert’s smooth voice and cool trumpet solo gave the songwriting team their first #1 in 1968. Bacharach’s first four A&M records: Reach Out, Make It Easy On Your Yourself, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Burt Bacharach expand his instrument offerings and allow him to stretch to new extremes in his arrangements. Reach Out uses harpsichord, bossa guitar and a güiro on “The Look of Love,” and a “Swinging London” organ delivers the sass in “Bond Street.” Bacharach makes his debut vocal performance on “A House Is Not A Home,” with the same arrangement used in the 2019 performance. Burt Bacharach is not a powerful singer but you can feel his affection for the lyrics, in this case, the songwriter being the best interpreter of the song.
Make It Easy On Yourself came two years later and over half the songs are from the Broadway play Promises, Promises. The Tony Award-winning show features all Bacharach/David original songs and earned the songwriters a Grammy for the cast album. Bacharach creates spacious arrangements for these songs on Make It Easy On Yourself, best represented on the tender “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again.” The popular tune was initially not included in the play and could have easily been discarded, never to find its way, years later, into the second Austin Powers film. “This Guy’s In Love With You” closes the album, and Bacharach sings again, this time with cool Antônio Carlos Jobim-like wordless vocals.
The soundtrack for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid also came out in 1969, and Bacharach’s score for the film is so easy to love, even more so if you also adore the film. The music earned two Oscars: one for the score and the other for the massive hit “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.” Bacharach’s use of tack piano, banjo and accordion captures the period of the story, but the beauty in the music is modern and electrifying. Like Plays His Hits, I listened to this record over and over, especially loving the instrumentals that opened each side: “The Sundance Kid” and the beautiful “Come Touch The Sun.” Two other enjoyable and unique tracks gave the album some added spice: “The Old Fun City (N.Y. Sequence)” and “South American Getaway,” the latter with the vocals acting as the instruments, sung by The Swingle Singers. B.J. Thomas’ rendition of “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” not only won an Oscar, but also stayed at #1 on the pop charts for a month in early 1970. I’ve never been a fan of the song, but I remember how much it was loved at the time, sung by almost everyone on records and on television. Bacharach’s celebrity heightened extensively after the Oscar wins; appearing on TV more and adding an additional activity to his already large workload: touring concert performer.
Bacharach’s next solo record highlighted two blockbuster songs and also presented some of his wildest work. “(They Long to Be) Close to You” was a tremendous hit for the Carpenters and on Bacharach’s 1971 self-titled album, he gives the song a sweet arrangement, partially taking the vocals himself. The other big song on the record, “One Less Bell to Answer,” is sung by Cissy Houston, Dionne Warwick’s aunt and the mother of Whitney. “Wives and Lovers” had been a hit for Jack Jones in 1963, and on this recording, Bacharach spares us the unfortunate sexist lyrics, only singing the last line at the end. The song is given an instrumental rebirth on the album, with multi-part segments and an exciting use of instruments and solos. Bacharach gave this hyper-thrilling arrangement a visual look when he performed it with a full orchestra on his 1972 TV Special. “Nikki” is another wonderful track on the album, written for Burt’s daughter with second wife, actress Angie Dickinson. In the same 1972 TV special, there’s a segment with Bacharach running through “Nikki” with his orchestra in the studio, calling out the sections as their parts arrive and bringing together each piece of the arrangement with the right tempo and volume. It’s an absolute joy to watch and more evidence of Bacharach’s musical gift. Burt Bacharach’s self-titled album topped off four solo records of inventive music, and by 1971, with several chart-topping songs by Dionne Warwick, successful movie scores, Grammy awards, a Tony and two Oscars, it seemed like everything Bacharach and David touched turned to gold. But just a few years later, the songwriting team would experience their first major flop and bring the hit machine to a screeching halt. Lost Horizon changed everything.
Film producer Ross Hunter, fresh off the success of the movie Airport, set out to create a musical remake of the 1937 Frank Capra picture Lost Horizon. He signed many of the top actors of the day for the film: Peter Finch, Liv Ullman, Sally Kellerman, George Kennedy, Olivia Hussey, and hired Burt Bacharach and Hal David to write the songs. This created one of Lost Horizon’s first critical problem: hiring non-singer actors for singing roles. Hunter may have have been inspired by the box office success of the 1969 movie musical Paint Your Wagon, which cast actors Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood in singing parts. Finch, Ullmann and Hussey’s vocal parts were dubbed and Bacharach took on the daunting task of teaching the remaining actors their vocal parts. Lost Horizon came out in 1973, a time when the old-style Hollywood movie musical had fallen out of favor and the film showed poorly at the box office. The songs Bacharach and David wrote for Lost Horizon found little interest as well. I bought the soundtrack album prior to the film’s release, and I was equally underwhelmed by the music. Bacharach spent two years working on Lost Horizon and it ended his songwriting partnership with Hal David when they squabbled over the split of their point distribution from the film. It’s mind blowing today to realize that this amazing team that had made such incredible music imploded over a small scrap of money from a movie that few people liked. And with their partnership dissolved, they also couldn’t meet their production and songwriting agreement with Dionne Warwick and her label. The three ex-partners would all file lawsuits and not speak to each other for a decade.
Odder still was Bacharach’s next A&M solo record in 1973, the Living Together album, released right on the heals of the Lost Horizon soundtrack. I purchased a copy when it came out and found it to be a head-scratcher, with half the album devoted to vocal cuts of the same songs from the Lost Horizon recording. Burt appeared on the cover, neither smiling nor melancholy, instead looking a little worn with more gray in his hair than ever before. Unlike the Make it Easy on Yourself album, which gave new life to the Promises, Promises musical, the remake of the Lost Horizon songs added little to the originals. There are some bright spots on the record: “Walk The Way You Talk” and “Long Ago Tomorrow” have some of the sparkle of his previous albums. I didn’t get Bacharach’s reasoning for the Living Together album until much later when I realized he was just trying to salvage something good out of a handful of songs he really cared about. And then, after a early 1974 TV special, Burt Bacharach just seemed to drop out of sight.
What came next were the quiet years, or at least, that’s how it appeared. Bacharach seemed to be out of the spotlight, but he was still doing concerts, working on his own music, and collaborating with others. He released two new solo records in the late seventies with little fanfare: Futures in 1977 and Woman in 1979. I remember seeing Woman in a record store when it was first released and not even bothering to pick it up to read the liner notes on the back cover. I had moved on. Bacharach continued to work, writing the theme song for the film Arthur with third wife Carole Bayer Sager, which won a Grammy for Best Original Song in 1981. Another film tune would also bring an unexpected result for the songwriting couple. Their song “That’s What Friends Are For” was written for the movie Night Shift and it became a #1 hit when it was remade in 1985 with an all-star group of singers led by Dionne Warwick. The song raised millions for the American Foundation for AIDS Research and won a Grammy award for Song of the Year. It also reunited Bacharach and Warwick, who became friends again. There were other songs with Neil Diamond and “On My Own,” a hit single sung by Michael McDonald and Patti LaBelle. Still, it seemed like Bacharach was mostly flying under the radar. That is until Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery brought him back.
Like many people in 1997, I went to see the first Austin Powers movie at the theater, not really knowing what to expect. The film was entertaining, and I got a big laugh when they brought out the red Burt Bacharach Plays His Hits vinyl album as they were going through Austin Powers’ personal effects. I hadn’t seen the record in years! Of course, watching Bacharach later in the film, playing piano and singing “What The World Needs Now Is Love,” was another pleasant surprise. Apparently, Mike Meyers is a fan, and he got the idea for the Austin Powers movie after hearing “The Look of Love” on the radio.
Seeing Bacharach in the first Austin Powers movie was fun, but Bacharach’s music didn’t fully return for me until his project with Elvis Costello. Their co-written song “God Give Me Strength” was made for the film Grace of My Heart, a movie about the Brill Building, songwriting and pop music in the sixties. Hearing the gorgeous horns that open “God Give Me Strength” and the lush strings that flood over the song was like being taken back to ten years old again. The arrangements I loved were revived with “God Give Me Strength” and their album together, Painted From Memory: The New Songs of Bacharach & Costello was Bacharach’s return to form. He found in Costello the perfect songwriting partner who could capture the darkness that Bacharach had previously achieved in songs with Hal David. In his book Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, Costello writes about the Bacharach’s chart for “God Gives Me Strength” and the beautiful sound that makes his music so incomparable. Costello initially wrote the melody and lyrics and sent them to Bacharach, who created a stunning arrangement with Costello’s first song draft. Nothing less should have been expected from the master arranger. “Finally, there was an instrumental motif that acted as an introduction and interlude between the verses,” Costello wrote. “It was no surprise when Burt said that it was to be played by flügelhorns. It was the very definition of Burt Bacharach music.”