Burt Bacharch has revolutionized the world of commercial recording in the most unlikely way -- he has replaced noise with creative music.
...Anthony Newley
There seems little more that one can say about Burt Bacharach. When I first heard "Don't Make Me Over", I burst into tears with sheer joy and excitement and his music has been affecting me this way ever since. To me, he is the end.
... Dusty Springfield
I have worked with many creators of songs and fresh concepts but few have the dynamic talents of Burt Bacharach.
... Gene Pitney
Burt is one of the best of today's composers. He has a fresh approach to music, typical of which is his song "Wives and Lovers" which, I believe, was the first commercially successful jazz waltz. His arrangement are as interesting as tasteful as his melodies and help sell many of his songs. Burt Bacharach is a remarkable man.
... Jack Jones
The charm, personality, and talent of this man speaks for itself. To me Burt is:
If you love not tall pines which touch the beginnings of the sky If you have never yearned to leap a mailbox, nor longed to join the street urchins in a game of tag If you have not sighed and smiled beyond your mind as sleep creeps out of the abstract and carries you into its endless night If violins and cellos harpsichord and piano trumpets, flutes and sounds of rippling scales have never lightened your spirit If Alfie did not become so much a name, more a lonely island of song in a sea of human sadness. If cool water too long hung out of reach has never quenched your thirst If love comes second or you come first, If you have never walked without a destination nor flown without a sense of marvel If you have known neither pain nor sorrow nor wept for the joy of release. If a baby is not a person until it knows your name If your heart has not leapt nor your sense quivered as the conductor's baton taps the music stand If you have not stared at a pretty girl in a vacuum in time across a crowded room and prayed she knew If you believe that the essence of a man and his music can adequately be caught and conveyed within an album liner note ... then it is likely that the entrapment of music between these covers is not for youand though it is sad, you should walk on by. But Burt Bacharach, shy, young, handsome, courteous, New Yorker son of a jounalist, married to an actress, is more relevantly, a fiery complex ingredient in the exciting cauldron of the musical sixties Put down by no one, whether peers or followers, put on by nothing, whether fame or wealth; put off by neither pressure nor competitor, Bacharach is a very special man. He bestrides, like Gulliver, the warring worlds of the Establishements' Academy Award system -- from whom he has wrought two Oscar nominations for "Alfie" & "What's New Pussycat" -- and the contemporary Top Forty scene where the buying power lies in the hands of the very young. It is effortless to praise him because he has done so much, so widely and so well. Marlene Dietrich doted on him as her arranger and conductor, adores him as a man. From Hollywood to New York, across to Europe and the British Isles in military camps and in brutally sophisticated nightclubs, he built upon his formal training as a pianist by adding technique and style and charm As a songwriter, he decided to create tunes people could hum, and by now, few singers anywhere in the world haven't sung them. On this album, his first for A&M Records with whom he has a close and vastly rewarding relationship, he has written, arranged, assembled all eleven songs, conducted the orchestra and produced the entire album, and because he knows there is nothing you can do that can't be done, he has played piano on all of the tracks and sung on one of them. This one is called "A House is Not a Home," and it is something else. So is Burt Bacharach.
He has a way of doing unconventional things with time, with the length of a phrase, with chord patterns and the logic by which one note follows another. WHat he is after is not just "differentness" but fresh emotion, caught in rhythms which are like the pulsings of life. The result is that a Bacharach songis not faintly reminiscent of ten or a dozen other songs. It has a rightness all its own, and power and intensity.
Burt's very special voice -- honest, unhackneyed, direct, intense and loving, with a kind of underlying urgency even in moments of gaiety -- seems remarkably right and characteristic of our time.
Since Burt recorded his first A&M album "Reach Out," nearly two years ago, he and his lyricist-partner Hal David have written the smash Broadway hit, "Promises, Promises." Five numbers from that great score are included here, along with two brand-new songs, "Pacific Coast Highway" and "She's Gone Away" and four Bacharach standards.
There are voices here, including the Bacharach singers and the master own rumpled and earnest baritone on "Make It Easy On Yourself."
But Burt the arranger has seen to it that this outing is primarily instrumental, the better to showcase Burt the melodist, and incidently Burt plays piano. And the arrangements are as fresh and unhackneyed as the melodies, turning to such unexpected sound-sources as the ocarina, twin flügelhorns, marimba, organ and baroqye toy trumpet to beguile the ear. He even proves that the oboe is a wind that somebody can blow good.
The pleasing and characteristic musical intelligence of Burt Bacharach is doubly at work here.
--CHARLES CHAMPLIN, Los Angeles Times
GUEST APPEARANCES
Vocals
Jamie Anders -- "We Should Have Met Sooner," "When You Bring Your Sweet Love to Me"
Peter Yarrow -- "The Younger Grow Younger Every Day"
Joshie Armstead -- "I Took My Strength From You (I Had None)," "Us," "Seconds," "Where Are You"
Melissa Mackay, Sally Stevens and Marti McCall -- "No One Remembers My Name"
FEATURED SOLOISTS
Warren Luening, trumpet
Marvin Stamm, trumpet
George Young, sax
David Sanborn, sax
BACKGROUND VOCALS
Patti Austin, Lani Groves, Raymond Simpson, Vivian Cherry, Zachary Sanders, Frank Floyd
KEYBOARDS
Burt Bacharach, Richard Tee, Leon Pendarvis, Paul Schaeffer
GUITARS
Joe Beck, Jay Berliner, Charles Chiarenza, David Spinozza, Hiram Bullock, William Pitman, Stuart Scharf, Eric Weissberg
BASS
Tony Levin, Donald Bagley, Herb Bushler, William Lee
PERCUSSION
Ralph MacDonald
DRUMS
Grady Tate, Clyde Duell
PHILADELPHIA STRINGS
Joseph D'Onofrio, concert master and contractor
Margaret Ross, Lois MacDonnell, Kathleen Carroll, Peter Nocella, Emma Kummorow, Pamela Porta, Thomas Sarla, Rebekah Johnson, Helen Janov, Lance Elbeck, Hitai Lee, Richard Amaroso, Sarah Jane Johnson