The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

Here's an extended clip from Jimmy Webb's appearance on Playboy After Dark that features the interview with Hugh Hefner that preceded his performance of 'One Of The Nicer Things'. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lEOGJ0_T4-k&pp=ygUdamltbXkgd2ViYiBwbGF5Ym95IGFmdGVyIGRhcms%3D What a remarkable bit o...

It's nice that Julie London and Peggy Lee have been discussed or at least referred to on the forum recently because both are singers I grew up hearing a lot at home as my parents owned several of their albums on vinyl. It's also interesting that Alma Cogan has been featured here and I remember my d...

Looking at the contents of the fourth CD in the collection I see that there's a version of 'Baby It's You' by the impressive pairing of Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe, a recording apparently made in the 1980s which until now I'd never heard before. I don't know who plays the guitar solo but it's a bea...

I remember about thirty years ago hearing Elvis Costello's recording of Bacharach & Hilliard's 'Please Stay' and being impressed that he chose to base his interpretation on the UK hit version of the song by The Cryin' Shames rather than The Drifters' original. This is featured on disc 4 of the c...

"When you're writing songs with Burt Bacharach, you obviously don't give a fuck what people think". Now which Burt Bacharach do you think Bob Dylan was referring to in that statement? The one with a long-standing reputation as one of the greatest popular music composers of the twentieth c...

Performed decades before the term 'political correctness' came into common usage and when women singers regularly sang 'Wives And Lovers' without batting an eyelid, or more in keeping with the language of the times, their pretty little eyelids.

There seems to be a growing interest in Laura Nyro if British music magazines like Record Collector and Shindig are anything to go by. Both these publications have done big features on her in the last month or two and in fact she's on the front cover of the latest edition of Shindig. A continuation...

Great choice of song and a terrific version that more than does it justice. It certainly has a better sound quality than the two previous recordings of the song!

I remember reading somewhere that Bacharach's wife Jane Hansen was influential in his decision to drop from his shows the instrumental or semi-instrumental versions of his hits so familiar to us from the A&M albums, her argument being that audiences wanted to hear the songs with the words sung. ...

.....My guess is that there's been dozens of orchestral albums released over the years by the likes of Frank Chacksfield, Ronnie Aldrich and Tony Hatch and for them and all the various jazz musicians who've recorded Bacharach albums there's a separate list to be made. I think the main reason why fo...

I liked what I heard of the arrangement on the brief snippet of 'Let Me Go To Him' featured in one of the two videos just posted, so I immediately went in hot persuit of the complete track:

I remember being very underwhelmed the first time I heard Tony Hatch's Bacharach album back in the 70s. I can't remember what exactly I was expecting but perhaps I was hoping that "Britain's Burt Bacharach" could have produced something a bit more adventurous and less bland and which conta...

'Pieces Of Dreams' was not only one of my favourite Alan and Marilyn Bergman lyrics but also one of my favourite pieces of music by Michel Legrand. This is the recording of the song I always come back to:

By 1965 Dionne Warwick would have already been well aware of Bacharach's fame in the UK after her visits to promote her single releases, and through her Hal David would have known of all the hype surrounding his songwriting partner, but I should imagine that they both must have been more than a lit...

'Be Aware' has previously been recorded by Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, The Anita Kerr Singers and Laura Nyro, and here's Trijntje Oosterhuis's version from her new all-Bacharach album: