The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

Thanks for the Nick Palmer post...that's an interesting recording. The A-side sounds more like the late 1960s (the MOR, AM radio pop late 60s, that is) to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8KczQqjuTE The keyboard on the Bacharach B-side has a distinctive, almost "electric harpsichord" t...

Thanks Blair, I've got several of Pullen-Adams Quartet albums, but not this one. They didn't cover that many pop songs or standards from what I can tell, so it's cool to hear them deconstruct this. Not for the faint of heart! :) In a "seven degrees of jazz separation" exercise, I'll note t...

Cliff Richard is one of those artists I probably would know by name only if I wasn't a Bacharach fan. I've come to like his Bacharach recordings, even if he does tend to keep things on a low simmer (he seems kind of like the Chet Baker of British pop when he does a Bacharach tune). I don't see any m...

I love that Meters cover and would love to know about more instances of New Orleans R&B musicians covering Bacharach. Off the top of my head I can only think of a couple of Irma Thomas songs. Speaking of great organ combo versions of "Look of Love", I like the 1968 live recordings by D...

Just hearing it now for the first time, I like the Muldaur song better too! I should investigate her catalog in depth; she does have a terrific voice and she has the right artistic instincts when she uses it. In the U.S., the Robert John track went to #1, so it was pretty much impossible to be alive...

I agree on that Kathy Kirby recordings, it's got some nice features. My searching this week led me to the recordings by Sue Raney and Bambi McCormick--I didn't realize the tune got around this much at the time. (For someone I've never heard of, Bambi's vocal and the orchestra performance on her reco...

No, not even Dionne Warwick who sings it as if she's merely running through the song before the actual recording, backed by a less than inspired arrangement by Bacharach. I agree with that...I just put on Dionne when writing the other day in this thread, and was a little surprised at how uninvolved...

Eydie's "Knowing When to Leave" is new to me. She sounds like she popped a Valium just before the session, and that note she lands on and sticks with at 2:05 is definitely worthy of "let get another take, Eydie". I recently got the London "Promises Promises" soundtrack,...

Roscoe Shelton's "You're the Dream" (1966) is another song attributed to Bacharach that seems unlikely to have been written by him. It's a bit harder to pin down exactly who did write it though. Does anyone have any evidence one way or the other, aside from the label of the 2012 seven-inch...

I just stumbled across this rather over-the-top slice of Bacharachiana, notable for a few of things. 1.) Who is Robert John? His 1979 hit "Sad Eyes" will probably be familiar to anyone who was alive and visiting shopping malls and drugstores in the early 1980s, but his showbiz career is an...

That's funny, I just got the three Sweet Inspirations Bacharach tracks from that era yesterday, along with a couple of Cissy Houston Bacharach covers from Presenting Cissy Houston. Good stuff. Those tight gospel harmony stabs that open up "Reach Out" are so good. Cissy, like Aretha on &quo...

I generally prefer singers who stick pretty close the the original conception of a Bacharach tune, and don't over-decorate or get too loose. Willie's arrangement and vocal are very evocative of 1970 and fun to hear, though I wouldn't go to this version very often, as it's a little too loose for me (...

Here's an item I don't see in the online discographies or in the Dominic book. Maybe it's common knowledge among the serious completists, I don't know. https://www.discogs.com/release/11726587-Willie-Tee-Reach-Out-For-Me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk6J0NujtDg I like New Orleans music and know j...

Approve?
Sure. This is hardly the first time a hip hop artist has sampled "Walk on By".

Respect?
Well...he'd probably cash the check, smile, and think "they still need my hooks."

...There is another mistake in the new box-set: the Jay Livingston & Ray Evans song "Another time, another place" credited like a Burt song. Thanks for pointing out "Another Time, Another Place". I just got a Bacharach rarities anthology that included that track as recorded ...