Frankie valli sings Burt

[gabba]

Dear friends,
in Frankie Valli's last album "romancing the 60's" there are two Burt tracks performed by this talented fellow:"any day now" and "this guy's...".
bye Gabba

[steveo_1965]

Ty Gabba for that!
And for those who dont remember...back in the mid 60's Frankie Valli
sang lead for the group The "Four Seasons"..they put out an album whereby they sang the hits of Bacharach and David....Can't remember the exact title..4 Seasons sing The hits of Bacharach and David, or something like that. Part of this album or one side may have been devoted to Bob Dylan...my mind is a bit hazy on the history of this album, but it definitely did exist.

Steveo

[nymusicalsguy]

Its unwieldy title is THE 4 SEASONS SING BIG HITS BY BURT BACHARACH/HAL DAVID/BOB DYLAN, and it's definitely worth seeking out on LP or CD (the Rhino and Ace CD reissues are very out-of-print, unfortunately). Track list:

What The World Needs Now/Anyone Who Had A Heart/Always Something There To Remind Me/Make It Easy On Yourself/Walk On By/What's New Pussycat?/Queen Jane Approximately/Mr. Tambourine Man/Like A Rolling Stone/Don't Think Twice (It's Alright)/All I Really Want To Do/Blowin' In The Wind

[An Enormous BB Fan]

Ty Gabba for that!
And for those who dont remember...back in the mid 60's Frankie Valli
sang lead for the group The "Four Seasons"..they put out an album whereby they sang the hits of Bacharach and David....Can't remember the exact title..4 Seasons sing The hits of Bacharach and David, or something like that. Part of this album or one side may have been devoted to Bob Dylan...my mind is a bit hazy on the history of this album, but it definitely did exist.

Steveo

Steveo, your memory is correct! I went to amazon.com and found it in one second! Here is the link:



You can listen to samples there too. And I'm sure you'll notice just from the samples how the orchestrations are so inferior to Burt's. It's like that old saying, "How're ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?", if you know what I mean.

The title of the album is "The 4 Seasons Sing Big Hits by Burt Bacharach...Hal David...Bob Dylan/New Gold Hits"

Here are the songs:


1 What the World Needs Now Is Love The Four Seasons
2 Anyone Who Had a Heart The Four Seasons
3 (There's) Always Something There to Remind Me The Four Seasons
4 Make It Easy on Yourself The Four Seasons
5 Walk on By The Four Seasons
6 What's New Pussycat? The Four Seasons
7 Queen Jane Approximately The Four Seasons
8 Mr. Tambourine Man The Four Seasons
9 Like a Rolling Stone The Four Seasons
10 Don't Think Twice, It's All Right - The Wonder Who? The Four Seasons
11 All I Really Want to Do The Four Seasons
12 Blowin' in the Wind The Four Seasons
13 C'mon Marianne The Four Seasons
14 Let's Ride Again The Four Seasons
15 Beggin' The Four Seasons
16 Around and Around The Four Seasons
17 Goodbye Girl The Four Seasons
18 I'm Gonna Change The Four Seasons
19 Tell It to the Rain The Four Seasons
20 Dody (I Dig You) The Four Seasons
21 Puppet Song The Four Seasons
22 Lonesome Road The Four Seasons
23 Opus 17 (Don't You Worry 'Bout Me) The Four Seasons
24 I've Got You Under My Skin The Four Seasons

[BachtoBacharach]

Frankie Valli had early ties to Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach. Frankie was from New Jersey and became friends with Warwick early in their careers. Darlene Love wrote in her biography about visiting Warwick's family in East Orange on Thanksgiving (if my memory is correct) and Lee Drinkard Warrick and her husband Mancel entertained Dionne, Dee Dee, Frankie, Darlene, Cissy Drinkard Houston (who was pregnant with Whitney at the time), Judy Clay, Doris Troy ("Just One Look" a 1963 hit Dionne sang backup on) and several others. This would have been around Thanksgiving of 1962 when Dionne was climbing the charts with "Don't Make Me Over"...Valli remained a friend of Warwick's and was an admirer of Bacharach and their work together. Maybe someone someday will write a book about Dionne, Burt and Hal and tell these worderful stories of all the folks who aggregated around Warwick/Bacharach/David. Lee Grant, the Oscar winning actress was an early friend of both Warwick and Bacharach and recalled attending the recording session in 1963 when they recorded Walk On By. Darlene writes in her book that famous folks gravitated to Warwick when she worked with Dionne as a backup vocalist from about 1973 to about 1979. John Wayne, Aretha Franklin, Claire Bloom, Rod Steiger, Neil Armstrong, Janis Joplin, Cass Elliott, Carly Simon, Diana Ross, Elvis Presley, etc. were all big admirers of Dionne and those Bacharach/David works of art...it's too bad that Dionne, primarily because of the Psychic Friends Network and a few poor decisions regarding business associations in these later years, has hurt her credibility and good name and some folks can't get past that and have no idea how influential she was as a singer...she was a singer's singer and was as big as Aretha (both were "superstars" in music in the sixties and the other "gals" who were also big then were nowhere near as big as those two) in their respective heydeys but those who were born after 1980 or so don't realize that...or appreciate fully the brilliance of those wonderful recordings of Warwick/Bacharach/David, IMHO.

[An Enormous BB Fan]

Great stuff BachtoBacharach. And you're so right when you say that someone should definitely write a book about those years and tell all those stories. And you're right when you say that Dionne was a singer's singer and was a true giant in music in those years. I think you're right when you say that the Psychic Friends Network hurt Dionne in terms of people's regard of her place in pop music history. She's not just some singer from the past. I think also think that it might have hurt her a bit when she decided to add an "e" to the end of her name and then dropped it. But I don't know if that really had any effect on her reputation. But I do think that her association with Linda George hurt her mystique. I remember thinking then, "Why is Dionne doing this?"

And you so correctly spelled "Warrick" -- as that is really the family name -- not Warwick (which was a misspelling on the record).

I have a question for you: Did Dionne sing backup on "Just One Look" AFTER she recorded "Don't Make Me Over"?

You can listen to "Just One Look" by clicking on this link.



It's really a great song and Doris sang it so well. I tried to hear Dionne in the background but I couldn't hear her (which, of course, is the way it should be) -- but I thought I might be able to catch a little bit of it.

Speaking of background singers: You can definitely hear Burt's voice in the background of The Shirelle's "Baby, It's You".
Listen:

[steveo_1965]

Hey,
This turned into some really neat posts! I love it...reagarding the Seasons orchestration
on the Bacharach material...well, their arranger (Charlie Callello?)tried to tutor
the songs into their stlye...and as I recall hearing it a couple of times...(many moons ago)
my impression is that is was a quickie, and not a lot of great thought went into the
charts, so aside from it being prepared for a small group with the typical "seasons"
bag of tricks, well it just doesnt translate as well, bacially because these arrangements were not thought out enough.(time constraints) This is my take of what happened.It was a neat idea, but I don't think it sold well....
By the way, I consider the low compact seasons vocal arrangements by Nick Massi(the bass singer in the group)on their hit songs to be a great influence in my writing....I like that dense low sound in the backround vocals!

Steveo

[BachtoBacharach]

Dionne Warwick continued to do some background work up until around mid-1963 when she began another round of recording sessions with Bacharach culminating in the the November 1963 sessions where "Anyone Who Had A Heart" and "Walk On By" were recorded. Warwick's touring schedule after "Don't Make Me Over" became a hit cut into her background work but when Anyone Who Had A Heart hit it big in December 1963 she curtailed all her background work and began a tour of Europe where Marlene Dietrich introduced her at the Olympia Theater in Paris where she was promptly dubbed "The Black Pearl of Paris". George Martin was in the audience furiously scribbling lyrics and a quick chart of "Anyone Who Had A Heart" to take to back to England for Cilla Black to record. Martin was able to secure Dionne's Scepter single of the tune a few days later which had not been released in Europe yet and fleshed out his arrangement using the single and Black quickly recorded it before Scepter could even get Warwick's original released in Europe. Cilla blows the lyrics in a couple of places in her recording! Doris Troy was a close personal friend and Lee Warrick was a surrogate mother for Troy; Judy Clay was actually adopted and raised by Lee Drinkard Warrick. Warwick grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in the racially diverse community of East Orange, New Jersey and was a conservatory trained musician; many folks don't know but Warwick is an accomplished pianist and can play a mean guitar as well. Her early gospel training coupled with conservatory training and Bacharach's School of Music (so to speak) enabled Bacharach/David to create the complex compositions they wrote for her specifically. And it produced that unique sound that no one else has been able to duplicate. Hence the simplistic and rather bland arrangements and vocalizing in the Frankie Vallie Bacharach/Dylan album...this points out perfectly how difficult Bacharach is to sing and sing well and how easy Warwick made it all seem. You can listen to Warwick playing a rocking piano on her cut of the gospel classic "This Little Light" on her 1965 album "Here I Am". Bacharach tells the story of how Warwick even sat down at the piano with Bacharach when he was composing and struggling with the initial charts for "Anyone Who Had A Heart" and pointed out a couple of time signature changes that he had not realized and counted them out for him. Warwick was insisting that Bacharach finish the tune after Burt played the unfinished work...she wanted to record it and they were going back into the studio three days after the rehearsal at Bacharach's apartment...Hal David was finishing the lyric in the bedroom while Burt and Dionne worked in the living room. Such a synergistic triangle will probably never happen in music quite that way again.

[Jerry]

You guys---gabba, nymusicals,bach, enormous, steveo---are AMAZING!!! This is a chapter in '60's music lore I knew absolutely nothing about...described and disseminated with great skill!

One of the reasons I frequent this listserv every day are the musical lessons I glom from so many of you! As an actor/writer, working to add SINGER to my job description, thank-you for another valuable post!

Best to All,

Jerry

[An Enormous BB Fan]

Thanks all!

Just to confirm something that BachtoBacharach said: I heard Burt say (on some show) that he, himself!, didn't know that, at the end of "Anyone Who Had A Heart", the time signature when into 7/8. He said that it was Dionne who figured it out. I can certainly understand this because Burt has talked about composing music as he feels it. This means that, as he's composing, he has no idea what time changes are happening. He can only notice the changes when he writes it out on paper. I must say that the 7/8 change at the end of Anyone Who Had A Heart is very tricky and not so easily discernible -- even to the song's own composer (i.e., Burt)!

Also, right in the middle of "Finders of Lost Love" there's a terrific change of key. I've never seen a song changes keys the way that one does. I'm wondering if Burt realized that he slipped into another key only after putting it on paper. (Of course, if he composed it on the piano, then he would have known -- but, even then, maybe not.)

[steveo_1965]

Jerry,
thanks for your input...I hope you're having a great new year......I learn also from
these posters! Sometimes the series of posts can turn out to be very amazing.

Best,

Steveo

[Jerry]

Same to you, Steveo! All great things!

Jerry