The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

Also with a very similar sound is The Green Grass Starts to Grow with it's oompah sound as well....isn't it interesting that most all these tunes discussed in this thread were composed in 1968-1970 by Bacharach and were so unusual in that they were really unlike most anything he composed previous to that or after that. Serene Dominic mentioned in his book about Bacharach that Who Gets the Guy sounded like a mash up of Raindrops, This Guy's In Love with You, and another tune I can't recall. All these tunes are instantly identified as Bacharach compositions. And, aren't Who Gets the Guy or The Green Grass Starts to Grow just about the polar opposite of say Walk On By and who could have pulled off the dichotomy of those tunes but Warwick? She sang them all beautifully and was brilliant at interpreting just about anything Bacharach and David wrote. The only Bacharach tunes she ever recorded where her performance was a total dud in my opinion were the simple The Love of a Boy which was originally done by Timi Yuro in 1962 and The Look of Love cover which she recorded for her On Stage and in the Movies album from 67 on which she gave a rote and workmanlike performance of a dreadful arrangement. And they weren't THAT bad but just not near what she did with other Bacharach tunes.

I read somewhere that in the 50s Burt arranged for oom paa
bands in Germany...well, he took some of that with him when he did
some of his arrangements in the late 60s and early 70s...

I heard a Dionne interview many years ago, saying that Burt asked Dionne to take the song to Dylan, and he turned it down...

Hi,

I just posted a short article about this subject to my blog, http://yesteryearsounds.blogspot.com/

(It's drawn from interviews done years ago for my book)

Robin Platts