The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

Been thinking about some of the British artists who did some of Burt's big hits in the mid sixties...
Listening to these records, one is "fooled" by the thought that Burt himself
arranged these...but so integral to the songs are Burt's arrangements...the arrangers chosen did a brilliant job "aping"
or creating "Burt Bacharach Styled" arrangements..
When intervievwed on BBC radio recently, the female host started dicussing the arrangements to Dusty's Look of Love...Burt had to say.."o, that was not me, that was one of Dusty's arrangers"...
(Reg Guest)
One hears Wishin' and Hopin' - one of the most brillinat 45's ever made, and one immediately thinks that Burt did the arrangement, buit no, he did not...
so the people who worked with Dusty were in fine tune with Burt's style of arranging, oftern copying, I'm sure, from any information given off the "demo"
Again, when hearing "What's NEw Pussycat" by Toim Jones, it's the same thing...although Burt may have attended that session...
I seen to recall the late Lyn Murray having something to do with that chart.

I felt the same way about the whole Promises, Promises cast album. Having listened to a lot of Burt's music beforehand, I just assumed that he had arranged the score for the show. But he didn't; Jonathan Tunick did. Same thing with "On the Flip Side." Peter Matz did the arrangements, but they sound so much like Burt, that if you told me he had done them I wouldn't have doubted it.

Steve,
In the case of the Promises Broadway score, Burt did bring his original
4 line sketches with him to the orchestrator Johnathan Tunick, so Tunick worked off of those....embellishing, etc...so one might say it was "based on" Burt's arrangements"...
Of course on a 4 line sketch, there's not very much info, so Tunick was left to flesh it out...the crisp rhythms with the dot and dash marks over them were provided..this is a big part of the Burt sound...also the dots and dash marks over the brass..(the short and the long of certain notes)
Then there were the original piano demos(on disc) but to my mind, those were very far away from the finished product.
What's amazing is how those british arrangers pegged Burt's style with
a combination of the original record demo(not very much there) and a piano or Grand Staff (treble and bass)lead sheet.
I agree that Peter Matz hit the nail on the head as well for certain songs on
"On the FLipside" "They Don't give Medals" comes to mind...also
"Juanita's Place"...