The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

In short, just how did Stephanie Mills inherit that trove of B/D songs?
She was young, cute, and a hit in The Wiz but it took more than youth, cuteness, and popularity to attract Burt`s and/or Hal`s serious attention.
Did I sleep through this story ?

I'm completely interested in those unfortunate years after the Lost Horizon disaster. I'd like to know where to find more hard information on what happened and why; what Burt, Hal and Dionne did immediately after, and how they came to work with the collaborators they eventually hooked up with. While I've read some interviews with Burt on the subject, I never got all the info I was eager to have. I've read several books about Burt and his work, but everyone always gives just surface information. I suppose the principals aren't eager to talk about it; maybe there are even legal strictures on what can be said? I, too, would like to know how Burt chose Stephanie Mills. She's wonderful, though she wouldn't have been my guess as his next likely choice to showcase his music.

Don't know how Stephanie Mills was chosen but know in the 80s, she and Dionne became close. Now I suspect that Burt's choice of Stephanie was to prove a point. Dionne hit #1 with Then Came You...Burt was, I am almost sure, surprised. I think the point Burt was trying to make was that he could take anyone and make them a success...so potent was his hitmaking ability...a kind of backhanded slap at Dionne, if you will. There are questions that the principals will not answer or say much about but those close to them have talked about what they do know from time to time. Burt took Dionne into the studio in 1974 with some new tunes written with Neil Simon but after a couple of tunes were in the can, the project was aborted. No one has ever said why although Burt has said that the spark he had with Hal and Dionne was gone. The tunes he had written with Hal from 1971 until they split would have gone to Dionne and some did for the Dionne album. Burt COULD have taken Dionne back into the studio sans Hal and done what he did with Mills before 1976 so why didn't he? Dionne didn't file her lawsuit until 1976...after Mill's album was released. Mills also re-recorded some Bacharach-David tunes Dionne had done previously. Was that he chose to work with Mills when he contractually should have worked with Dionne the final straw that led her to finally see that she and Burt were over and that he was essentially saying he was through with Dionne? She apparently waited four years to give him an chance to honor their contract and found other producers to meet her contractual obligations to Warners and he never bothered to honor their contract and she sued. Bacharach was rather shi**y to both DIonne and Hal during this time...in fact, I believe both Hal and Dionne were far more gracious to Burt than he was to them. There is this side of Burt that has to be acknowledged although it has tempered with age. As late as 2002, Bacharach told the press that he would have prevailed in the suit if Hal hadn't talked him in to settling with Dionne...he has since admitted that he was the total root of the problem that shattered both his and Dionne's careers for many years...I believe statements of those kind have not set too well with Dionne and I have a feeling she let him know it. I am conjecturing based upon years of hearing snippets of conversations and items in the press...as private as both Burt and Dionne are, we may never know the intimate details of the split but some conclusions can be made from some of the more obvious things that happened.

The suit was settled in 1979 for $5 million and the settlement was sealed by the court and never made public although Bacharach and David as well as others have stated that the settlement was in the $5 million range. Rumor has it that Dionne could not disclose the details of the settlement as part of the settlement, so she took her $5 million and went on with her comeback that year and never looked back until Burt called her in 1984 at the urging of Aaron Spelling...she told the press when the intercom rang and a voice said "This is Burt" she asked "Burt who?" Bacharach answered "Charley, it's Burt" and then she knew who it was...Burt's pet name for Dionne was Charley...Bacharach had to be sweating bullets wondering if Dionne was even going to let him in the house! The last thing Hal and Burt's attorneys wanted was a public forum in a courtroom for their differences and Hal said from the get-go that they had breached the contract so Burt settled. Burt was livid that Dionne ever filed the lawsuit in the first place, which is ironic and his actions regarding the whole affair were pretty confrontational; from not letting her know he and Hal were not working together, to not accepting her phone calls regarding their working status, from calling her out on stage, to initially refusing to let her work with anyone else, etc. He took a lot out on Dionne and she finally decided to quit being so gracious and filed the suit. I didn't know that Mills album was essentially produced by Hal and wonder why Hal didn't go with Dionne into the studio? But, I imagine her loyalty Burt probably prevented her from going into the studio with Hal since they weren't speaking. This also explains why Hal amended the lyric to "Loneliness Remembers". And although Mills is talented, she was a strange choice...not at all the same type of vocalist Dionne was.