The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

So, what are the odds of a final Bacharach studio album?
And is there still such residual bad blood between Burt and Dionne that he mightn't consider writing nine or ten songs for her diminished voice?
They (and we -those of us writing our age using the initial numeral 6, if not 7) have to be thinking of the end around now.
Can we seriously hope for an A&M-style "solo" finale and a Scepter-like Dionne/Burt coda?

We can hope, Blair. Though, somehow I tend to doubt it. My age begins with a '5', yet I feel quite the same pangs. Honestly, this is not something I get too down about, as-believe it, or not-Burt is only a small part of my existence on this globe ;0)-I just think, at this point, there may be too much mud under the proverbial bridge for them both. We Bacharachians have been supremely, deliciously gifted by what Burt-Hal-Dionne (as well as Bob Hilliard, E. Costello and all the other collaborators!) have bequeathed upon us.

I feel fortunate, though I am a little late in the game, to have access to all these beautiful sounds...as 'Do You Know The Way to You-Know-Where?' plays in the background!

All The Best!

Hey, I`m not sitting here with a razor blade poised over my wrist. I just think it would be nice for this whole thing to come full-circle.

Circles are great, though life can be more zig-zaggy than that. And I didn't mean to imply anything...

Best regards.

Jerry, I know that you weren`t implying anything.
The reason I keep calling for new material is simply that I`ve lived long enough to be bone-weary of the old. I`m sated. Unlike some, I can`t endlessly enjoy the catalogue.
The same goes for that lazy, lame-ass Jimmy Webb. He`s been boasting for years about how he is at the peak of his creativity without displaying a sliver of evidence.
Maybe you`re right and we can`t legitimately ask for any more.

Hey Blair,

Thanks for that. Yeah, I can understand that...myself, although I'm 54, I did not become consciously 'aware' of Burt/Hal/Dionne, until I was in my mid-30's. Of course, I knew full well of their existence-how could one not?! But the music did not speak to me until I reached a certain maturity and level of life experience. Honestly, I feel that in order to truly appreciate what they created during that incredible 1962-1973 period, one needs to have a bit of emotional mileage on the odometer! Point being, it is still relatively fresh to me, so, I can understand how someone such as yourself may have made all of the discoveries and is hungry for more.

As for Jimmy Webb, I stand in deep appreciation (beats standing in something else!) of him. It was his masterpiece Wichita Lineman that sparked my creativity and got the ball rolling on a play-with-music what I wrote (and discussed on this site, back in 2007) called Seven Men From Now. Later revised it has since been published as The Music You Remember: http://www.greatstagepublishing.com/#!t ... mber/c1ve2 Along with Mr. Webb's music, it features B&D, as well as The Beach Boys. However, I can understand what you are saying: about a year ago, he made an appearance on
David Dye's World Café. And as many have said here, he pretty much talked/played the same 8-10 songs everybody knows, spinning the same yarns involving Richard Harris, Frank Sinatra, et., al. It must be tough to be in a situation where one is told repeatedly that they peaked at 23...what follows must be challenging.

Blair, it's something that I have wished for for a few years. Surely Bacharach can conjure up something worthy for Dionne's diminished pipes. He wrote for some pretty scantly talented singers early in his career and even later and made them sound great and Dionne still has the technique and the polish and could probably pull it off without breaking a sweat provided he tailored the tunes for her current voice. She does sound better these days than she has in years and I believe her curtailment of all the touring her helped...she fell in the shower and broke her foot badly back in February and was hospitalized for three weeks...she's a diabetic and almost lost the foot after the fracture and although I have not seen Dionne in quite a few years, friends say she is not smoking any longer. Her health is declining as is Bacharach's so if they are going to do something, it should be soon. I really don't think it will come to pass though. They don't seem to be as close these days as they were even 15 years ago. And Bacharach was not too kind to Warwick in his bio and downplayed her contribution to his career by barely mentioning her...that's something she never did to either he or Hal David...she was kinder to him in her book but still managed to get a couple of snipes in particularly about their split. In addition, Burt has gone on record as stating that Dionne tampers with "his" tunes too much these days and isn't pleased that she is singing everything in a much lower key...he says he barely recognizes the tunes...I would argue that he is splitting hairs there...those tunes are indelibly associated with her and she has always felt she could do anything with them she damn well pleased and I don't blame her...but she has had the respect for him not to tamper too much with the tunes when she toured with him...she sang them pretty straight down the middle when he accompanied her...Interestingly though, when they toured together, he always used her charts and didn't have a problem doing so. And even in her concerts in earlier years, she pretty much honored the tunes...she never put herself above her tunes unlike folks like Aretha Franklin and Patti LaBelle who were the consummate showboats and in concerts have been known to mangle some tunes pretty badly with all the whorish vocal trickery! I have always felt both Aretha and Patti were terribly overrated but that topic is for another board so I'll shut the hell up about that! With the catalog that Dionne has, she could afford to let the songs shine and she shone even brighter for that...smart lady she. I don't think either Bacharach or Warwick has anything to prove any longer but it would be nice to bring their collaboration full circle with a new set of tunes...Perhaps Elvis Costello can come up with some great lyrics!