The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

Rock performances at the O'keefe Centre in Toronto featuring Sergio Mendez and Brasil '66, Dionne Warwick, San Francisco's Jefferson Airplane, folksinger Eric Anderson and The Doors, featuring Jim Morrison singing THE END. Host Noel Harrison examines the the rock scene, like it is - psychedelia and all. Songs performed include - Alfie and Windows of the World (Dionne Warwick); the Beatles hit Daytripper and Mais que nada (Sergio Mendes and the Brazil '66); Rollin' Home and Thirsty Boots (Eric Anderson); White Rabbit, Two Heads and Pooneil (Jefferson Airplane).

https://vimeo.com/channels/eaglerock/118138005

Wow! If there had been slots for Alan King, Topo Gigio and a plate spinner this could have been an unusually cool Ed Sullivan Show.
It was especially interesting to see the early Brasil `66 when Janice Hansen was there (much as I preferred the later Karen Philip). The Airplane was my favorite band of its ilk, so it was fun to see them again (especially in light of Paul Kantner`s recent demise). I always thought Jim Morrison was a fraud and never liked his band. Eric Andersen was a better Bob "Dylan" than "Dylan" but faux-folk wasn`t my thing. The Dionne segment was lovely. It made me like "Don`t Make Me Over" all over again; and I don`t think I`d ever seen her do "Windows of the World" before.
Sure, all of this was lip-sync-ed but that`s how it was back then, boys and girls.
Thanks for the link, BtoB.

The video here shows Dionne in her prime and this was right before I Say A Little Prayer was released. This has been seldom seen in its entirety since airing on the CBC in 1967. It illustrates in a nutshell what made the 1960s so unique music-wise. The telecast really mirrored what was heard on the radio during those days and what was considered "rock" music was much more broadly defined than later eras. Yes, you would never consider Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra, who enjoyed some Top 40 success in the 1960s as "rock" singers, but for younger folks in the 1960s, labels for young singers like Dionne weren't important...she was a groove and kids loved her and their parents did too. This is why Dionne Warwick was so successful in that era...and she had a certain "cool" factor as well...it wasn't until around 1970 that folks began to struggle assigning a label to her and at that time as the singer-songwriter era was coming to the fore...she was labeled in some circles, along with Bacharach, as irrelevant and too "pop" and by 1972 was beginning to struggle to get her current releases on the radio and at the same time, Bacharach began to struggle as well. It's interesting that Dionne's peak began to build in 1966 with Message to Michael and when Alfie hit big in the spring of 1967 and ended up as #44 in Billboard's Hot 100 of 1967...quite a feat for a recording that charted at #15 and this among recordings that charted in the top 10...that's one time that the chart position didn't accurately reflect the tunes popularity and sales and Alfie was a massive hit. This started a real hot streak that didn't cool until around early 1971 (and interesting to note, really parallels Aretha's rise and fall...Aretha had the same problem as Dionne...she didn't write her own material and in the singer-songwriter era of the early to mid-seventies, this was a cardinal sin...Carly Simon (as talented a singer-songwriter as anyone coming down the pike in that era) was the female solo singer darling by then replacing both Dionne and Aretha in airplay and sales). Around late 1971, when Dionne signed what was then the largest recording contract ($5 million) ever given to a female singer to defect from Scepter to Warner Brothers Records, no one had an inkling that her hot streak was ending...poor promotion by Warner and the trouble brewing with the Lost Horizon debacle, as well as Bacharach's struggles with Hal David, ended that hot streak for both Warwick and Bacharach. Bacharach had a meteoric rise in his profile after his Oscar win for Raindrops, where he became a big star and a concert performer in his own right, but it's interesting that he and Warwick flamed out at roughly the same time. Warwick enjoyed an unusually long, consistent successful career in the 1960s but Bacharach got white hot in 1969 as a star but it essentially ended for him the day he signed on to score Lost Horizon essentially and he fell hard. Interesting rise and fall of those two.

Thanks for this link, B2B! What an eclectic time for music, as you said. Dionne was really something else. The first word that I think of to describe her in the 60s is "chic." Everything about her just seemed so stylish, cool, and hip (on top of her trademark elegance). Even though her looks are polarizing for some, I think she was stunning to look at with that figure, those cheekbones, and her overall carriage. And, of course, her singing speaks for itself. It's no wonder she was a superstar, because she was/is completely one of a kind!

Something I forgot to address is the criticism that Dionne/Burt/Hal had become too "pop" by the early 70s. I have to agree with David Nathan and other critics that their music had lost a measure of soulfulness by then, maybe beginning around 1968 or so. However, it can't be argued that they enjoyed their biggest commercial success during this period, so the public clearly didn't mind until the singer-songwriter era and Philly Soul sound took over. For my money, their best music was what they produced between 1964 and 1967, between "Walk On By" and "Alfie," perhaps best represented by the Here I Am album. Those years represent the perfect marriage of Burt's diverse influences with Dionne's quiet soul delivery. If only they could have stayed in that groove for a little longer. Their sound was actually a major component of, and perfect segue into, the Philly Soul sound of the early 70s, and Dionne could have walked right into that moment without missing a beat if she hadn't already veered so far into "white" sounding pop territory (whatever that means!).

I`m not sure I follow the "black" to "white" trajectory of Dionne`s repertoire. I don`t see how "Here I Am" sounds "blacker" than "Who Gets the Guy" and it`s not at all difficult for me to imagine Eydie Gorme covering "I Cry Alone."
For whatever reason, the early `70s saw the end of a number of `60s music successes, including many rock bands - creatively, anyway. The crash and burn of that era is inexplicable to me.
In addition, BtoB, Lost Horizon didn`t just poison Bacharach/David. It ended the career of previously very successful producer Ross Hunter. I don`t think we ever saw Sally Kellerman (hot from her role in MASH) or Olivia Hussey (fresh from the Zefferelli "youth" version of Romeo and Juliet) again either. For just a crummy little movie, it had a devastating effect.

Thank you for the link, BTB - nice finding!

Blair N. Cummings wrote:I`m not sure I follow the "black" to "white" trajectory of Dionne`s repertoire. I don`t see how "Here I Am" sounds "blacker" than "Who Gets the Guy" and it`s not at all difficult for me to imagine Eydie Gorme covering "I Cry Alone."

You know, I mostly think the idea of "white" and "black" music is rubbish, but I think what those critics mean is that the arrangements and Dionne's delivery took on a more controlled and subdued style overall as time went on, in a way that was more associated with white artists. Compare "Here I Am" to "Very Dionne" or "Dionne" (1972) and notice how the gospel-sounding background singers (Dee Dee and the crew) disappeared, the meaty, throbbing gospel piano was gone, and Dionne more often than not employed a delicate touch instead of the more varied approaches of her earlier recordings. Whether or not these stylistic choices can/should be categorized racially is up for debate, but there is no denying that the music itself did change over time, which was likely inevitable over such a long stretch. What's interesting to me, though, is that an artist like Roberta Flack could come along to great acclaim in the early 70s with the same sort of pop music that Dionne was making with Burt and Hal towards the end of their run, while Dionne's popularity flamed out at the same time for no good reason. That's show biz, I guess.

Blair, it's amazing that such a flop film as Lost Horizon could end so many careers both directly and indirectly. As far as the changes in Bacharach/David/Warwick's music, it was evident to Vince Aletti, who reviewed the album Dionne (1972) in the March 1972 issue of Rolling Stone and he references the change in style from their earlier work. This is an interesting review, praising Dionne and praising/damning Bacharach/David for confining her...it expresses his frustration with the team well...he seems to be saying can how something that has become so formulaic still be so damn enjoyable...Bacharach/David/Warwick were always a paradox.

“DIONNE”-DIONNE WARWICK REVIEW (March 1972-Rolling Stone Magazine)

At the end of "Don't Make Me Over," Dionne Warwick (this is in 1963) breaks out of the song twice to sing, to yell, with incredible fervor, "Accept me for what I am. Accept me for the things that I do," drums pounding and cymbals crashing around her. Being a black pop singer isn't easy. There are too many definitions, expectations and demands that have to be sidestepped, too many people wondering where you at. Dionne Warwick steps rather nicely even if she never moves out of an area more than, say, five feet in circumference. I guess the space is comfortable.

On the back cover of her new album, Dionne is pictured head-to-head with Burt Bacharach and Hal David, her long-time producer/composers, one on either side of her like bookends that's her space; that's her niche. She moves in it gracefully, with assurance, even with a wonderful, if somewhat over refined, beauty. May be a bird in a gilded cage, but she's sitting pretty.

If it seems Bacharach and David have defined (confined) Dionne Warwick, consider (1) that she has, to a great extent, defined them as well and (2) that they the three of them working as a team within a carefully circumscribed area, rather like a group of highly-trained technicians have together achieved a kind of elegant perfection. Warwick is limited by her sophistication, her slickness, her restraint, her tendency to slip and say, "One less bell to ahnswer, etc.: limitations that Bacharach-David seem to share. This prevents Dionne from being Miss Funk, but so what? In their chosen field, needless to say, the team's stylistic limitations are transformed into virtues of varying degrees. Once you come to terms with the word "sophistication" (as it is used in, for instance, the Copacabana), Dionne Warwick can be sheer pleasure.

Can be. That brings us to Dionne, the latest chapter in a collaborative work that is both consistently fine and maddeningly unvaried. It's not that Warwick-Bacharach-David haven't changed but that many of the changes seem like minor adjustments in an instantly-recognizable, trademark Sound. At times the style has been refined to the point of attenuation, like a Victorian novel. Listening to Dionne Warwick's Golden Hits, Part One (Scepter SPS565), the essential work from the early years and her latest offering, the first thing that strikes you is the amount of real feeling conveyed by Dionne in her early songs. Take "Anyone Who Had a Heart," which begins with the lines, "Anyone who ever loved/could look at me/and know that I love you./Anyone who ever dreamed/could look at me/and know I dream of you." Dionne sings with an amazing combination of lovely purity and aching, uncomprehending emotion; the song smoulders with a just-under-the-surface intensity that comes pounding up with unexpected force at the end, the closing cries all the more powerful for the opening restraint.

There's nothing to compare to this or "Walk on By," "Don't Make Me Over," "Make It Easy on Yourself" or "Reach Out for Me" on the new album. The emotion hasn't disappeared as “draining a voice as good as Warwick's of feeling would be near impossible but what remains is almost smothered by Bacharach-David's damned delicacy of expression and a subtlety that approaches the obsessive. The fault is not Dionne's she's astonishingly effective within the more-than-usually limited range of emotions she is allowed to explore. The producers, who wrote seven out of the ten songs, have simply failed to give her the opportunity to get into anything heavier than the lament of "One Less Bell to Answer," which, I must admit, is quite effectively underplayed in this version.

The continued narrowing-to-perfection of the Bacharach-David sound also leaves me somewhat ambivalent. With few exceptions, the production work is classically simple, clear and brilliant. There are lots of violins, bursts of horns, but instead of weighing the songs down with great thick lumps of sound, they seem to have let even more space into their characteristically light, bright style–the violins float nicely in that space. Only once or twice is Dionne joined by a chorus and, even in understatement, which seems to be her mode throughout, she clearly doesn't need any support. And yet, when compared with the old sound, the new album feels slightly stiff. While the early sound was hardly rough or gritty, still it didn't have the polished and waxed finish it now has; they have more intelligence, more craft, now, but less to say.

On several cuts, however, everything comes together: The opener, "I Just Have to Breathe," is built on a clear, precise piano line and surges of violins, Warwick's singing, from the beginning, very quiet, very direct, beautifully effortless. She seems to grasp every phrase completely and with understanding, bringing it to full expression. The lyrics are among the best here: "For me to love you/I just have to breathe," and the song ends with the plea, "In this world where nothing stays the same/stay with me." Dionne delivers the last three words one at a time, imploringly, somehow managing to capture in that small space more intensity than many singers gather in an album.

"The Balance of Nature," which follows, is potentially a vacuous, silly love song about love which begins, "Once/to every bird there comes along/the one bird that sings her a sweeter song." But it's sweetly irresistible, saved by the old team restraint: the music, mainly what sounds like a lightly-strummed banjo, is so fragile it feels like it might blow away and, on the surface, the vocal gives the same illusion, but Dionne's control keeps even the most tenuous elements anchored. She never lets one word, one lighter-than-air inflection escape.

"Close to You" is even sillier than "Balance of Nature": "Why do birds suddenly appear/every time you are near?" (the aviary motif again) . Why do I like it? There are more floating-on-a-cloud vocals but when the violins seem to be unreasonably loud in a particular swell of orchestral emotion, Dionne rides their crest without even appearing to raise her voice.

Even the cuts which are resistible are eminently listenable (it does get a little cloying, though, on the final cut, a bit of ephemera called Hasbrook Heights). The elegant display of social consciousness in "Be Aware" is saved by a strong arrangement (but understated, always understated) it begins and ends with a series of insistent knocks: the real world trying to get in? or the Po-lice?) and interesting phrasing, a strong point throughout. The whole package is so fucking "tasteful" it threatens to disappear in a cloud of perfume (or perhaps an odorless spray), but there is something that Dionne Warwick does even when she's singing about going away for the weekend that I'll never really understand. I just like it. (RS 102)

VINCE ALETTI

Yes, B2B, that's what I was trying to say (albeit far less eloquently)! The DW/BB/HD sound had become very understated and polished by the early 70s, which lends some validity to the idea that it had lost some of its "soul." Dionne no longer wailed like she did on "Anyone Who Had A Heart," "How Many Days of Sadness," or even "Go With Love" or "The Beginning of Loneliness," for example, and Burt no longer attempted to capture the urban strut of, say, "Walk On By," "This Empty Place," or "The Last One To Be Loved." Their late period music was still art, no doubt, but it didn't have the energetic pulse of the earlier stuff. Dionne didn't really loosen up on that tight restraint until the 80s, when all those big ballads (and her renewed success/confidence) gave her permission to unleash that voice again (particularly in concert).

I remember reading that review when it was published and thinking that Aletti liked the album more than I did. It sounded like everyone involved had ingested too much Valium.
But if we assume that the songs on the Stephanie Mills album were those intended for Dionne`s second Warner`s album, then all could be forgiven. Dionne (as they say nowadays) would have "killed" them. In addition, the aborted `75 sessions proved that the "soul" was still present in composer and singer.
Oh, well. All water under the bridge now.

There were a handful of tunes on the album that I liked...Be Aware, If You Never Say Goodbye, and I Just Have to Breathe (the tune on that album with that trademark sound) but otherwise, consider that only three original tunes were introduced on the album...Goodbye, Breathe, The Balance of Nature. Everything else had been introduced previously. By 1970, Bacharach was composing less and performing more...witness the shortage of new material on Dionne's Promises, Promises (no new Bacharach material), I'll Never Fall in Love Again (three new Bacharach tunes), Very Dionne (two new tunes, all others previously recorded), and Dionne albums. And when Time Magazine called Bacharach the "Music Man of the Decade" in 1970, it was in large part due to his work with Dionne of course but ironically it was two old Bacharach tunes high on the charts at the time...Close to You by Carpenters and One Less Bell to Answer by the Fifth Dimension both composed years before and not new material that prompted Time to make such a prediction. I submit that perhaps Bacharach's focus on his own career coupled with Dionne's restlessness at Scepter and her interest in producing other artists had an impact on their creative output during the very late 1960s and early 1970s...and that culminated in the album Dionne. Blair, you hit the nail on the head...it seems the album has no spark and that the result is somewhat soporific...were the participants bored or growing bored with each other? Very Dionne did show that Bacharach and Warwick could still generate fireworks in the studio, and I offer Check Out Time as an exhibit of what could happen when that spark managed to ignite in the studio. And I agree that the proof that the spark was still there was the aborted 74 sessions...what incredible, interesting work both did there...interesting to note that Dionne certainly seemed to be over being confined by Bacharach and her own stardom and niche by that time and she seemed freed from her gilded cage that Aletti referenced in his review of Dionne. Bacharach is on record as saying the spark was gone and simply walked away from the 74 project and once again left Dionne high and dry. Perhaps, Dionne was creatively asserting herself by that time and out of Bacharach's control...in other words she didn't need him as much as he needed her at the time? I have no idea but I have always felt and observed that Bacharach could be fickle in love, relationships and apparently in his creative process. Just some random thoughts!

Dionne has also noted that the vibe was off for her "Dionne" album. I guess by then it was evident that they were pulling apart from each other, and their famous chemistry was compromised. Am I the only one who thinks that those 1974 sessions were just a little bit uninspiring? They were musically interesting, certainly, but completely non-commercial and without that soulful pulse that their best work has. Honestly, by that time, Thom Bell was doing a better job being Burt Bacharach for Dionne than Burt himself was doing! Bell's sessions with her were the best adaptation of the DW/BB/HD sound for the 1970s than what we've seen anywhere else, perhaps because Burt was such an obvious influence on Bell, while Bell also managed to bring a younger, more urban approach to the music that had been lacking in Dionne's later work with Burt.

I love Thom Bell`s early `70s melodies. Who didn`t?
Unfortunately, for someone of my generation, Dionne will always be inextricably connected with Burt. In the case of the mid-70s sessions, "musically interesting" (an understatement in my view) trumps "younger, more urban." If you`re looking for the latter, you should be looking elsewhere. You know what to expect from Burt and Dionne.

Blair, I wouldn't say "unfortunately, Dionne will always be inextricably connected with Burt"! In fact, it is all of our good fortune that they will, indeed, always be one and the same for all intents and purposes! They were at their best when they were together, and they (with Hal) brought out artistry in each other that no one else could pull out of them. It's no coincidence that Dionne's concert repertoire after she stopped making hits and trying to promote new recordings has almost exclusively been the BB/HD material. That decade of music is her legacy.

My nod to Thom Bell was simply to say that, by the 1970s, he was best positioned to channel the Bacharach style for the new times, with respect to Dionne. Burt was becoming increasingly experimental in ways that proved to be too challenging or alienating for many listeners, and Dionne needed a writer/producer who could keep her on the charts while also preserving that sophisticated sound that she was known for. Remember, she was still a young lady and could still appeal to the masses with the right material and production. Bell was her best producer of the 1970s, and I wish that they had done more together.