Burt Bacharach (May 12, 1928 – February 8, 2023) was an American composer, songwriter, record producer, and pianist who is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential figures of 20th-century popular music. He helped define the sound of “easy listening”, with its richly textured arrangements and gently swaying, memorable melodies that danced above intricate rhythms.
Bacharach was particularly known for his flurry of hits in the Sixties and Seventies, co-written with Hal David, though the six-time Grammy award and three-time Oscar winner achieved the distinction of scoring hits across seven decades. Despite the “easy listening” label, Bacharach was considerably experimental, particularly in his approach to chord progressions, rapidly shifting time signatures and instrument choice, which included flutes and flugelhorns.
Burt Freeman Bacharach was born into a Jewish family in Kansas City, Missouri. His father, Mark Bertram “Bert” Bacharach, was a newspaper columnist, and his mother, Irma Freeman, a songwriter and painter. Irma instilled in him a deep love of music, encouraging the young Burt to learn cello, piano and drums. The family moved to Queens, New York where he enrolled in music courses at the Mannes School of Music. Bacharach’s senses were awakened to the sounds of jazz by the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk. More than a hint of those jazz influences can be heard in Bacharach’s syncopated rhythms and irregular phrasing.
He started playing jazz and studied music at Montreal’s McGill University and the Music Academy of the West in California. After graduating in 1948, he served in the US Army for two years, playing piano in clubs for his fellow officers. During his time there he met Vic Damone, leading to his first professional break as his pianist and conductor. Success did not arrive in a flash, however. Bacharach spent much of the Fifties working at resorts in the Catskills to support his song-writing.
He got his break in 1956 when he became Marlene Dietrich’s arranger and conductor for her nightclub shows. They toured worldwide and he wrote for her on and off until the 1960s. While working at the famous Brill Building songwriting factory in the late 1950s, Bacharach met lyricist David. The duo went on to forge a highly successful writing partnership, which was to spawn such hits as The Look of Love, Walk On By, Close To You, What the World Needs Now Is Love and Do You Know the Way To San Jose?
Many of these classics were sung by Dionne Warwick, who was discovered by Bacharach in 1961 singing backing vocals for the Drifters. The trio’s recordings sold over 12 million copies and from 1962-1968 they had 15 US Top 40 hits. Aretha Franklin also reached the US Top 10 and had her biggest UK hit with her version of the Bacharach-penned I Say a Little Prayer.
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| Warwick & Bacharach |
More success came with artists including The Carpenters, Cilla Black, The Walker Brothers and Dusty Springfield. Bacharach’s songs went against the rock and roll grain at the time, but he didn’t seem to care. “If a song like ‘Alfie’ can make it on both sides,” he said in 1968, “that is a great satisfaction. You have real adults buying it … My mother and father wouldn’t even think of turning it off. And kids buy it, too. Great.”
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| Burt with Dusty |
Next came film scores for Casino Royale, What’s New, Pussycat?, Alfie and the Oscar-winning Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. During this time Bacharach also released several solo albums. Bacharach and David fared less well in the 1970s, falling out over a failed musical version of the film Lost Horizon. Bacharach, however, kept writing and producing, winning an Oscar in 1981 for the film theme of Arthur, and gaining US No 1s in 1986 with a version of That’s What Friends Are For, released as an Aids fundraiser, and On My Own with Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald.
Starting in the Nineties, Bacharach began being newly appreciated. He collaborated with Costello on “God Give Me Strength” (for the 1996 movie Grace of My Heart, based on the story on the Brill Building) and then on an entire album together, Painted from Memory, two years later. Noel Gallagher admitted that Oasis’ “Half the World Away” was direly inspired by “This Guy’s in Love With You.” Bachrach’s 2005 album At This Time included collaborations with Costello, Dr. Dre, and Rufus Wainwright.
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| Burt with Elvis Costello |
He received a deluge of honours and accolades including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award in 2008, opening the BBC’s Electric Proms in the same year. In 2012, he was awarded the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize by then-president Barack Obama.. In 2015 he performed at Glastonbury Festival and featured in Rolling Stone Magazine’s 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time.
In 2020, he signed a lucrative publishing deal with Primary Wave. His projects with Tashian and Steven Sater earned him additional Grammy nominations in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Bacharach died of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, California, on February 8, 2023, at the age of 94.
Bacharach
was married four times:Paula Stewart (1953-1958), Angie Dickinson (1965 - 1981),
Carole Bayer Sager (1982 - 1991) & Jane Hansen (1993 -).
(Edited
from The Jewish Chronoicle, The Guardian, Rolling Stone & Wikipedia)