Burt Bacharach was of course the incredibly inventive composer in the legendary songwriting partnership with lyricist Hal David. Bacharach died yesterday at the age of 94. Stephen Holden’s New York Times obituary provides an excellent short course in the fruits of their partnership. I would like to quote Auden’s great elegy on Yeats: “What instruments we have agree / The day of his death was a dark cold day.”
The David-Bacharach partnership originated in New York’s Brill Building and achieved sublimity through the voice of Dionne Warwick. David provided the evocative lyrics that followed the twists and turns of Bacharach’s sinuous melodies. They made a great team. The 2012 Times obituary of Hal David concisely recounted:
“I Say a Little Prayer,” a No. 4 hit in 1967, was the most successful of the three dozen or so singles Mr. David and Mr. Bacharach wrote and produced for Ms. Warwick, whom they met in 1961 when they were journeymen on the New York music-publishing scene and she was a 20-year-old backup singer.
After she sang on some demo recordings of their songs, a disgruntled Ms. Warwick complained to them, “Don’t make me over, man.” Mr. David turned that line into a full lyric, with an unusual (for the time) feminist stance, and Ms. Warwick’s recording of the resulting song, “Don’t Make Me Over,” became her first hit, in early 1963. From then until mid-1971, rarely a month went by when the troika were not represented on the Billboard singles chart, with charismatic hits like “Walk On By,” “Message to Michael,” “Alfie” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.”
The frustratingly brief but beautiful video below derives from a reunion of Bacharach with Warwick.
I believe the video below derives from the 1998 tribute show One Amazing Night a few years later. The video includes a medley of “Walk On By” with “I Say a Little Prayer For You” and “Do You Know the Way To San Jose?”
“Amazing” is the operative adjective. RIP.
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