The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

As Tony Hatch was sometimes referred to as 'Britain's Burt Bacharach' during the 60s I suppose it was inevitable that after he formed a successful songwriting partnership with singer Jackie Trent that they would occasionally be mentioned in the same breath as Bacharach and David. They wrote several ...

I see that Chick Corea won a couple of posthumous Grammys last week for the album 'Trilogy 2', one of them for his solo on 'All Blues'. Yes, there's an award for 'Best Improvised Solo'.

It goes without saying that Bacharach and David's partnership would have stood a better chance of surviving the failure of 'Lost Horizon' if their songs of the preceding three years had been more successful. But in the UK at least what chance did they have of any commercial success when other than '...

Carrying on the theme of songs written by Bacharach and David in the three years between Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head in November '69 and Lost Horizon in December '72, according to Serene Dominic's book Song By Song twenty-two new titles were released on record during that time, and in chronolo...

Here's Norma Jean Martine's studio version of 'I'm Still Here' from her album entitled 'Only In My Mind'. The song does have one or two killer chord changes.

The Norma Jean Martine song is called I'm Still Here and though she and Bacharach wrote it in January 2015 (according to her Wikipedia page) its debut recording isn't due for release until September. It will be featured on her new album entitled Only In My Mind. I took to her and the song immediate...

Blair, changing times, I think. By the early 70s radio stations were starting to play more and more rock music, just when Bacharach's output was noticeably starting to soften and while something with the opulent production values of The Carpenters' 'Close To You' would be expected to be heard coming...

The poignant thing about 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head' is that it was the last song Bacharach and David wrote that was to become a major international hit. Yes, both 'Close To You' and 'One Less Bell To Answer' were big hits the following year but as we all know both those songs were already s...

I remember Bacharach being asked that very question on a BBC radio interview a dozen or so years ago and denying that he ever seriously considered asking Dylan to record the song, for the very good reason that even if he had wanted Bob he knew he wouldn't have touched it with the proverbial barge po...

She hasn't been nominated before because this is very much a rock-based institution. It's the same reason why Bacharach and David have never been inducted while the songwriting teams more acceptable to the rock music establishment - Leiber and Stoller, Pomus and Schuman, Mann and Weill, Greenwich an...

I know the song 'Long Ago Tomorrow' is a favourite of quite a few on this forum and here's a new version that's just been posted on YouTube:

Blue, thanks for posting this vintage slice of mid-60s 'Swinging London' and I think we can pin it down to August '64 as that was when Lou Johnson's 45 of 'There's Always Something There To Remind Me' was released. Although he's clearly very nervous, I think Bacharach acquits himself well during his...

A collection of Bacharach's music that could almost rival the 'Bacharach Baroque' album by The Renaissance for both its rarity and lack of coverage on the forum is 'The Burt Bacharach and Hal David Treasury' by Terry Baxter His Orchestra and Chorus. Released in 1971 this 4 LP box set consisted of no...

Many years ago a friend of mine told me he was convinced that The Swingle Singers had recorded an album of Bacharach hits in the same style as their Bach albums. I eventually found out that the album he'd heard was in fact by an American group based in LA called The Renaissance and was entitled 'Bac...

It will give you some idea how totally ignored this song must have been here in the UK when a dedicated long-term Bacharach follower like myself could be completely unaware of its existence until the mid-90s, over thirty years after the first recording by Paul Evans. Here is that 45 from December 19...