The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

When blue posted the Lost Horizon demos on here a few years ago I commented that Bacharach's enthusiasm for the songs was obvious from his performances and he must have been very confident as to their reception at the film's release. Little would he have known that Fate was lurking round the corner ...

Here's Dusty Springfield performing another Bacharach and David classic which she never got round to recording. This is taken from a late 1964 edition of the BBC radio show Top Gear which was known for featuring specially recorded sessions by established artists. It was presented by British broadcas...

In Bob Dylan's recently published book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, the Nobel Prize Winner In Literature wrote this about Elvis Costello: "When you're writing songs with Burt Bacharach, you obviously don't give a fuck what people think." While I'm sure privately Elvis Costello would hav...

Although Jimmy Radcliffe had the hit in the UK with 'Long After Tonight Is All Over', which must have been played around a million times on the dance floors of the Northern Soul scene, I actually marginally prefer Dusty Springfield's recording of the song for what I consider is its more exciting arr...

As long as he's physically able to walk on stage there must be a good chance that Bacharach will continue to give the occasional concert close to home in cities like LA and San Diego. Alas, I think that it's highly unlikely that we'll see him again in the UK, where he was always guaranteed packed ho...

As a young buck, I was so inclined and wanted to believe that this sheet music was touched by the hand of the creator(Burt sitting at the piano) feeding us the information on these pages) It turns out "no" Steve, my instinct when I started going through the 40 Golden Songs book was that t...

I like the fact that choreographer Mark Morris has stated that this Bacharach show isn't an exercise in nostalgia but a celebration of great American music. Here's a brief promo video for the show:

There was a very well made hour long radio documentary broadcast by the BBC in 2005 entitled Shooting Star - Laura Nyro Remembered. It was presented by Bette Midler and included interviews with David Geffen, Janis Ian and Laura's biographer, Michele Kort. I believe this documentary received a lot of...

I too acquired this book in the early 70s and still have it. I've learned to play probably in the region of twenty of the songs well enough but the one that has proved to be a bit of an elusive bastard is 'Alfie', and even now it's more of a case of trying to get through it unscathed rather than tru...

Here's something I haven't heard before and it's Dusty Springfield performing Wives And Lovers with Dudley Moore at the piano. This is an audio only excerpt taken from the BBC TV series made by Dudley Moore and his comedy partner Peter Cook in the mid-60s called Not Only...But Also: https://m.youtub...

From what little I know of Laura Nyro's show for the BBC, it was something in the region of 30 to 40 minutes long and featured her alone at the piano in front of an invited audience performing around 8 or 9 songs, a veritable treasure trove when you consider the dearth of footage there is of her pe...

Barry, that's truly sad to hear. She was a great lady of music and thanks for sharing some of your personal memories of her.

I think the best hope we have is that someone made a private recording of Laura Nyro's wiped 'In Concert' show for the BBC in 1971. There have been a few instances over the years of private copies of previously lost TV shows coming to the surface, but this tends to happen only after an advertising c...

The third member of The Springfields featured in that video is Mike Hurst who after the trio broke-up became an in house producer at Decca and their offshoot label Deram, for whom he discovered and produced Cat Stevens. In the late 60s he formed The Mike Hurst Orchestra and recorded instrumental ver...

Here is that just released track 'Always'. Some of the changes are recognisably Bacharachian.