The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

Brian Matthew always maintained that the most popular and most requested artists on Sounds of the 60s were Billy Fury and Dusty Springfield. While Fury to my knowledge never recorded any Bacharach material, we all know that Dusty recorded practically an album’s worth of his and Hal David's songs. Be...

Martin, what I think is so impressive about Helen Shapiro's performance as a 15 year old is her phrasing and it's no surprise to me that she eventually became a jazz singer. I only really became familiar with 'Tell Me What He Said' after hearing it played so many times on Sounds of the 60s and now h...

Martin, I remember Sandie Shaw actually presented Sounds of the 60s for a few weeks about ten years ago when Brian Matthew was away and in a very laid-back, laconic style. She's always had a reputation for being humorous and for not taking herself too seriously and that certainly came over in those ...

A couple of the people I went with to see 'Promises, Promises' recently singled out 'Knowing When to Leave' as the show's most beguiling song after 'I'll Never Fall In Love Again' and wondered why it wasn't better known. I told them that although it had been recorded many times and by some well know...

'Back in the day' of 1965, Blue, Tony Blackburn actually released a single of a Bacharach & David song, 'Is There Another Way to Love You'. The general consensus is that by moving the show to an earlier start of 6am and making it live and interactive with none of the old features, the new boss o...

I returned to see the final show last night and it was brought home to me just how impressive this production was given the limited resources and the tiny stage. While Gabriel Vick and Alex Young confirmed their brilliance in the roles of Chuck and Marge, I found myself warming to Daisy Maywood as F...

I saw the show again last night and I have to say the whole production has sharpened up immeasurably since the opening over three weeks ago. Although I still have some reservations about Daisy Maywood's singing voice, this is a cast that on the whole more than does justice to both the book and the s...

I remember an evening in autumn 1969 and being round a schoolfriend's house to hear his latest purchase, the sensational debut album by King Crimson and it being played repeatedly and at top volume because his parents were out seeing a show in London's West End. I was still there at around midnight ...

Blue, the obvious John Barry influence is probably why he may be underrated.

Do you remember how the song from the Martini ad was chopped and changed to become 'Dancing Easy', a UK Top 30 hit for Danny Williams during the disco craze in 1977?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUwFzMl0W90

I saw the show on the second night and was very impressed with both Gabriel Vick’s charming and very well sung portrayal of Chuck and Alex Young’s superb comic timing as Marge, and their duet of ‘A Fact Can Be A Beautiful Thing’ was one of the highlights of the production. I was less taken with Dais...

Here's a positive first night review of the new London Fringe production, although there's not enough about the music with only two of the songs getting a mention:

http://www.broadwayworld.com/westend/ar ... e-20170118

I've managed to get tickets for the opening night of this revival which opens in a couple of weeks. The Southwark Playhouse is a small theatre seating 240 so I'm expecting a very fringe theatre type production with a small group of maybe six or seven musicians instead of a pit orchestra. Anyone els...

It seemed that in 2016 you only had to switch on the radio, open a newspaper or go online to be confronted with the news of the death of some music icon or another. Although at the age of 89 his passing could hardly be described as a shock, I was still saddened in November to hear that Mose Allison ...

Listening to Sounds of the 60s this morning and hearing world-renowned lyricist and music enthusiast Sir Tim Rice wrongly credit Hal David for the words to 'Any Day Now' was a little surprising to say the least. Easy mistake to make, of course, and I've heard it before on the radio with other Bacha...

It doesn't really matter how intelligent and well-read someone is, if they're not a music lover and they're under forty then it's entirely feasible that they're not going to have heard of Burt Bacharach, remarkable though that might seem to us. I just hope for this particular young woman's sake that...