The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

I`m still glad that there was never a stage musical. And I don`t think that it was the "melancholic" nature of many of the songs. After all, `Carousel` was hardly a yuk-fest and `South Pacific` featured a heart-breaking tragedy. It was, I think, the relentless nature of the bummer leading ...

I seem to recall that Carole posted once or twice here under a pseudonym before being thoughtlessly outed by someone.

It`s true, David B., that there will be no new songs but there were two nearly completed with Tashian that he plans to finish, the abandoned `Snow White` score, as well as that for `New York Animals`. Whether any demos exist for the shows is unknown to me, but there must be plans to examine the &quo...

Words fail.
Except for those comprising this forum which, for all of the occasional contentiousness, will remain a major testimony to the effect his music had on so many.

Paul, My recollection is that it was at Carole`s insistence that Burt rid his melodies of the eccentricities that actually defined them in order to re- appear on the charts in a less adventurous musical era. Again, my memories may be faulty but I recall her appraisal of PFM as less laudatory and mor...

So, Burt didn`t compose his score for the allotted times in the movie, as he did for `Butch Cassidy...`? He just dumped pieces of music and went home, leaving Napier-Bell to do what, exactly? Edit Burt`s compositions? Re-configure them? And Burt was okay with this? The story is interesting but parti...

This event still puzzles me. Assuming that the A&M label was not re-launched, that neither Burt nor Sergio Mendes was there, and that for some arcane reason Dionne was...WTF? Did this make any sense to anyone there? Not that Jerry doesn`t deserve credit for his accomplishments, but neither he no...

Bell was also one of those writers who generously agreed to collaborate with the stunning "should-have-been", Nikki Jean:

Better late than never, I suppose, but this seems awfully late. For how many decades has the entire A&M catalogue been secreted in a bomb-resistant bunker? And why just Jerry? And what happened to Sergio Mendes? And why Dionne, whose sole recording for the label was the singing of the last line ...

And I hope he "autographs" it using the same scam that "Dylan" used - the slimeball:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/arts ... ature.html

These are gems. They were once available as a bootleg and I grabbed them then.
There also exists (although I`ve never heard) an "unauthorised" recording of the now-forgotten `New York Animals` score.
Last, did the `Snow White` songs ever reach the demo stage?

It must be another example of the ineffable genius of Bobby Zimmerman that enables him to detect in a song all the flaws that he also concedes have been successfully concealed.

One of the more enduring mysteries of popular culture (to me, anyway) is why people continue to lend any sort of credibility at all to this foul mediocrity. I first posted the following many years ago and again when "Dylan" was awarded the Nobel Prize. I still wouldn`t change a word: Bob &...

Steve, that`s very interesting news to me. I, too, had always assumed that there was an "official" copy of the composition that I also assumed was written or blessed by the composer.
Never too old to learn.