Joanna Eden is an English jazz singer/pianist and teacher, one of her students being Grammy Award winning Sam Smith. She's featured on four tracks on the 4 CD box-set Simply Burt Bacharach, including Are You There. See and hear her perform Sam Smith's Stay With Me with definite Bacharach overtones:
The 4 CD 'Simply the Songs of Burt Bacharach' is very listenable from start to finish because of the high standard of the vocalists/musicians and the fact that most of the people involved have a background in jazz is betrayed on many of the tracks. Listen to the way the flugelhorn and Georgie Smit's sultry vocals on 'Arthur's Theme' combine to make it sound much more like a genuine Bacharach tune than the Christopher Cross recording.
Joanna Eden is an English jazz singer/pianist and teacher, one of her students being Grammy Award winning Sam Smith. She's featured on four tracks on the 4 CD box-set Simply Burt Bacharach, including Are You There. See and hear her perform Sam Smith's Stay With Me with definite Bacharach overtones:
The 4 CD 'Simply the Songs of Burt Bacharach' is very listenable from start to finish because of the high standard of the vocalists/musicians and the fact that most of the people involved have a background in jazz is betrayed on many of the tracks. Listen to the way the flugelhorn and Georgie Smit's sultry vocals on 'Arthur's Theme' combine to make it sound much more like a genuine Bacharach tune than the Christopher Cross recording.
Back in the late 50s & early 60s writing in the country style came easily to Bacharach. It was while I was in the jazz & easy listening section of Dussmann in Berlin last week that I heard Nancy Sinatra's recording of a song that Burt wrote with Bob Hilliard, something I'd only heard sung before by Del Shannon. I think Nancy recorded this early in her career, before she started having hits. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pcvDg_BeQCU
If ever a record company compiled a CD of C&W stars performing Bacharach this would have to be the first track. The Don Williams record is ingenious in its directness and simplicity and it's also refreshing to hear this song without the whistling and cloying backing vocals of the two hit versions. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-PcU3C9cbzM
pljms wrote:If ever a record company compiled a CD of C&W stars performing Bacharach this would have to be the first track. The Don Williams record is ingenious in its directness and simplicity and it's also refreshing to hear this song without the whistling and cloying backing vocals of the two hit versions.
With only five chords and all of them straight majors and minors, several C&W acts have cut Trains and Boats and Planes. Laura Cantrell's recording is probably the pick of the bunch not least because she actually sings the bridge, unlike several well known versions including Bacharach's own hit recording (no.5 in the UK):
In the US, Dionne Warwick had a sizable hit in the US and Canada with Trains, Boats and Planes in mid-1966 and she sang the entire bridge which most artists who covered the tune didn't attempt. Warwick's version is by far my favorite recording of the tune and with an original Bacharach arrangement to boot. Her version was the best-selling version of all the US recordings of the tune.
No BtB, I hadn't forgotten about Dionne's recording of Trains and Boats and Planes and the fact she sang the bridge. As Serene Dominic pointed out in his Song by Song book, most female vocalists who've recorded the song have sung the bridge while practically all the male singers, Billy J. Kramer and the Everly Brothers among them, haven't. The one exception that I can think of were the Boxtops of all people:
Another terrific video from Revolver TV, this one featuring a live outdoors performance from 1970 by the Carpenters of their Bacharach & David Medley, this time with Close to You added at the beginning:
pljms wrote:Another terrific video from Revolver TV, this one featuring a live outdoors performance from 1970 by the Carpenters of their Bacharach & David Medley, this time with Close to You added at the beginning:
I always enjoy watching old footage of the Carpenters with Karen playing the drums and singing at the same time, before she was pushed, reluctantly, up front.
Perhaps the most surprising choice of song for Rumer's forthcoming B&D album is The Last One To Be Loved, apparently requested by Bacharach himself. I've always liked Lou Johnson's recording of the song, a single release in '64 and it's bluesy B-side It Ain't No Use, which although not a Bacharach composition features his brilliant and original arrangement. Here they both are:
Burt was always perplexed that this song wasn`t a hit for Johnson, but I could have told him why it stiffed: because it was about a state of prolonged virginity, not a cool thing for a guy to be singing about in the sixties...or now, for that matter.
Sexist? Yes. But street- real.