What song first made you appreciate Bacharach & David?

[robbievogue]

How much I appreciated Bacharach (and David) was back in 2001, when I heard this song for the first time. The seemingly endless languid string arrangement and the intense modest sadness of the lyrics made me realize how contemporary and literature-like sometimes Hal David's lyrics are. It swept me right off my feet, and it still does. One of Bacharach and David's best songs EVER!

[Tom Bragg]

For me it was Raindrops. Those were "Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid" times. Then my uncle bought the Green Album and I loved Mexican Divorce and Hasbrook Heights at first time.

[Alvina]

I just thought of the first song that I thought was so fresh and different and as you all know the "Reach Out " album was my first and "The Look Of Love" was so different with the Brazilian influence was awesome to me. I had never been exposed to anything like that before. It has been a lifelong love affair with the man and his music.

[scotsgreg]

Although I came from a fairly working class family in Houston, many of my relatives eschewed, or at least varied, the requisite C/W fare of the late-1960's South with the music of Burt Bacharach. That's one of the magical things about the Bacharach/David legacy. They took uptown Tin Pan Alley music principles and made sophisticated music accessible to middle and lower class folks of all races and regions. No longer "Down In The Depths On The Ninetieth Floor," instead we were disenchanted with the rich and famous and focused on catching a bus to get to work or looking to get back to San Jose, Scranton or Hasbrook Heights to face life and love without pretension or callow irony.

My mother, in particular, represented the quintessential Dionne Warwick listener of the period. Young, cosmopolitan yet not terribly political in a terribly political era, she was a divorced working girl with a child, tooling around town in a red VW bug singing along with "I Say A Little Prayer" and dancing on her dates to "This Guy's In Love With You." The experiences shared in the sound and lyrics of Bacharach's and David's songs reflected her own values, aspirations and attitudes. Consequently, I became an unconscious fan.

Through my family, Bacharach's music played a significant role in my toddler years and informed my earliest memories. When I was three, I recall my mother driving us home on a warm summer night in 1970 with The Carpenters' "Close To You" playing on the AM radio as I watched the light from the streetlamps suddenly flash through the backseat windows and slowly dissipate to black, feeling an inexplicable melancholy contentment as I listened to the sad lull of Karen Carpenter's vocal. I have similar warm feelings for The Fifth Dimension's "One Less Bell To Answer," Warwick's "I'll Never Fall In Love Again" and even Bacharach's "All Kinds Of People," often used to underscore the bumpers of Jerry Lewis' Muscular Dystrophy telethons in the early-1970's.

Later, around 1980, as 1960's nostalgia took hold and "Oldies" stations first began creeping into American FM as a popular radio format, my mother abruptly turned the volume up in the car one morning as the DJ announced "'Anyone Who Had A Heart' by Dionne Warwick from 1964" and I was struck by how unusual, almost fresh the song sounded when compared to what was then currently popular. By the last dramatic crescendos of the song, I was blown away by the passion of the recording. I lifted "Dionne Warwick's Greatest Motion Picture Hits" from my parent's defunct record collection and eventually sought out a cheap Dionne Warwick hits set on vinyl, although I recall being mortally embarrassed at the record store, given Warwick's decline in the 'cool' department among kids my age. I think I picked up an album by The Clash to give the clerk the impression my taste was properly balanced. I felt vindicated when I discovered that Rolling Stone gave a random Warwick greatest hits package 5 stars in their 1979 Record Guide.

Finally, around 1983, with the releases of Roberta Flack's "Making Love" and Naked Eyes' "Always Something There To Remind Me," I began to realize while listening to my stereo one afternoon that many of my favorite 45's, both new and inherited, shared similar musical and lyrical traits and bore an even more direct point of commonality. A majority of them featured in their songwriting credit the name of Burt Bacharach, a gentleman whom I mostly remembered from relatives' A&M album covers and as the handsome pianist on the arm of Angie Dickinson from the Martini and Rossi TV commercials of the early-1970's. It dawned on me that in over 15 years of shifting cultural tides and popular tastes, I'd been a consistent Burt Bacharach fan ('Heartlight,' notwithstanding.) I just hadn't known it.

Ultimately, I suppose it was that vivid 1980 encounter with Warwick's 'Anyone Who Had A Heart' that really instigated my conscious fascination with Bacharach's music and, to this day, remains for me a virtually perfect recording of the virtually perfect unrequited love song.

[Alvina]

You must be a writer or if not you should be because you have put into words a beautiful story of how this mans music became a huge part of your soul as it has so many of us. Thanks for saying it so well. I know my kids would laugh if they read your story because they could so relate. My oldest daughter told me recently......Mom I am really scared lol. I asked why and her reply was "I woke up singing What's New Pussycat" this morning. It was her way of saying my music had had a similar effect on her. Oh my, how could I like what Mom likes? It's the great thing about aging, and there aren't many ha! You get to see things come full circle.

[Martyn]

For me it was Burt's instrumental version of 'Nikki' which I first heard on his 'Portrait in Music' compilation album in 1973. The part of that tune that really grabbed me was the violin break.

PIM became my favourite album at the time and those tunes are still among my favourites of his, especially 'The April Fools', 'Knowing When to Leave', 'Pacific Coast Highway', 'She's Gone Away', 'Freefall' and 'And the People Were With Her'. Gee I've just about listed the whole album!

It would be interesting to know who was responsible at A&M for the track listing on this album (which included tracks from the 'Butch Cassidy' soundtrack). To me the album had an uplifting feel to it that was, and still is, sublime.

Martyn, Sydney

[roberto pinardi]

for me Lost Horizon / Living togheter album 1973

Roberto

[Vincent Cole]

Bonjour Martyn;

How are you doing?

It funny that you chose ‘Nikki’! I used to play the ‘Nikki’ instrumental until I wore out my needle on my Turn-Table (late 60’s and early 70’s)!!!

Also in the states, there use be a 4:30 Movie of the week on Channel 7that, that played a version of ‘Nikki’. Of all of Burt’s instrumentals, ‘Nikki’ is in the top 3! is still in my top

Take care mon ami!

Vincent

[Massimo]

All the songs in the LP "Portrait in music".

Massimo

[European guest]

The first was Magic Moments performed by Perry Como. I heard this song at a radio broadcasting. Then French version of Trains Boats and Planes by Claude François. I love all BB composition especially South American Getaway and Wives and Lovers.

[alvina2758]

From the "Woman" album lots of good stuff but "New York Lady" is so different and wonderful. Burt used to do this one in his concerts. How I long for one of those kinds of shows again. Has anyone seen it on CD?

OOPS, forgot to login. 30 lashes with a wet noodle lol. This is post 3 hurricane hysteria.

[An Enormous BB Fan]

The first was Magic Moments performed by Perry Como. I heard this song at a radio broadcasting. Then French version of Trains Boats and Planes by Claude François. I love all BB composition especially South American Getaway and Wives and Lovers.

I loved Magic Moments and it was only later that I learned that Burt (& Hal) wrote that big hit song.

If I had to choose one song, it would have to be Dionne's first hit "Don't Make Me Over." When I got the album and listened to it a million times, I couldn't help noticing that the names Bacharach/David were listed under each song. I just couldn't believe that all those great songs on that album were written by the same two guys. I don't remember exactly how I discovered who Burt was, though, except to tell you that I was talking Burt up to all my friends before he was known to the public. As unsophisticated as I was then about music, I could tell that Burt was extraordinary and his music touched me like no one else's. Even to this day this is true. I listen to the early Dionne songs all the time and I never get tired of it and I always moved by it, even after all these years.

[vincent.cole]

Bonjour An Enormous BB Fan ;

Being 12 years old at the time and really not into music that much, I ask my brother who was singing the song and playing the music!

I checked the 45 and it said, "Dionne Warwick'. Music by Burt Bacharach and Lyrics by Hal David.

I really didn't know who these people were, but I knew it was far different than anything I heard on the radio and on 45's at that time!

When my brother got subsequent releases of "Any One Who Heart" and "Walk On By" in the next couple of years, my love for this trio kept growing and growing!!!

When I saw Dionne Warwick and the fame Apollo in New York, in the 60's, it was truly awesome!

[Marcel]

I really don`t know anymore?
The first time that i heard and saw Burt was on the Dutch television about 34/30 years ago.
I was very impressed, thats when i fell in love with his music.(specially the way he conducts)
Guests on his shows were:Jose Feliciano.Juliet Prowse,Dusty Springfield.Mirelle Mathieu,The Harlem Globetrotters,Roger Moore.
I think that they were 2 or 3 shows?
About The Woman Album my favorite is Magdalena!
Looking forward to his 2005 project! ( such a very long time that he did a solo album)!
The Cool.Great and Brilliant BURT! (or should that be backwards hahaha)

[Andrew]

For me, I think it was really listening to A House Is Not A Home in the early 80s that made me sit up and learn about this name 'Bacharach' that I kept stumbling across. I'd heard a few songs from my dad's Andy Williams LPs and 'Alfie' was a family favourite on the piano, but AHINAH was the one that tuned my ear to Burt. My first Burt purchase soon followed with the 'In Concert' LP that I picked up from a second hand record shop - after listening to that, there was no going back!