First recording of Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets

[pljms]

I'd always assumed that Dionne Warwick was the first to record 'Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets', but I've now discovered courtesy of Second-Hand Songs that a singer from New Zealand called Allison Durbin cut it a year before in 1969 for her album 'Soft And Soulful'. I can't find any information regarding who was responsible for the arrangement, but it's very similar to the one by Bacharach for Dionne's recording.


Also thanks to the Second-Hand Songs site I discovered that Liz Damon's Orient Express recorded the song in 1971.

[blueonblue]

Paul,
Thank you for two great "finds" !

Here's Dionne's "alternative" version with the extended coda.....



'blue'

[Sara D]

I'd always assumed that Dionne Warwick was the first to record 'Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets', but I've now discovered courtesy of Second-Hand Songs that a singer from New Zealand called Allison Durbin cut it a year before in 1969 for her album 'Soft And Soulful'. I can't find any information regarding who was responsible for the arrangement, but it's very similar to the one by Bacharach for Dionne's recording.

I see that there's no reference to this recording in Serene Dominic's Song By Song and it makes you wonder how an obscure singer from New Zealand managed to get hold of a new and previously unrecorded Bacharach & David song and with what sounds like to my ears a Bacharach arrangement?

[Jim Dixon]

I see that there's no reference to this recording in Serene Dominic's Song By Song and it makes you wonder how an obscure singer from New Zealand managed to get hold of a new and previously unrecorded Bacharach & David song and with what sounds like to my ears a Bacharach arrangement?

Her Wikipedia page gives some clues, assuming the release date of 1969 is accurate. Looking at images of the LP rear cover and LP labels, I can't find a copyright date, and sometimes Secondhandsongs relies on "best guesses" input by users listing LPs on Discogs.com. I'm not saying the record didn't come out in 1969, but I'd like a little more evidence than the Discogs listing and what I see in photos on eBay.

Here's some context that might explain her good luck in getting this song early:

1.) Her career caught fire in 1969, and while she's obscure today, she was "New Zealand Entertainer of the Year" in 1969, the same year she won "Australia's King of Pop Award for Best Female Artist". So EMI might have had ambitions of breaking her internationally, like a new Dusty Springfield.

2.) From Wikipedia: "In the late 1960s, Durbin began a relationship with expatriate New Zealand record producer Howard Gable, then a senior A&R manager and in-house producer for EMI Australia. They married in 1969 and started a family." -- It helps to have husbands in high places in the record biz!

[pljms]

The first recording of 'Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets' that I heard was by Stephanie Mills, released five years after Dionne Warwick's version and featuring an arrangement by Dave Matthews which is largely based on the one by Bacharach for Dionne, albeit with a longer fade and with some additional lyrics. Anyone reading Bacharach's autobiography would think that after the fallout and the lawsuits that followed the 'Lost Horizon' debacle that he and Hal David never worked together again, when it appears that they were back in the studio within a couple of years writing and producing the 'For The First Time' album for Stephanie Mills containing 'Loneliness Remembers'. I wasn't even aware of the album's existence until I stumbled upon an LP copy in the second-hand section of a record shop in London several years after its release and on getting it home discovered that the majority of the songs that were new were well up to standard, which given the still litigious nature of their relationship was quite remarkable. As we all know Bacharach would go on to record new versions of 'I Took My Strength From You' and 'No One Remembers My Name' for his 'Futures' album and of the other songs written for Stephanie Mills I think 'Please Let Go' is probably the strongest. It certainly contains the kind of chord changes that were unique to him and the arrangement has all his familiar trademarks.

[Blair N. Cummings]

Paul,
It has always been my understanding that the songs eventually appearing on the Mills album were those written prior to the `Lost Horizon` debacle and intended for Dionne`s second Warners album. No one has ever been able to tell me how Stephanie came by these songs given her inadequate range. She was popular at the time for her role on Broadway in `The Wiz`, but the connection to Bacharach/David remains a mystery.
Incidentally, you`ll note that the credits on the album for production are reversed for the only time in Burt and Hal`s partnership. That is because Hal produced the album alone. Mills said in an interview that Burt wasn`t even in the studio during her sessions.

[pljms]

Blair, it would certainly make more sense that the new songs for the Stephanie Mills album were written a few years earlier because just the idea that Bacharach and David could have collaborated on new material shortly after having filed lawsuits against each other has always struck me as more than a little bizarre.

Bacharach may have had little or no involvement with the production of the album but there's no doubting his role as the arranger on several of the tracks and the way the chords are voiced on the piano for this song sounds very much like Burt.

[Jim Dixon]

the idea that Bacharach and David could have collaborated on new material shortly after having filed lawsuits against each other has always struck me as more than a little bizarre.

I could see it having gone either way--the songs might have been written for Dionne a few years prior, or the project could have instigated something like a final weekend fling between a separated couple who then realize there's no hope of repairing the marriage. Or it could be some mixture of old and new songs. Also, any new material could have been written via mail (they were used to collaborating from opposite coasts by then), with Burt and Hal not being in the same room at any point--there's a few scenarios between full reconciliation and pulling old songs out of the trunk.

My sense is that Hal was a pretty even-tempered guy who might have been willing to put professional opportunity above his feelings about Burt saying "FU" in 1972. For his part, Burt might realized he wasn't in a position of strength regarding the lawsuit, and that working on material with Hal might be a way to avoid some financial pain if things went well. He and Dionne managed a little reunion session in 1974...maybe Angie was talking some sense into his head during this period regarding blowing up all of his professional relationships? Maybe his own intelligence was telling him his big power move over the revenue split was, in the big picture, kind of self-defeating?

Joe Marchese seems to think the new material was truly new and post-"Horizon", but he doesn't cite any sources and might have been making assumptions: https://theseconddisc.com/2014/10/01/al ... irst-time/

I can't find anything in interviews with Burt or in his memoir where he describes how the Stephanie Mills record was written. I don't find it that mysterious that Bacharach and David decided to do the Mills album, however it came to be. I agree that Mills wasn't a Dionne-level singer, but Motown was willing to put a push behind her, and "Never Knew Love Like This Before" shows that she had enough charisma and unique vocal qualities to connect with the public given the right material and production. Kind of like Madonna or Cyndi Lauper, really, in terms of being able to work within the limitations of her voice. But having her sing Burt's music...not Motown's best idea. I like the album okay, but I'd much rather hear Dionne singing those songs with deluxe 70s production.

[Blair N. Cummings]

A couple of facts argue against an early rapprochement between Burt and Hal.
Burt has admitted to "sulking for a couple of years" after the split; and much was made in 1993 of the "first Bacharach/David collaboration" in twenty years, "Sunny Weather Lover." It deserved the "meh!" response it got, largely because Burt was in the habit by then of composing rather dull melodies for Carole (at her request, promising that it would get him back on the charts). Here`s a live version with Burt on piano:

[Jim Dixon]

I forgot to check Robin Platts' book for this--it's not a book I pick up very often. He's quoting Hal on p.92:

"Berry Gordy called me. He was interested in me coming to work for for Motown. I wasn't interested--not because of Motown, but I just wasn't interested in working for a record company, or working for anybody. And he said, 'Well, why don't you do an album for me? I've got this wonderful singer, Stephanie Mills. Who would you like to do it with?' I said, 'Well, let me call Burt and see how he feels about it.'....We had gotten past it [the feud--ed.]. We had been together many years and had a very good relationship. And once we got beyond the discomfort of being on the outs, so to speak, once we got back together again, we were back together again. When we worked together, we were fine....There may have been an older song somewhere in the mix, but essentially they were all new songs."

Platts says in the intro he interviewed Hal for the book, so I assume that's where the quotes were taken. There's no date or other information about the interview.

I can't run down the source right now, but sometime in the last few months, I was reading or hearing audio of Burt talking about Motown keeping him on a tighter leash as a session producer than he was used to at Scepter, A&M, and elsewhere. Platt quotes Phil Ramone as saying Hal was around for the whole Motown record, but Burt only came in to produce the tunes he arranged.

As to why this album didn't figure into the 1993 publicity about the Dionne / Burt Hal reunion, that doesn't surprise me at all. Mills' album flopped and nobody remembered it in 1993 outside of Bacharach super-fans. It would have only complicated a good bit of public relations about the grand "Horizon" breakup being followed by a 20-year cold war between Burt and Hal. Serene Dominic claims the "Sunny Weather Lover" reunion actually happened in 1989, contra the PR:

"The pair’s workday reunion actually took place in 1989, when the Bacharach-Sager marriage was showing the first signs of turbulence. This historic but private summit yielded only two songs, 'How Can I Love You' (which remains unrecorded) and 'Sunny Weather Lover, served up to the public as a 'Bacharach-David reunion offering some four years later."

[Blair N. Cummings]

But, at that time, they were still in breach of contract with Warners and Dionne for not producing her second album. Wouldn`t their first obligation legally as a team have been to make good on their Warners contract?

[Jim Dixon]

Wouldn`t their first obligation legally as a team have been to make good on their Warners contract?

That's a good question, beyond my knowledge. These kind of lawsuits play out in a lot of different ways, and some artists have more leverage than others based on their copyrights and other factors. Courtney Love leveraged the Nirvana catalog during her beef with Universal over her band Hole's owed albums. XTC, on the other hand, were basically silenced for 7 years at something close to the peak of their career when they started fighting with their label. Maybe Warner's could have played hardball and blocked the Mills album, but chose not to? That could be a rational business decision.

[pljms]

Bacharach was quite vague in his recollection of the Stephanie Mills album when interviewed by Serene Dominic for the book 'Song By Song':

SD: After you split with Hal and Dionne, you got together with Hal again to write the Stephanie Mills album.

BB: Oh yeah, yeah. Forgot about that. We were together for that? 'Cause that was after the split.

SD: That was after Dionne filed suit. Were you actually in litigation with Hal while you were writing those songs?

BB: I doubt it. I think it had been resolved, maybe.

SD: From what I understand, it was settled out of court in '79. The Stephanie Mills album was in '75.

Burt goes on to say:

BB: I was very conscious of people looking over my shoulder at Motown. I never had any experience working with them. I just know that one experience. A lot of looking over your shoulder.

He then goes on to say:

BB: I don't think we had to play anything for anybody at Motown. We had to play it for Stephanie and her family and make sure she was OK with it. And I think we could have made a better album if we had really sat down and tried to understand her more, vocally, instead of remaking existing songs.

SD: Were all those pre-existing songs?

BB: Maybe not. Didn't we do 'This Empty Place'?

SD: And 'Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets', pretty much a note-for-note recreation of the Dionne version.

BB: Yeah, that's fudging a little bit in retrospect, looking back. Was I crazy about her as an artist? I thought she was pretty exciting in the show (The Wiz). But it's very hard to follow Dionne.

I think what Burt said near the end there about remaking existing songs is very significant.

[Jim Dixon]

"I was very conscious of people looking over my shoulder at Motown." - That's the quote I was remembering.

Serene was too polite and/or wise to press Burt for more details when Burt was a bit vague, which is too bad. But Burt seems like a guy who lived a very full life, in and out of music, and didn't spend a lot of time going back over his own past.

He also seems like a guy who was good at compartmentalizing, emotionally speaking. Carole Bayer Sager, for instance, told a reporter for The Telegraph:

‘I’m really all OK with it.’ Carole Bayer Sager talks amusingly in the book about Bacharach’s self-absorption – ‘nothing changes with Burt when he changes wives. The only thing that changes is his wife; his routine remains the same’

The same story digs up an Angie Dickenson quote that makes me think Bacharach had a way of tuning out unpleasant things:

Dickinson mentioned it in an interview that she gave to Vanity Fair in 2008, in which she also spoke of how she believed Bacharach had ‘no real connection’ with Nikki. ‘She was too difficult for him, but it was his loss....’

The fact that Burt had no real memory of when the lawsuit with Hal was resolved makes me think he wasn't that involved in the details after the initial wave of activity. It did take something like seven years to resolve. He might have been able to compartmentalize his feelings about the lawsuit, which was dragging on in the background, and work with Hal again at a time when they were both in something of a dry spell.

It is bizarre that, no matter when the songs were written, that they were cooperating at some level on an album project only 2-3 years after a pretty bitter fallout. That's some Fleetwood Mac level "show must go on" stuff.