Something Big: The Complete A&M Years (Burt)

I think the reason we had so much Burt in the house is because my mom probably had a crush on him. :D I still recall us driving around to half a dozen record stores one afternoon while she looked for his Make It Easy On Yourself record.

Yet it took me until that Rhino box set to finally hear most of those tracks recorded by their original artists, after hearing for years how good they were. Had I known I would have liked Warwick's recordings that much, I probably would have been buying them all along. But at least I can listen to them now. :)
 
From that context, I can safely say some of the A&M recordings are a nice change of pace, but not really essential as compared to the multitudes of others who have performed his songs, especially the work he and Hal did with Dionne Warwick.
Agreed, although some of the songs tend to fall into the "whichever version I hear first is my favorite" rule for me. I haven't played that box set in a while -- need to get that out again. And, I have always wanted to delve a little more into the Dionne catalog but I never have...another item for the list.
 
I was quite aware of the Dionne Warwick/Burt Bacharach connection from about 1968. That's when I started really listening and paying attention to the radio. I was given an FM stereo receiver as part of my high school graduation presents, and I quickly gravitated to the station that I ultimately began my radio career in. It played an MOR mix that would later be called soft rock and they played the Dionne Warwick hits aplenty, so I quickly associated many of the Burt Bacharach songs with Dionne Warwick. Later on, as I delved further into records and such, I was amazed at the number of other artists who also were picking Burt Bacharach songs to perform, like the 5th Dimension, B.J.Thomas, Bossa Rio, and so many others. It seemed like every other song on the station at times was yet another Bacharach song. They even had a Burt Bacharach weekend where they featured about four songs every hour from the composer - all stuff that had been played quite often. Heck, even the Beatles had done a Bacaharch song.

I remember after "This Guy's In Love With You" had settled down and my Dad told me that he heard a new Herb Alpert record of a Bacharach song on the AM station he listened to. It was of course "To Wait For Love" and I managed to tune in to it for the first time as the song was fading out. But I got a taste of what it sounded like - a slowish ballad with the Bacharach "bounce" to it. I tried in vain for days on end trying to record it on my reel-to-reel recorder, but another song with that same Bacharach "bounce" kept fooling me - Dionne Warwick's "Who Is Gonna Love Me?" At first that record annoyed me because of the way it kept fooling me, but after I finally got "To Wait For Love", I grew to really like Dionne's record too.

I've got a couple of her hits albums on CD, a lesser-known treasures-type disc, and a two-fer that includes the proper version of "Who Is Gonna Love Me?". I never did figure out why the version on the hits album wasn't the one I remembered. Perhaps an album and a single version? A rerecording? Don't know, but I knew the moment I heard it that it wasn't that recording that I heard so many times in 1968.

And now I sit here in 2016, all these years later, reading an email from Rumer about her upcoming album THIS GIRL'S IN LOVE WITH YOU being a little delayed by the label for better Christmas sales. The album is filled with familiar and unfamiliar Bacharach songs, and I've had it on order forever. She sent a link to a YouTube preview of the album:



Burt is truly a timeless composer - and one person I'm glad I got to share the planet with and see in person.
 
That's cool that she's doing "The Balance of Nature." That's one of my favorite Bacharach tunes. Another early favorite of mine was "Are You There (With Another Girl)." I think that might be the first Burt Bacharach song (his own recording, that is) that I heard on the radio...a station in Billings, KGHL, used to be an "easy listening" station and would occasionally play Bacharach, Herb Alpert, Sergio Mendes and of course Carpenters. We used to have it on at the store when I was a teenager.
 
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That's cool that she's doing "The Balance of Nature." That's one of my favorite Bacharach tunes. Another early favorite of mine was "Are You There (With Another Girl)." I think that might be the first Burt Bacharach song (his own recording, that is) that I heard on the radio...a station in Billings, KGHL, used to be an "easy listening" station and would occasionally play Bacharach, Herb Alpert, Sergio Mendes and of course Carpenters. We used to have it on at the store when I was a teenager.
Where i lived in southern idaho we had several easy listening stations exactly like what you described within 100 + miles of each other back in the late 70s it was very common to hear Bacharach's music in many ways along with Herb. Sergio. Carpenters etc. And even muzak instrumental versions of these as well as current top 40 fare done instrumentally i loved hearing it all and today i have almost all of that in my collection and more. Truly Wonderful and timeless music.for all time
 
I hope this upcoming album of Rumer's is better than her last two, which I played once each (I actually couldn't get through Boys Don't Cry, and the vinyl version I have tragically left off "Sara Smile"). Her non-album B-sides are some gems, though, including a few of Burt's tunes, although her delivery of "Alfie" is a bit one-dimensional IMHO. The new album looks like it has a good mix of the popular and the somewhat unfamiliar (to many listeners). "The Last One To Be Loved" (covered by Lou Johnson on a single that unfortunately went nowhere) is a surprising addition.

I'm sure it will be better than the maligned When Ronan Met Burt album from a few years back. :laugh:

I think I know about the bounce that @Harry is describing--early in his career, Bacharach visited Rio de Janeiro and heard the samba first-hand. That one rhythm that he uses, in modified form, in very many of his songs (Gene Pitney's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence" and "Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa," Dionne's "I Smiled Yesterday," "Are You There (With Another Girl)," "Do You Know The Way To San Jose?," a slower version in "Any Old Time of the Day," even the bass line in "Walk On By") are all based on the basic rhythm of the samba.

I put together my Dionne Warwick "all Burt" playlist again last night (the original was on my old drive), and have been playing it this morning. It exceeds 50 tunes at this point. And I am sure I am missing a few obscurities, but I don't have time to look through 16 albums worth of credits to find them. :D

@Harry mentioned one of her anthologies above that covers lesser known tunes--that one is called Hidden Gems and if you're not going to get any of the albums, I can also recommend it myself as it is nice to have something that gets away from having the usual suspects on it that we've heard so many times. With that and a more standard anthology, you can cover a lot of ground and get many of the highlights of her career.

If you want to go all completist on her Scepter Records catalog, these are an excellent bargain, they sound good, and they cover sixteen of her albums across nine CDs, including b-sides and a handful of rarities. Very many Bacharach/David songs here. These cover all of her output for Scepter, as well as two from when she moved to Warner Bros. (which coincides with her split from them, when they quit composing together). You can get all of them, shipped, for less than $60 from Amazon, or around $57 plus shipping from Amazon UK.

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Dionne Warwick is one of those people who I always thought her music was nice, but have never listened to it besides on the radio. So last night I checked on Amazon Prime, and they have several of her hits collections on there. (but none of the Scepter albums, sadly.) So I've been listening to some of the tunes. Great stuff! I kind of fell off her wagon when she started doing more schmaltzy stuff in the '80s and '90s...she really was best at doing Bacharach material.
 
Indeed. She had those hits on Arista and I admit I like them, and have an anthology which covers those, but wouldn't really want to be listening to full albums at this point.

She really put a unique touch on the Bacharach/David tunes and they, in turn, wrote the more challenging pieces specifically for her. It was a great partnership while it lasted. I believe it was either the stress from the Promises, Promises stage production, or the Lost Horizon film, that led to Bacharach and David parting ways. Warner had signed Warwick based on having their songwriting talent, but the lawsuits flew when that partnership fell apart. Took a couple of decades for the three to reconcile.

Her Scepter albums, like any, had filler on them, some more than others. Some were pop standards that I don't think came off very well. Yet getting those CDs above was the only way I could really ensure I got just about all of her Bacharach/David recordings I could get my hands on.
 
I for one Enjoy Almost all of dionne warwick's output my entry was her Arista period when She had a hit with "I'll never Love this way again" and "Deja Vu" and i discovered her Bacharach/David collaborations shortly thereafter and then Everything Clicked. By the early 90s i lost track of her but at least i have all my favorite Songs by Dionne from the 60s to the late 80s in my library and best of all it all started With Burt Bacharach.
 
She also did a Brazilian album on Arista that was pretty good. I think that's the only CD of hers I actually own. I liked the song "Deja Vu" from the Arista period -- it reminded me of the Bacharach/David hits somewhat.
 
"Deja Vu" was a big hit on local R&B radio when it first came out--I've always liked that song.
 
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