Bacharach/David songbook by artists beyond Dionne Warwick

lj

Well-Known Member
Apart from Dionne, here are other recording artists/groups who had great success with Bacharach/David songs: Tom Jones "What's New Pussycat", Jackie De Shannon "What the World Needs Now", Dusty Springfield and Brasil 66 "The Look of Love", BJ Thomas "Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head", 5th Dimension "One Less Bell to Answer". and the Carpenters "Close to You." While Dionne was deservedly the go-to vocalist for the vast majority of Bacharach/David songs. the musical interpretations by the other aforementioned artists could not be topped in my opinion.
 
B.J. Thomas had quite a run of interesting covers of Bacharach/David tunes: "Long Ago Tomorrow," "Send My Picture to Scranton PA," "Everybody's Out of Town," and of course the #1 smash "Raindrops." I haven't dug fully into his catalog yet to see if he has any others--his catalog in those Scepter Records years is as scattered as Dionne's is, and the album reissues are in shambles.

Jackie DeShannon had a handful also. "So Long Johnny," "To Wait for Love," "A Lifetime of Loneliness" and "Windows and Doors" were good cuts ("So Long Johnny" is probably my favorite cut of hers), and her version of "What The World Needs now is Love" is arguably the definitive version of that tune.

There's also Cilla Black's "Alfie" which outshines most of the others out there.

I don't believe it was a hit, but the Gladys Knight & The Pips version of "Seconds" (which was from the aborted film remake of the Promises, Promises stage production) I prefer over Bacharach's own, although they are both similar in execution.
 
I would add Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass on "Casino Royale", though it was really Herb Alpert and the Burt Bacharach orchestra.

And "I'm A Better Man" by Engelbert Humperdinck had some chart action.
 
Ed Ames "Sings David And Bacharach" from early 1971 on RCA Victor is still not available on Apple iTunes.
 
Also Ed Ames "Lost Horizon" (from 1973 on RCA Victor & his final album) also not available on Apple iTunes.
 
I can think of a few instrumentals of Burts that were covered by other instrumental bands or jazz artists, but none that I can think of were well known beyond the "Casino Royale" theme. And they are too numerous to bother getting into here. It's kind of like the Beatles thing with cover versions, but not as annoyingly prevalent.
 
The Baja Marimba Band had the very first Bacharach song on A&M with "Walk On By."

 
Stevie Wonder did a fantastic version of Alfie, using the harmonica. Carnival's Walk On By got a lot of airplay in this market and Bossa Rio's Don't Go Breaking My Heart did as well. Dusty' Springfield's version of Wishin' and Hopin' was her most successful Bacharach/David single release. She also did a great version of Anyone Who Had A Heart. Cher sang Alfie in the closing credits of the original film and had a minor hit with the song as well.
 
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I mentioned this before but two artists did albums of Bacharach/Warwick music instrumentally We know of Cal Tjader's 1969 Bacharch Album on Skye and a Short time later Moog Synthesizer artist Christopher Scott recorded 2 volumes appropriately titled "Switched on Bacharach". Volumes 1 and 2 Respectively
 
I recently found the album, Burt Bacharach and Friends(A&M SP 19007) at a thrift store. It has 5 songs by Bacharach and 1 song each by Brasil'66, Herb Alpert and TJB, Baja Marimba Band Carpenters, Sandpipers and Wes Montgomery.
 
Dusty' Springfield's version of Wishin' and Hopin' was her most successful Bacharach/David single release. She also did a great version of Anyone Who Had A Heart.
And her definitive version of "The Look of Love" from the Casino Royale soundtrack album is the gold standard; the Brasil '66 version is total rubbish, as the tune is not suitable to a trite pop song treatment. That's like someone remaking the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home" as a biker band rock song.
 
the Brasil '66 version is total rubbish, as the tune is not suitable to a trite pop song treatment.
There are those of us with a different view, and the public apparently agreed, sending the record to #4 on the charts. :)
 
Years ago, I heard I'll Never Fall In Love Again sung as a male/female duet but the station did not say who was singing it. It stopped when Dionne's version came out. I preferred the duet and thinking back, it may have been from the original cast album for Promises, Promises.
 
This is the PROMISES, PROMISES version of "I'll Never Fall In Love Again", Jill O'Hara and Jerry Orbach.

 
I don't know if you all know this, but R&B singer Stephanie Mills did a whole tribute album to Bacharach/David! It was released in if I remember correctly 1975(or 1976). It was done to capitalize on her then "The Wiz" Broadway musical fame. I think Motown put the album out.
 
And her definitive version of "The Look of Love" from the Casino Royale soundtrack album is the gold standard; the Brasil '66 version is total rubbish, as the tune is not suitable to a trite pop song treatment. That's like someone remaking the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home" as a biker band rock song.
One thing that surprises me is how did Dusty get to do The Look Of Love for the movie over Dionne Warwick? Warwick was critical of the British women covering her songs so I wonder how she felt about this?
 
In 1968 the Beach Boys recorded “Walk On By” and “My Little Red Book”. WOB wouldn’t be released until 1990 (reissued in 2001) when it appeared on the 2-get-1 CD Friends-20/20 and then MLRB would be released in 2018 on the digital-only album The Beach Boys 1968: Wake The World: The Friends Sessions.
 
There are those of us with a different view, and the public apparently agreed, sending the record to #4 on the charts. :)
Even rubbish is popular though--look at just about all Top 10 hits from the past 25 years. I always had the feeling A&M was force-feeding that song on every artist, trying to force it to be a hit. I'll stand by my view that the arrangement completely ruins the feeling of how the tune is supposed to be performed. But, Burt didn't have a hand in the arrangement, so it wasn't his screw-up that ruined it for me.
 
One thing that surprises me is how did Dusty get to do The Look Of Love for the movie over Dionne Warwick?
If you look at it this way--not all songs were destined for Dionne. She had plenty to record on her albums, and less than half of her recordings on the Scepter albums were of Bacharach/David tunes. I guess it's like saying that while the trio worked closely, they were also not joined at the hip. Later in their partnership, they would write songs specifically for her; earlier on, though, the songs were shopped around to more artists, and other than what is written in Burt's bio or via firsthand accounts, we don't know who passed on the songs or decided to record them. And sure, in those earlier days there were plenty of ruffled feathers.

Burt scored the film in London as well, so it made sense to use talent from England as opposed to flying in artists from the US to record on the album, or send various tapes across the pond. Burt already flew the tapes over to A&M so Herb could record his trumpet onto the orchestral backing, probably trusting that Herb knew what the song needed. As opposed to Burt needing to record a vocalist in person to coach and direct them in how he wanted it sung--as much of a perfectionist as he was (sometimes doing dozens of takes on a track), he wouldn't have been happy with the outcome unless he were "hands-on" with the singer's performance. On top of it, Burt probably had Dusty's voice in mind as the only person in England who could properly make the song as sultry as it needed to be. (Cilla Black's voice would not have worked, for instance--the song needed a soft, alto voice to come off as Burt intended.)
 
Two that have gotten lost in the shuffle-The Shirelles and Smith for the song Baby It's You, an early Bacharach/David composition with writer Mack David.
 
Mack David was Hal's brother. So the apples do not fall very far from the tree, it seems. 😁

Bob Hilliard was another who wrote some early lyrics with Burt.
 
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