"I Say A Little Prayer", instrumentally

Who had the best instrumental version of "I Say A Little Prayer"?

  • Burt Bacharach

    Votes: 6 54.5%
  • Baja Marimba Band

    Votes: 3 27.3%
  • Sergio Mendes

    Votes: 1 9.1%
  • Wes Montgomery

    Votes: 1 9.1%

  • Total voters
    11

Harry

Charter A&M Corner Member
Staff member
Site Admin
We all know the Aretha and Dionne versions and there are a number of debates of who did the better version among those two. But I'm wondering about the various instrumental versions of the song, particularly among the artists who inhabited A&M Records. We have versions by The Baja Marimba Band, Burt Bacharach himself, Wes Montgomery, and even Sergio Mendes if you hop over to his Atlantic recording.

So give a listen to the YouTube versions below if you're unfamiliar with some of them and vote in the poll.
 
I've always really loved Burt's own instrumental take on "I Say A Littler Prayer" so that's the one I voted for. Coming closely behind would be the Baja Marimba version. I like that one a lot too.
 
Bacharach for me too. There aren’t too many instrumentals of his songs that I like better than his own versions. The guy really knows his way around an arrangement.
 
I voted for Burt Bacharach's version and the BMB version was in my mind a very close second although I like all the aforementioned versions there's one version I first heard on Tv being used as theme music for a Local TV Interview type program that version of "I say a little prayer" was a Moog synthesizer version by Christopher Scott who did two volumes of albums called " Switched on Bacharach" and on one of those Scott did what I think is a perfect instrumental version of The lesser known "Paper Mache " which I heard played on the radio often back in the day
 
Gotta go with the BMB on this one...it's the only tone poem of the group. You feel the sense of urgency with the long synth tone that starts each verse, and the general feeling I get from it all is that the world is a very busy and unforgiving place, and only the love for the person the lyric is speaking to is all that's getting the other person through the day. Especially during the fadeout, there's that drone again, but the light marimba ad lib overpowers it saying, "Suck it, World...I have someone to turn to, to keep me happy; and I'm doing all I can to protect and nurture that relationship."

To my ears, this was the definitive version of the song. Aretha and Dionne fans might disagree with me, and their versions had a lot of emotion as well, but Julius and the boys said it best.
 
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