Burt Bacharach (4)

BURT BACHARACH - PLAYS HIS HITS (1997)

1. Don't Make Me Over
2. Walk On By
3. Don't Go Breaking My Heart
4. Wives And Lovers
5. Anyone Who Had A Heart
6. The Last One To Be Loved
7. (There's) Always Something There To Remind Me
8. 24 Hours From Tulsa
9. Trains And Boats And Planes
10. Blue On Blue
11. A House Is Not A Home
12. What's New Pussycat?
13. My Little Red Book (All I Do Is Talk About You)
14. Saturday Sunshine
15. And So Goodbye, My Love

Back before one is a genius, one is a hustling schlub who thinks he's a genius, and Bacharach never completely left the Brill Building, even in the '70s when he turned up his collar and started writing symphonies about what women are allegedly about. This oft-reissued 1965 date for Kapp (augmented by a touch of earlier material) is the pop calm before the full-blown storm of his post-"What's New Pussycat?" career onA&M. There's an orchestra and white bread chorus, all right, but the results are relatively unpretentious, and you might be surprised by the endless number of hits he'd written before the peak: "Walk On By", "A House is Not a Home", "Wives and Lovers", etc. No Dionne, but Bacharach makes his Muzak count in a manner that Neil Diamond, after much effort, never has. There's still time, though. --D. Strauss

BURT BACHARACH - FUTURES (1977)

1. I Took My Strength from You (I Had None)

2. Futures
3. Us
4. Where Are You
5. We Should Have Met Sooner
6. No One Remembers My Name
7. Young Grow Younger Every Day
8. Another Spring Will Rise
9. Seconds
10. When You Bring Your Sweet Love to Me
11. Time and Tenderness

As with 1973's Living Together album, Burt Bacharach was given a lot of latitude by A&M, and deservedly so. This album is even more deep and complex than Living Together; though commercially it has more to grab onto, it still lacks the immediate punch of his Reach Out album, Burt Bacharach Plays His Hits or even A Tribute to Burt Bacharach: Composer, Arranger, Conductor. This is a very musical episode with Burt Bacharach: Reach Out engineer Phil Ramone co-producing. When you've got Jamie Anders singing on "When You Bring Your Sweet Love to Me," Joshie Armstead contributing to four titles, and even Peter Yarrow helping out on "The Young Grow Younger Every Day," the result can be called "underground adult contemporary." It goes down smooth, and where there are no singers, like on "Time and Tenderness," sophisticated Muzak emerges. As negative as the term Muzak has become, that is a compliment. The audience that enjoys a "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" are more apt to listen to this perfectly balanced array of performances and arrangements. Futures is a great title; it's a very futuristic middle of the road album, Bacharach looking like he stepped out of the gym riding in what looks like a ski lift on the cover. An Engelbert Humperdinck type relaxing, if you will. But the music inside is complex, and the project itself is as tremendous as Jethro Tull's A Passion Play. Unfortunately, it is also as difficult. With the legendary songwriter's many achievements it makes sense that A&M would allow him to go so far out on a limb. As Carole Bayer Sager's masterpiece Sometimes Late at Night mesmerizes -- and keep in mind Burt Bacharach was a major contributor to that epic, Futures is not as easy to absorb. It is immediately accessible, but not as easy to contain or recall. On the back of the album the artist writes, "My music came alive because of these people...," and that pretty much says it all: a major composer and arranger bringing more of his individual music to life. It's a classy project that may find appreciation years after it was recorded, one that might have been overlooked because the composer's other work is so popular. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide

BURT BACHARACH - ONE AMAZING NIGHT (1998)

1. One Less Bell To Answer - Burt Bacharach & Sheryl Crow
2. Always Something There - Burt Bacharach & All Saints
3. God Give Me Strength - Burt Bacharach & Elvis Costello
4. Baby It's You/A Message To Michael - Burt Bacharach & Chrissie Hynde
5. What's New Pussycat? - Burt Bacharach & Mike Myers
6. Anyone Who Had A Heart - Burt Bacharach & Wynonna Judd
7. Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head - Burt Bacharach & Ben Folds Five
8. They Long To Be Close To You - Burt Bacharach & Barenaked Ladies
9. The Window Of The World/What The World Needs Now - Burt Bacharach & Luther Vandross
10. Wives and Lovers - Burt Bacharach & David Sanborn & George Duke
11. Walk On By/Say A Little Prayer/Do You Know the Way To San Jose - Burt Bacharach And Dionne Warwick
12. Alfie - Burt Bacharach

BURT BACHARACH - LIVING TOGETHER (1973)

1. Something Big
2. Monterey Peninsula
3. I Come To You
4. Walk The Way You Talk
5. Balance Of Nature
6. Living Together, Growing Together
7. Reflections
8. Lost Horizons
9. Long Ago Tomorrow
10. I Might Frighten Her Away

The ten songs on Living Together all feature Burt Bacharach on piano, but that's where the similarity to his hit recordings ends. This album plays with less commercial viability than one would expect; it's a lush and elegant exercise and pleasant listening experience, but not easy to grasp. "Long Ago Tomorrow" is mostly instrumental, with voices coming in as additional instrumentation -- it could very well be an outtake from a Broadway show. "Something Big" starts off like Simon & Garfunkel but quickly moves to that "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" sound of a Dionne Warwick record, which is what listeners expect from Bacharach. The Fifth Dimension did put out "Living Together, Growing Together" as the title track of their 1973 Bell album, Bacharach truncating that for the title of this album, Living Together. The Fifth Dimension did crack the Top 40 with the song, their last of 20 chart hits, in fact, and 18th in terms of popularity. Their version was featured in the Peter Finch film Lost Horizon. Tony Middleton and the always exquisite Cissy Houston do the vocals on "I Come to You," but the song is not his most memorable and this album is a far cry from Burt Bacharach Plays His Hits or A Tribute to Burt Bacharach, Composer, Arranger, Conductor. "Monterey Peninsula" a good case in point: It's a jazzy instrumental piece connecting "Something Big" with "I Come to You." "Walk the Way You Talk" would make Mantovani proud. Heck, Mantovani did "Ari's Theme in 1961 and Bacharach did "Arthur's Theme" in 1981, and Bacharach must have certainly looked up to that orchestra leader, but the heartfelt vocal on "The Balance of Nature" is really what the fans expected with the Engelbert Humperdinck-style cover photo, and it comes off as one of the most appealing tracks on the album. This is said with all due respect: Living Together is Muzak with integrity, and makes for good background music while cleaning house.