Composer Burt Bacharach – maybe finest identified for his Oscar-winning music Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head – has died aged 94.
Hailed as one of many best songwriters of the twentieth century, he wrote greater than 500 songs, which have been carried out by greater than 1,200 totally different artists, throughout his seven-decade profession.
Despite quite a few collaborations, it was the songs he wrote within the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies with lyricist Hal David and carried out by singer Dionne Warwick that achieved the best recognition, establishing all three as musical stars in their very own rights.
His music – which was usually described as ‘simple listening’ or ‘elevator music’ due to its catchy melodies – was impressed by an early love of jazz.
But followers of his work would argue that though immediately memorable and addictively hummable, the blended meters, advanced melodies, uncommon chord development and asymmetrical rhythms imply his work was removed from ‘simple’.
An achieved pianist in addition to a composer, Bacharach organized, performed, and produced nearly all of his personal songs.
A six-time Grammy Award winner and three-time Academy Award winner, his composing ability earned him comparisons with American music greats together with George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers.
Early collaborations included Perry Como and Jerry Butler, occurring to work with stars together with Frank Sinatra, Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones and the Carpenters.
Some of his greatest hits embody the Oscar-winning Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, (They Long to Be) Close to You, Anyone Who Had A Heart, Always Something There To Remind Me, and What the World Needs Now Is Love.
Hollywood additionally performed its half in amplifying his profession, with lots of his songs occurring to change into soundtracks to main movies.
The Look of Love, which was used within the 1967 spy parody of a James Bond movie, Casino Royale, turned a gold document for Dusty Springfield and Brazilian musician Sergio Mendes, and was additionally inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Many years later, the spoof film would result in cameo roles for Bacharach in all three Austin Powers movies, with Mike Myers calling him a “lucky charm” for the movies.
What’s New Pussycat? – which featured within the 1965 Woody Allen movie of the identical title – gave Welsh singer Tom Jones his second prime 40 US hit and was additionally nominated for an Oscar for finest unique music the next 12 months. It went on to be sung by stars together with Barbra Streisand, The Four Seasons and The Wailers.
His point out in Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life was proof of his rightful place in popular culture, in addition to his popularity as a girls man.
‘I didn’t need to disappoint my mom’
Born Burt Freeman Bacharach on 12 May 1928, in Kansas City, Missouri, his father was a newspaper columnist and his mom an beginner painter and pianist.
The household moved to New York when he was three. A Jewish household in a largely Catholic neighbourhood, Bacharach mentioned in his 2013 autobiography, Anyone Who Had A Heart: My Life And Music, that he saved his religion to himself, and “didn’t want anybody to know about it”.
It was due to his mom’s love of music that Bacharach undertook piano classes as a toddler. He hated them with a ardour, however later informed followers throughout gigs that he persevered as “I did not want to disappoint my mother”.
He went on to review music at Montreal’s McGill University, Quebec, Canada, earlier than finishing his coaching at Mannes School of Music, in New York, and on the Music Academy of the West in Montecito, California.
Not a fan of the classical music he would play in his courses, he would later sneak into jazz golf equipment as a young person, with the type occurring to affect his songwriting later in his profession.
Drafted into the US military for 2 years in 1950 throughout the Korean War, and stationed in Germany, he bought his first style of working in music serving as a pianist at officer’s golf equipment and arranging music for dance bands.
Hitting it off with huge band singer and actor Vic Damone throughout his time within the navy, he went on to work with him as a pianist and conductor following his discharge.
Touring with Hollywood royalty
From there he started to play with different artists, together with actress Marlene Dietrich who is alleged to have referred to as working with him “seventh heaven,” in accordance with the 1989 biography Marlene.
Looking again on his time together with her in his autobiography, Bacharach wrote: “We went to Russia, Israel, the Middle East. Going with Marlene was like going in with a conquering army.”
As the Hollywood star’s musical director, arranging and conducting her nightclub reveals, he gained higher public prominence, nonetheless their working relationship got here to an finish within the early Nineteen Sixties, when Bacharach determined to dedicate himself to his personal songwriting full time.
Looking again to the beginning of his profession, Bacharach mentioned he initially thought songwriting was “so startlingly simple, I thought I could write five or six a day”.
However, after a 12 months or so of working, and “about a thousand” rejection letters, he concluded: “It’s hard to be simple.”
Without doubt, his most enduring and fruitful skilled relationship was with lyricist Hal David, who he met in 1957. In the early and mid-sixties alone, the pair wrote over 100 songs collectively.
Work with Hal David and Dionne Warwick
But it was in 1961, after they found Dionne Warwick who was working as a session singer, that their partnership actually took off.
During their time creating songs for Warwick, they wrote 39 of her chart hits together with Don’t Make Me Over, I’ll Never Fall In Love Again, Walk On By and Do You Know The Way To San Jose.
In 1969, Bacharach and David ventured into theatre, writing hit musical Promises, Promises, based mostly on the 1960 movie The Apartment. Their first and solely Broadway present, it gained them a Grammy.
Less auspicious was their soundtrack for the 1973 film Lost Horizon, an enormous flop which led to lawsuits between the pair and their skilled breakup.
In flip, their parting of how led Warwick to sue them for failure to honour their contract working together with her on her music. It was lastly settled out of courtroom in 1979 for $5m (£4.1m).
In 1975, Bacharach labored briefly with David once more, producing a Motown album collectively.
And in 1985, Warwick and Bacharach have been reunited too, when she sang his hit That’s What Friends Are For.
Co-written along with his then-wife Carole Bayer Sager, the monitor featured Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and Gladys Knight and went on to win a Grammy for Song of the Year.
Warwick described her relationship with Bacharach on the time as: “Not just friends. We’re family.”
The three would work collectively as soon as extra in 2000, on songs for movie Isn’t She Great, based mostly on the lifetime of Valley Of The Dolls novelist Jacqueline Susann.
In the Eighties, Bacharach’s music impressed most of the songs popping out of the post-punk period, and within the Nineties his work was launched to a complete new technology of followers due to a lounge music resurgence, led by bands together with Divine Comedy and The Mike Flowers Pops.
Named the “Sexiest Man Alive” by People Magazine in 2000, the noughties noticed remixes and samples of his work excessive within the charts on quite a few events.
An American Idol
A visitor vocal coach on American Idol, a whole episode was additionally devoted to his hits in 2006.
More fashionable collaborations embody Sheryl Crow, Elvis Costello, Noel Gallagher and hip-hop producer Dr Dre.
In June 2015, Bacharach performed the primary stage at Glastonbury Festival, 15 years after he had been compelled to drag out of the occasion because of a shoulder damage.
Bacharach was awarded the Johnny Mercer Award, the best honour within the Songwriters Hall of Fame In 1996.
Other honours embody the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Musical Achievement from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Grammy lifetime achievement award, the place he was proclaimed music’s best residing composer, in 2006.
A performer in addition to a composer, Bacharach performed concert events everywhere in the world all through his profession, usually accompanied by massive orchestras.
Not identified for his political songs, he made an exception in 2018 with Live To See Another Day, devoted to the survivors of gun violence and with proceeds going to a charity run by the households of a few of these killed within the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School taking pictures.
In late 2022, a New York dance troop celebrated Bacharach’s music in a night of dance titled The Look Of Love, named after certainly one of his greatest hits.
Even his pastime of horseracing – he was an proprietor and breeder of thoroughbreds for over 30 years – was influenced by his love of music, naming certainly one of his champion horses Heartlight No. One after his Neil Diamond collaboration, impressed by movie E.T.
Bacharach was married 4 instances, first to TV actress Paula Stuart between 1953 and 1958, then to actress Angie Dickinson between 1965 and 1980.
Bacharach and Dickinson had one daughter collectively, Nikki, who took her personal life in 2007, aged 40, after battling with Asperger’s Syndrome from a younger age.
His third marriage to lyricist Carole Bayer Sager lasted from 1982 to 1991, and so they adopted a son, Christopher.
His fourth and closing marriage was to former ski-instructor Jane Hanson, 32 years his junior, with whom he has a son and a daughter – Oliver and Raleigh.
Bacharach is survived by ex-wives Dickinson and Bayer Sager, his spouse Jane, and youngsters Christopher, Oliver and Raleigh.
Source: information.sky.com”