Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Various Artists - Covered: Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Volume 3: 1965-1968

Here's the third of five albums collecting the best songs written by Burt Bacharach and/or Hal David. The two of them wrote a remarkable number of classic songs, and they were at the peak of their creative powers around this time, from the mid to the late 1960s.

As with the other albums in this series, I've tried to avoid including any covers performed by Dionne Warwick, since most any fan of this type of music presumably has her 1960s greatest hits at least, which are basically all Bacharach-David songs. The time period of this album is again dominated by Warwick hits. So sometimes I've had to get creative to find alternates. I did include one Warwick performance, "Looking with My Eyes," because I couldn't find any alternate versions at all.

But Bacharach and David were so successful and prolific during this time that they had a bunch of hits even if you don't include the Warwick versions. I'd say this album is roughly half hits by Warwick where I've had to find alternates and half hits by others.

I'm not 100 percent sure, but I'm fairly sure that all the songs on this album were written by both Bacharach and David. I think that's the case with the last album in this series too. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Sadly, their collaboration would fall apart in the early 1970s.

01 What's New Pussycat (Tom Jones)
02 Looking with My Eyes (Dionne Warwick)
03 My Little Red Book (Love)
04 Don't Go Breaking My Heart (Astrud Gilberto)
05 Alfie (Cher)
06 Promise Her Anything (Tom Jones)
07 After the Fox (Hollies & Peter Sellers)
08 Casino Royale (Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass)
09 The Look of Love (Dusty Springfield)
10 I Say a Little Prayer (Aretha Franklin)
11 Do You Know the Way to San Jose (Connie Francis)
12 Are You There [With Another Girl] (Buckinghams)
13 The Windows of the World (Bobbie Gentry)
14 Promises, Promises (Connie Francis)
15 Another Night (Dusty Springfield)
16 This Guy's in Love with You (Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass)

https://www.imagenetz.de/cRRau

I have to admit I blatantly cheated with the album cover. I was so frustrated by the lack of good color photos with both Bacharach and David in them that I decided to make one myself. I took a photo of Bacharach (with the blue background included) and another of David, and put them together. Maybe it looks a little bit weird. The David picture is at a lower resolution, unfortunately. I'd be curious what people think.

5 comments:

  1. I really looking forward to listening to all of of your 'Covered' series! So many of these are now standards or have been covered by more contemporary artists and we don't realize how influential these composers have been. Thank you and keep up the good work!

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    1. Thanks a lot for the feedback. I'm glad to hear at least one person is digging this. I just posted Allen Toussaint.

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  2. The photo is genius. I would not have guessed anything out of the ordinary had you not pointed it out. Looks great.

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    1. Glad to hear it. Thanks! But how's the music?

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  3. I think the photo is great, too--Hal even looks a little sharper (to my eyes) than Burt! And of course the music's great on all the volumes! I'm just sorry that you didn't find room anywhere for one of Hal's best post-Burt songs...but since you're not much of a country fan, I can understand how you might have wanted to omit it: "It Was Almost like a Song," by Ronnie Milsap.

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