Dionne Warwick - Dionne, Burt and Hal: The Definitive Songbook, Volume 7: 1987-2012 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

I'm back from my two week vacation from Peru. It got off to a rough start due to the plane flight there, which I posted about. But everything else since then went great, with no more problems. :) I even had good weather the whole time, despite it being the rainy season there.

Here's the last album in a series that contains all the songs written by Hal David and/or Burt Bacharach and sung by Dionne Warwick. Though note that there's a bonus album of sorts still to come that will be explained later.

As I mentioned in Volume 6, the Bacharach-David songwriting partnership broke up around 1973, and they didn't collaborate for a long time after that. The second half of Volume 6 consisted entirely of songs written by Bacharach and another successful songwriter, Carole Bayer Sager. (In fact, Bacharach and Sager were married for a few years around this time). 

The Bacharach and Sager collaboration continued for a little while. The first songs are from a 1987, and are all co-written by those two. One song, "Love Power," was a hit. After that, there are a bunch of songs from 1989 to 2011, one song per year with many years skipped. "Sunny Weather Lover" from 1993 is a key song here, because it's the first song Bacharach and David wrote together since about 1972. However, that was a rare collaboration. Their songwriting partnership didn't reignite after that. (They also co-wrote two songs for the 2000 movie "Isn't She Great," but Warwick didn't sing them.) Furthermore, both of them were simply getting older and didn't write songs nearly as often as they used to. 

So the rest of the songs were written by Bacharach with others or David with others. For instance, "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)" was a Number One hit in the U.S. for Christopher Cross in 1981, and was written by Bacharach with Sager and two others. Track 101 is an unreleased live version by Warwick recorded in 2005.

The last four songs are from a 2012 album called "Now." It was billed as a celebration of Bacharach and David songs. However, it mostly consisted of rerecordings of old hits. The four new songs, presented here, were written by either Bacharach with others or David with others. For instance, "99 Miles from L.A." was written by David with Albert Hammond, and was a hit for Hammond in 1975. 

Hal David died in 2012, so that ended the chance for any more songs written by both of them. Bacharach died in 2023.

While I was on vacation, a commenter noted that a song, "(Theme From) The Valley of the Dolls" was included on Volume 4 of this series, despite neither Bacharach nor David being involved in writing it. Now that I'm back home, I was able to repost that album with that song removed. That also means that the numbering of all the songs after that has been fixed as well. So you might want to redownload Volumes 4, 5, and 6 if you're a stickler about such things. Also, since I had complaints about the cover art for Volume 1, I've posted an alternate version of the cover at the bottom of my write-up for that album that uses the original black and white photo, in case anyone wants that.

Thanks again to Mike Solof for putting this together.   

This album is one hour long. 

092 Take Good Care of You and Me (Dionne Warwick & Jeffrey Osborne)
093 Love Power (Dionne Warwick & Jeffrey Osborne)
094 In a World Such as This (Dionne Warwick)
095 Heartbreak of Love (Dionne Warwick & June Pointer)
096 On My Own (Dionne Warwick)
097 Sunny Weather Lover (Dionne Warwick)
098 Captives of the Heart (Dionne Warwick)
099 If I Want To (Dionne Warwick)
100 On My Way (Dionne Warwick)
101 Arthur's Theme [Best That You Can Do] (Dionne Warwick)
102 Keep Me in Mind (Dionne Warwick)
103 99 Miles from L.A. (Dionne Warwick)
104 Is There Anybody Out There (Dionne Warwick)
105 It Was Almost like a Song (Dionne Warwick)
106 Love Is Still the Answer (Dionne Warwick)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ieF2gBUW

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/DKTsSUgj9dgKC43/file

The cover photo shows her in concert in an unknown location, in February 1989.

Dionne Warwick - Dionne, Burt and Hal: The Definitive Songbook, Volume 6: 1972-1985 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Things changed drastically for this volume of all the songs written by Hal David and Burt Bacharach and sung by Dionne Warwick. Since the start of Warwick’s hit-making years in 1963, she was signed to Scepter Records. She was their biggest star by far. But in 1971, her contract ended and she signed a new deal with Warner Brothers Records. (Scepter Records went bankrupt a couple of years later.)

For her first album on her new label, released in 1972, all seemed well, because all the songs were written by Bacharach and David. But in 1973, the two songwriters wrote the songs for the movie “Lost Horizon,” without Warwick’s involvement. This turned out to be a disaster. The movie was a flop and so was the soundtrack. But worst of all, Bacharach and David had a falling out during the making of the soundtrack. They wouldn’t write songs together for many years, and both of them had much less success without the other one. To make matters worse, Warwick’s new record company expected her to have most of her songs written by Bacharach and David. When that couldn’t happen anymore, that resulted in more lawsuits, including Warwick suing the songwriting duo.

Decades later, Bacharach wrote about this dispute in his autobiography: "It was all my fault, and I can't imagine how many great songs I could have written with Hal in the years we were apart. So I now know that on every level, it was a very bad mistake." But at other times, he suggested that both he and David were somewhat creatively exhausted, so they probably wouldn't have been able to keep their streak of hit songs going much longer anyway. That can be seen by the fact that the two of them had wrote very few hits for most of the rest of the 1970s. 

The first seven songs are from 1972. The eighth song, "One Less Bell to Answer," is from 1977, but was written in the 1960s. The Fifth Dimension had a hit with it in 1970. Warwick didn’t have much success without Bacharach and David for most of the 1970s, but she resumed having hits in 1979. 

In 1985, she resumed performing some songs written by Bacharach, but not David, since Bacharach and David wouldn’t reconcile until later. Instead, Bacharach was cowriting songs with Carole Bayer Sager at the time. The rest of the songs here are written by those two, from 1985. One of those songs,”That’s What Friends Are For,” was a massive hit, helped by Warwick being joined by some other big stars. Not only did it reach Number One in the U.S., it was the biggest selling song in 1986. 

Warwick had this to say about working with Bacharach again in 1985: "We realized we were more than just friends. We were family. Time has a way of giving people the opportunity to grow and understand... Working with Burt is not a bit different from how it used to be. He expects me to deliver and I can. He knows what I'm going to do before I do it, and the same with me. That's how intertwined we've been."

This album is 55 minutes long.

078 Be Aware (Dionne Warwick)
079 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Dionne Warwick)
080 Hasbrook Heights (Dionne Warwick)
081 I Just Have to Breathe (Dionne Warwick)
082 If You Never Say Goodbye (Dionne Warwick)
083 The Balance of Nature (Dionne Warwick)
084 One Less Bell to Answer (Dionne Warwick)
085 Early Morning Strangers (Dionne Warwick)
086 That's What Friends Are For (Dionne Warwick, Elton John, Gladys Knight & Stevie Wonder)
087 Extravagant Gestures (Dionne Warwick)
088 Finder of Lost Loves (Dionne Warwick)
089 How Long (Dionne Warwick)
090 Stay Devoted (Dionne Warwick)
091 Stronger than Before (Dionne Warwick)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ku4tY3Qr

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/msqzMLVw1J3DQje/file

The cover photo shows her at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, on February 9, 1972.

Dionne Warwick - Dionne, Burt and Hal: The Definitive Songbook, Volume 5: 1969-1970 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here’s another album of Dionne Warwick singing all the songs written by Hal David and Burt Bacharach. Once again, thanks to Mike Solof for putting these albums together.

Warwick, David, and Bacharach had a great thing going from about 1963 until 1970. They had hit after hit after hit. The end of this album marks the end of that golden era. The three of them would still collaborate together, but much more intermittently. There are two more volumes dealing with those later years.

This album is 53 minutes long.

061 I'll Never Fall in Love Again (Dionne Warwick)
062 Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head (Dionne Warwick)
063 Dream Sweet Dreamer (Dionne Warwick)
064 Knowing When to Leave (Dionne Warwick)
065 Let Me Go to Him (Dionne Warwick)
066 Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets (Dionne Warwick)
067 Paper Mache (Dionne Warwick)
068 The Wine Is Young (Dionne Warwick)
069 Check Out Time (Dionne Warwick)
070 Make It Easy on Yourself (Dionne Warwick)
071 The Green Grass Starts to Grow (Dionne Warwick)
072 The Very First Person I Met [In California] (Dionne Warwick)
073 They Don't Give Medals to Yesterday's Heroes (Dionne Warwick)
074 Walk the Way You Talk (Dionne Warwick)
075 The Look of Love (Dionne Warwick)
076 Who Gets the Guy (Dionne Warwick)
077 Only Love Can Break a Heart (Dionne Warwick)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/nMDebKmr

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4j7hPKMNNw5COdY/file

The cover photo shows her on the Engelbert Humperdinck TV Show some time in 1969. 

Dionne Warwick - Dionne, Burt and Hal: The Definitive Songbook, Volume 4: 1968 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

I am posting this while waiting in an airport for a flight inside Peru. So far, my vacation is going great after a rough start getting here. This is another volume of Dionne Warwick singing songs written by Hal David and/ or Burt Bacharach. At this point, their songwriting partnership was going strong and they were still writing all their songs together.

Thanks again to guest poster Mike Solof for putting these albums together.

This album is 45 minutes long.

048 As Long as There's an Apple Tree [Extended Version] (Dionne Warwick)
049 Do You Know the Way to San Jose (Dionne Warwick)
050 Let Me Be Lonely (Dionne Warwick)
051 Odds and Ends (Dionne Warwick)
052 Promises, Promises (Dionne Warwick)
053 The April Fools (Dionne Warwick)
054 Reach Out and Touch - All Kinds of People (Dionne Warwick)
055 This Girl's in Love with You (Dionne Warwick)
056 Wanting Things (Dionne Warwick)
057 Where Would I Go (Dionne Warwick)
058 Who Is Gonna Love Me (Dionne Warwick)
059 Whoever You Are, I Love You (Dionne Warwick)
060 Walkin' Backwards Down the Road (Dionne Warwick)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PQUwnfKQ

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/VBcAZtk0uWxyYgh/file

The cover photo shows her on an unknown TV show in London, in 1968.

Dionne Warwick - Dionne, Burt and Hal: The Definitive Songbook, Volume 3: 1966-1967 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here’s another Dionne Warwick album in Mike Solof’s series of all the songs she sang written by Hal David and/or Burt Bacharach. I’ll keep my comments short. But I’ll note I think the three of them were peaking around this time until the end of the 1960s, with songwriting, production, and singing.

This album is 39 minutes long.

035 I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself (Dionne Warwick)
036 Go with Love (Dionne Warwick)
037 Message to Michael (Dionne Warwick)
038 Trains and Boats and Planes (Dionne Warwick)
039 Here, Where There Is Love [Alternate Version] (Dionne Warwick)
040 What the World Needs Now Is Love (Dionne Warwick)
041 Alfie (Dionne Warwick)
042 The Windows of the World (Dionne Warwick)
043 Another Night (Dionne Warwick)
044 The Beginning of Loneliness (Dionne Warwick)
045 Walk Little Dolly (Dionne Warwick)
046 I Say a Little Prayer [Alternate Version] (Dionne Warwick)
047 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (Dionne Warwick)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oLsc5LBu

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/NEh31dMotYhnVFJ/file

The cover photo was taken backstage during an engagement at the Copacabana nightclub in New York City, on May 2, 1967.

Dionne Warwick - Dionne, Burt and Hal: The Definitive Songbook, Volume 2: 1965 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here is the second volume collecting all the songs Dionne Warwick written by Hal David and/or Burt Bacharach. Like all the other albums in this series, this was mainly put together by guest poster Mike Solof.

Since I’m writing this on vacation, I’ll keep the comments short. Enjoy.

This album is 44 minutes long. 

019 Are You There [With Another Girl] (Dionne Warwick)
020 Don't Go Breaking My Heart (Dionne Warwick)
021 Don't Say I Didn't Tell You So (Dionne Warwick)
022 Forever My Love (Dionne Warwick)
023 If I Ever Make You Cry (Dionne Warwick)
024 Here I Am (Dionne Warwick)
025 Is There Another Way to Love Him (Dionne Warwick)
026 Wives and Lovers (Dionne Warwick)
027 Looking with My Eyes (Dionne Warwick)
028 In Between the Heartaches (Dionne Warwick)
029 Only the Strong, Only the Brave (Dionne Warwick)
030 Window Wishing (Dionne Warwick)
031 How Many Days of Sadness (Dionne Warwick)
032 That's Not the Answer (Dionne Warwick)
033 How Can I Hurt You (Dionne Warwick)
034 Long Day, Short Night (Dionne Warwick)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/dC4gq6mc

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/eODweEN1JWe1Yrp/file 

The cover photo was taken in Hyde Park, in London, in 1965. 

Dionne Warwick - Dionne, Burt and Hal: The Definitive Songbook, Volume 1: 1962-1964 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

In the last album I posted, I mentioned that I'm leaving for a two week vacation to Peru, starting tomorrow morning. But while I'm gone, I'm hoping to keep post albums from time to time. Most or all of the albums will be from two big musical projects, one by Fabio from Rio, and the other by Mike Solof. I've gotten them ready in a kind of assembly line fashion, and they take little extra work for me. That's the plan anyway.

So you already know the Fabio project: Covered albums for Neil Young. This Mike Solof project attempts to collect all the songs Dionne Warwick sang that were written by Hal David and/or Burt Bacharach. The vast majority were written by both, until the last couple of albums.

A couple of weeks ago, Mike came to me with the idea for this collection. I was delighted, because I already made a bunch of "Covered" albums for the Burt Bacharach and Hal David songwriting team. But when I did that, I deliberately avoided including any Warwick versions, because otherwise those albums would have probably been more than half her versions. So this collection perfectly complements that one. So a big thanks from me to Mike for making these albums. I did the cover art and some other minor things, but he was the one who collected all the songs.

Mike managed to find enough music for seven albums, plus a bonus album we'll explain later. If you want to know more, check out Mike's PDF included in the download zip. In fact, it's the same PDF for all the albums in this series.  

By the way, note that the song numbering begins with 001, 002, 003, etc... That's because Mike wanted the numbering from the end of one album to continue with the beginning of the next one. That way, you can put all the songs in one mega-album if you want. Since there's over a 100 songs, we have the extra zero at the same of each number. 

This album is 54 minutes long. 

001 Don't Make Me Over (Dionne Warwick)
002 I Smiled Yesterday (Dionne Warwick)
003 Wishin' and Hopin' (Dionne Warwick)
004 I Cry Alone (Dionne Warwick)
005 Make the Music Play (Dionne Warwick)
006 It's Love that Really Counts (Dionne Warwick)
007 The Love of a Boy (Dionne Warwick)
008 This Empty Place (Dionne Warwick)
009 A House Is Not a Home (Dionne Warwick)
010 Land of Make Believe (Dionne Warwick)
011 The Last One to Be Loved (Dionne Warwick)
012 Reach Out for Me (Dionne Warwick)
013 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Dionne Warwick)
014 Any Old Time of Day [Alternate Version] (Dionne Warwick)
015 I Could Make You Mine (Dionne Warwick)
016 Please Make Him Love Me (Dionne Warwick)
017 Walk On By (Dionne Warwick)
018 You'll Never Get to Heaven [If You Break My Heart] (Dionne Warwick)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/75y7xMfQ

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/5blQU4ahwkF5DEG/file

The cover image shows, from right to left: Hal David, Dionne Warwick, and Burt Bacharach. I don't know the details, but it's from some time in the 1960s. The original was in black and white, and very poor quality. I got it in somewhat decent shape colorizing it with the Kolorize program, then cleaning it up and adding detail with the Krea AI program.

Since some people didn't like the transformation I made of this image, here's the totally unchanged black and white version, in case you want to use that instead. As you can see, the AI program made some changes as I tried to improve the quality. I wasn't happy with those, but I preferred the end result over the rough original. If anyone can do better, please do, and post it here.

Various Artists - A Tribute to Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 6-29-2000

Unfortunately, I'm all done posting Gershwin Prize and MusiCares tribute concerts, at least until more of them become publicly available. But there are other similar tribute concerts out there. This one is so similar in format that it's basically the same as the other two kinds of concerts. This concert honors the songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. 

In fact, there was a Gershwin Prize concert in 2012 honoring these two songwriters. But I'd argue this one is superior. For one thing, its twice as long. But also, it has more big name stars, especially Dionne Warwick, who is widely considered the top singer of Bacharach-David songs.

I'm not sure of the exact reason for this concert, be it an anniversary or something like that. But I suppose it doesn't matter much. But I do know the profits from the concert went to support the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy non-profit. And it was broadcast on TV at the time, and later released on DVD. That's how I have it here in excellent sound quality, since it's never been released on any audio format.

By the way, I know Hal David was there, because of photos of him there, including the cover photo I selected. But there's no sign of him on this recording. I suspect he gave a speech near the end of the concert, just like Burt Bacharach did, but his speech got edited out of the TV show (and thus the DVD) since Bacharach is the much more famous one out of the two. 

This album is an hour and 42 minutes long. 

01 talk (emcee)
02 Wives and Lovers (Kenny Lynch)
03 talk (emcee)
04 One Less Bell to Answer (Lucie Silvas)
05 talk (emcee)
06 Don't Make Me Over (Lynden David Hall)
07 talk (emcee)
08 Reach Out for Me (Brian Kennedy)
09 talk (emcee)
10 Do You Know the Way to San Jose (Yazz)
11 talk (emcee)
12 You'll Never Get to Heaven (Shola Ama)
13 talk (emcee)
14 Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head (Sacha Distel)
15 talk (emcee)
16 This Guy's in Love with You (Paul Carrack)
17 talk (emcee)
18 A House Is Not a Home (Petula Clark)
19 Wishin' and Hopin' (Petula Clark)
20 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Petula Clark)
21 talk (emcee)
22 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (Leo Sayer)
23 talk (emcee)
24 Alfie (Sumudu Jayatilaka)
25 talk (emcee)
26 I'll Never Fall in Love Again (Brian Kennedy)
27 talk (emcee)
28 What's New Pussycat (Brian Conley)
29 Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa (Brian Conley)
30 talk (emcee)
31 I Just Have to Breathe (Teish O'Day)
32 talk (emcee)
33 Make It Easy on Yourself (Edwin Starr)
34 talk (emcee)
35 The Look of Love (Linda Lewis)
36 talk (emcee)
37 Elvis Costello (talk)
38 I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself (Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach)
39 talk (emcee)
40 Walk on By (Dionne Warwick with Burt Bacharach)
41 I Say a Little Prayer (Dionne Warwick with Burt Bacharach)
42 Do You Know the Way to San Jose (Dionne Warwick with Burt Bacharach)
43 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Dionne Warwick with Burt Bacharach)
44 What the World Needs Now Is Love (Dionne Warwick & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6Ec9rngv

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/mrGkAfgvmiFeA5M/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. That's Bacharach on the left and David, wearing glasses, on the right.

Various Artists - Gershwin Prize for Popular Song Honoring Burt Bacharach & Hal David, White House, Washington, DC, 5-9-2012

I'm particularly psyched to post this album, because all the Gershwin Prize tribute concerts are nice, but most are very hard to find, and I want to post them all. Another tough one has been conquered. This one is a tribute to the great songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

By the way, with this one, I've posted ten of the Gershwin Prize concerts. That leaves four that I'm still missing. These four. If anyone has any of them, please let me know!: 

2013 Carole King
2016 Smokey Robinson
2017 Tony Bennett
2019 Gloria & Emilio Estefan 

The timing of this concert was fortuitous, because it turned out Hal David died only a few months later, in September 2012, at the ripe old age of 91. He was too ill to attend the concert, and had his wife Eunice David accept the award on his behalf. But at least he lived long enough to know that he and his songwriting partner won this prestigious award. Bacharach died in 2023 at the age of 94. As an aside, I've included them in the "Covered" songwriter series, with five albums of their music.

This one was a real challenge to put together, which is why I said up above I feel like I "conquered" it. At first, it seemed easy, and I found a download for it at a popular bootleg sharing site. But while that got me the first two thirds, the file for the last third was corrupted. I asked if anyone could fix it, and waited a couple of months, but nobody ever helped. So then I found a list of all the songs performed and went to find the missing ones on YouTube. After much digging, I found them all, including the speeches at the end. This was a lucky break, because YouTube didn't have some of the songs from earlier in concert. 

All's well that ends well. Everything should be here, and in excellent sound quality. I only cut out a couple of unimportant bits, such as a track at the start where the emcee named all the music acts that would perform in the concert.

This follows the usual pattern of various stars performing covers of songs by the prize winners, then an acceptance speech, then the prize winners performing a song or two. One surprise was that comedian and director Mike Myers performed. But instead of doing a comedy routine, he sang a song. He didn't embarrass himself, and he said some comments showing that he was huge Bacharach-David fan.

This album is 53 minutes long. 

01 talk (emcee)
02 I'll Never Fall In Love Again (Sheryl Crow & Lyle Lovett)
03 talk (Stevie Wonder)
04 Make It Easy on Yourself (Stevie Wonder with Arturo Sandoval)
05 talk (emcee)
06 talk (Diana Krall)
07 The Look of Love (Diana Krall)
08 talk (emcee)
09 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Shelea & Arturo Sandoval)
10 talk (emcee)
11 What's New Pussycat (Mike Myers)
12 talk (Mike Myers)
13 talk (emcee)
14 A House Is Not a Home (Rumer)
15 talk (emcee)
16 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (Lyle Lovett)
17 talk (emcee)
18 Walk on By (Sheryl Crow)
19 talk (emcee)
20 talk (Michael Feinstein)
21 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Michael Feinstein)
22 talk (emcee)
23 Alfie (Stevie Wonder)
24 talk (Stevie Wonder)
25 talk (Barack Obama)
26 talk (Eunice David)
27 talk (Burt Bacharach)
28 What The World Needs Now Is Love (Burt Bacharach & Everybody)
29 talk (Barak Obama)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rHCqVPqb

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/MaAmDxJqb4273cL/file

The cover photo of President Obama giving the award to Bacharach is from this exact concert. 

Ronald Isley with Burt Bacharach - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 11-2003

Here's another episode of that great TV show, "PBS Soundstage." This time, it stars Ronald Isley, who sings exclusively from the catalog of classic songs written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. He's assisted by Bacharach playing piano on all the songs, though Bacharach doesn't sing, or talk much.

Ronald Isley is the long-time lead singer of the American R&B group the Isley Brothers. He founded the group in 1957 with two of his brothers. The Isley Brothers had hits from the 1950s to the 2000s, and they are still going as I write this in 2025. Ronald Isley didn't release a solo album until 2003, called "Here I Am: Ron Isley Meets Burt Bacharach." No doubt he put it out as a solo album because it was so different from the usual R&B danceable, funky style of the Isley Brothers. It turns out there was an ballad crooner inside Ronald Isley waiting to get out.

Not only was this concert part of the tour to support that 2003 album mentioned above, apparently it was the very first concert of the tour, so these were all performed live by Isley for the first time. Generally speaking, all of the songs are classics from the 1960s and 1970s, most of them associated with Dionne Warwick. However, the first version of "Love's [Still] The Answer" was from just a year earlier.

I don't believe this has even been shared as an audio bootleg before. I found a video of the episode and converted it to mp3s. However, the sound quality is still excellent.

This unreleased album is 54 minutes long.

01 talk (Ronald Isley & Burt Bacharach)
02 The Look of Love (Ronald Isley & Burt Bacharach)
03 This Guy's in Love with You (Ronald Isley & Burt Bacharach)
04 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Ronald Isley & Burt Bacharach)
05 Love's [Still] The Answer (Ronald Isley & Burt Bacharach)
06 Here I Am (Ronald Isley & Burt Bacharach)
07 talk (Ronald Isley & Burt Bacharach)
08 Windows of the World (Ronald Isley & Burt Bacharach)
09 Alfie (Ronald Isley & Burt Bacharach)
10 In Between the Heartaches (Ronald Isley & Burt Bacharach)
11 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Ronald Isley & Burt Bacharach)
12 Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head (Ronald Isley & Burt Bacharach)
13 talk (Ronald Isley & Burt Bacharach)
14 A House Is Not a Home (Ronald Isley & Burt Bacharach)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rZ1TTXsa

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/TknRRIFjVuk7Udj/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from a YouTube video of this exact concert. I used the Krea AI program to improve the image quality.

Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach - The Rainbow Room, New York City, 12-31-1996

Songwriter Burt Bacharach died in February 2023. He was 94 years old. Because he was such a musical giant, along with his songwriting partner Hal David, I wanted to post something from him in tribute. But there are virtually no Bacharach related bootlegs, and I had already posted seven albums of his songs in my Covered series. But finally, a couple of months later, I came up with something that serves as a good tribute, so here it is.

The person best known for singing Bacharach's songs is Dionne Warwick. The two of them occasionally went on tour together, and this concert is from one such tour. I found this because it was released on DVD as "Live from the Rainbow Room." But it seems to be a pretty obscure release, and it was never put out as an album.

Bacharach was a great songwriter, but although he put out many albums under his own name, his vocal abilities were limited. (Most of his solo stuff was instrumental.) He does sing a bit here, but, wisely, the vast majority of the lead vocals were done by Warwick. There are lots of songs here co-written by Bacharach and then made into hits by Warwick, plus a couple that were hits by others ("[They Long to Be] Close to You," "One Less Bell to Answer," and "What the World Needs Now Is Love"). But there are even more hits that they didn't get to. I could be wrong, but I think the only song here Bacharach didn't have a hand in writing is "(Theme From) Valley of the Dolls."

This concert recording is rather strange in two respects. The first is that the vast majority of songs were done in truncated versions in medleys. I guess they really wanted to cram in as many songs are possible in a limited time. It's possible that the actual concert was different but things were edited down for the DVD release. The other strange thing is that there are some voice-overs by Warwick or Bacharach, where they talk about the song during instrumental sections. One can find the video of this concert on YouTube, and it's clear from that that much of the talking didn't take place during the concert. It's not a terrible thing, but I thought I'd point that out.

This concert is 56 minutes long.

01 talk (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
02 Don't Make Me Over - Walk on By (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
03 I Say a Little Prayer - Do You Know the Way to San Jose (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
04 talk (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
05 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
06 I'll Never Fall in Love Again (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
07 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
08 One Less Bell to Answer (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
09 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
10 talk (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
11 Make It Easy on Yourself (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
12 I'll Never Love This Way Again (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
13 talk (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
14 Here I Am - The April Fools (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
15 Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
16 Arthur's Theme [The Best That You Can Do] - What's New Pussycat (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
17 [Theme From] Valley of the Dolls (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
18 The Look of Love (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
19 A House Is Not a Home (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
20 What the World Needs Now Is Love (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
21 Alfie (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
22 talk (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
23 That's What Friends Are For (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15192198/DionneW_1996_RainbwRoomNYC__12-31-1996_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London in June 2000.

Tom Jones - This Is Tom Jones, Volume 5 (1970)

I haven't posted much since getting back from vacation, been busy, but I hope to post a bunch in the next few days to make up for it. First up is some more Tom Jones. This is the fifth out of six volumes of his performances from his TV show, "This Is Tom Jones."

As with the other volumes, this has a lot of duets on it. In fact, ten out of the 14 songs are duets. And also like those others, he sings and plays with some of the biggest stars in music at this time. The duets here are with: Leslie Uggams, Ray Charles, Smokey Robinson, Burt Bacharach, Aretha Franklin, Jerry Reed, and the Supremes. I must admit I'd never heard of Uggams before, but it's ridiculous that he had so many duets with those other big stars. And consider that this is only from one portion of one season of his show, and I was only able to find some of the duets done during that time.

The duets with Aretha Franklin are particularly significant, in my opinion. They did four songs together, for almost 10 minutes of music. I doubt Franklin ever dueted with anyone as much as she did with Jones on this TV appearance. And while the Ray Charles duet is technically only one track, it's a medley of three songs that lasts seven minutes.

As with the other albums in this series, this is sourced from DVDs and YouTube videos. The DVD tracks sound better, not surprisingly, but it all had to meet my usual sound quality standards.

Even if you're not much of a Tom Jones fan, there's a lot to like here. Yeah, there are a few cheesy show-biz tunes. But there also are plenty of duets with some all-time greats, generally doing classic songs.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Somewhere (Tom Jones & Leslie Uggams)
02 Venus (Tom Jones)
03 If I Ruled the World (Tom Jones)
04 That Thing Called Love - Understanding - Bright Lights (Tom Jones & Ray Charles)
05 I Heard it Through the Grapevine (Tom Jones & Smokey Robinson)
06 What the World Needs Now (Tom Jones with Burt Bacharach)
07 Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head (Tom Jones & Burt Bacharach)
08 It's Not Unusual - See Saw (Tom Jones & Aretha Franklin)
09 Spirit in the Dark (Tom Jones & Aretha Franklin)
10 The Party's Over (Tom Jones & Aretha Franklin)
11 Funky Chicken (Tom Jones)
12 Guitar Man (Tom Jones & Jerry Reed)
13 River Deep, Mountain High (Tom Jones & Supremes)
14 Try a Little Tenderness (Tom Jones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700848/TOMJNS1970_ThisIsTmJnsVolum5_atse.zip.html

As with the other albums in this series, I figured it would be more interesting to show a photo of Jones from one of his duets on the cover rather than him alone. So I chose him singing with Aretha Franklin from the performance featured here.

Various Artists - Covered: Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Volume 5: 1981-2016

This is the last of five albums containing the best songs of Burt Bacharach and/or Hal David.

This one is very different from all the others. For starters, the Bacharach-David songwriting collaboration was effectively over. (They did write a couple of songs together in these later years, but none of them were hits and I didn't judge any of them good enough for inclusion.)

David was seven years older than Bacharach, and it seems he more or less retired from songwriting a lot earlier than Bacharach did. I believe only one new song here was co-written by David, without Bacharach. That's "To All the Girls I've Loved Before." This was a huge hit by Willie Nelson & Julio Iglesias in 1984. But in fact it was first done by Albert Hammond in 1975. That's another sign that David stopped being a songwriting force in the 1970s.

However, Bacharach had a career revival in the 1980s, and he's had some minor revivals since. (He's still alive at 91 years old as I write this. David died in 2012, also at 91 years old.) Bacharach found a new songwriting partner with lyricist Carole Bayer Sager, and had a few hits in the 1980s, but some of them were massive hits. For instance, "That's What Friends Are For" was the best selling song in 1986.

Unfortunately, Bacharach had hits in the "adult contemporary" and/or soul genres, and I have big issues with those genres after about 1980. I feel good songs were often ruined by too much use of synthesizers, drum machines, strings, and so on. The singing has been even worse. Whitney Houston and others became superstars in the 1980s with a showy style that I consider "oversinging."

So I've had to tread very carefully with this album to find cover versions that I actually enjoyed listening to. I've made some very unusual choices. For instance, I haven't included the big hit version of "That's What Friends Are For." Instead, I've gone for an acoustic version done decades later by a relatively obscure Dutch singer. I've used that same Dutch singer (Trijntje Oosterhuis) doing an acoustic version for another big hit, "On My Own," that I can't stand in its original version by Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald.

I've chosen to include the Naked Eyes 1982 version of "There's Always Something There to Remind Me" even though I included a different version on an earlier album in this series. That's because this is a drastically different arrangement, and I happen to like it a lot. It's the only song in this series that I've included twice.

A few of the other songs here were actually Bacharach-David hits back in the 1960s, except that the cover versions I liked best weren't recorded until this era. Those songs are: "In Between the Heartaches," "Paper Mache," and "Here I Am."

Bacharach had another popular revival from 1996 to 1998, when he found Elvis Costello as a new songwriting partner. They wrote the song "God Give Me Strength" together for a movie. They were so happy with that that they did an entire album together in 1998. "Toledo," This House Is Empty Now," and "Painted from Memory" were originally done for that album, though this version of "Painted from Memory" is from a different album.

In conclusion, if you enjoy the musical style of Bacharach-David's songs in the 1960s and are not a fan of production techniques for radio hits from the 1980s onwards, this album is for you. Bacharach especially did write a lot of great songs in his later years. It's just that most of them were ruined by bad production and performances. Hopefully, I managed to find enough gems so that this album is as strong as the others in this series.

01 Arthur's Theme [Best That You Can Do] (Christopher Cross)
02 In Between the Heartaches (Phyllis Hyman)
03 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (Naked Eyes)
04 To All the Girls I've Loved Before (Willie Nelson & Julio Iglesias)
05 God Give Me Strength (Kristen Vigard)
06 Toledo (Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach)
07 This House Is Empty Now (Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach)
08 Painted from Memory (Bill Frisell & Elvis Costello with Cassandra Wilson)
09 Paper Mache (Rita Calypso)
10 That's What Friends Are For (Trijntje Oosterhuis)
11 Here I Am (Kat Gang)
12 On My Own (Trijntje Oosterhuis)
13 The Last One to Be Loved (Rumer)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17175732/COVRDBACHDAVD1981-2016Vlum5_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/aFqiDtEc

I had a heck of a time finding any good color photos of Bacharach and David together when they were young, but there are tons of those when they were old, mostly from awards shows and tributes. Here's one from 2000.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Volume 4: 1969-1975

I'm going to go ahead and post the rest of my series on the best songs of Burt Bacharach and/or Hal David today. So here's the fourth out of five albums.

In the time period at the start of this album, the Bacharach-David songwriting partnership was still going strong. Dionne Warwick was still their main vehicle for getting hits. Note that, as with the other albums in this series, I'm avoiding including Warwick versions of these songs on the assumption that fans of this type of music have those already. I did include two songs done by Warwick though, "The Green Grass Starts to Grow" and "Plastic City," because I couldn't find any other versions.

However, the glory days were coming to an end. Bacharach and David had a falling out with Warwick around 1971, though I don't know the reasons for it. Then Bacharach and David had a falling out with each other around 1973, when a musical score they worked on, "Lost Horizon," was a critical and commercial failure. They wrote a couple of songs together many years later, but none of those were good enough to be included.

Around this same time, the two of them seemed to lose their musical mojo. For the rest of the 1970s, both of them had very few successes, and their style fell out of fashion. "Plastic City" is a song recorded in 1974 by Warwick during a tentative reunion with Bacharach (but not David). However, the song (and two other Bacharach tunes she recorded that year) weren't released until decades later. "99 Miles from L.A." was co-written by David without Bacharach, and was a minor hit for Albert Hammond in 1975. After that, my next album in this series begins in 1981, which shows was a dry spell they had.

Clearly, the two of them did better when working together. Happily, the vast majority of this music still covers the last of their glory years as a songwriting team.

01 I'll Never Fall in Love Again (Bobbie Gentry)
02 Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head (B. J. Thomas)
03 We Have All the Time in the World (Louis Armstrong)
04 Walk On By (Isaac Hayes)
05 In the Land of Make Believe (Dusty Springfield)
06 One Less Bell to Answer (5th Dimension)
07 The April Fools (Cilla Black)
08 Odds and Ends (Johnny Mathis)
09 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Carpenters)
10 The Green Grass Starts to Grow (Dionne Warwick)
11 A House Is Not a Home (Dusty Springfield & Burt Bacharach)
12 Something Big (Mark Lindsay)
13 Send a Little Love My Way (Anne Murray)
14 Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets (Stephanie Mills)
15 You'll Never Get To Heaven [If You Break My Heart] (Stylistics)
16 Plastic City (Dionne Warwick)
17 99 Miles from L.A. (Albert Hammond)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17175736/COVRDBACHDAVD1969-1975Vlum4_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ggUUAMD1

Yeay! Finally, I'm able to show a real, undoctored color photo of Bacharach and David together. The photo for the cover art is from the 1969 Academy Awards ceremony.

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.upload.ee/files/17301669/COVRDBACHDAVD1965-1968Volum3_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/mTqQnaq6

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.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.  Hopefully the problems mentioned above have gone away.

Various Artists - Covered: Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Volume 2: 1963-1965

Here's the second of five albums of the best songs from Burt Bacharach and/or Hal David. Hopefully, I don't need to explain how many great songs came from their minds.

Note that, like all the albums in this series, I've tried hard to avoid including any cover versions by Dionne Warwick. It's not that I don't like her covers. In fact, it's the opposite. She had so many hits written by them that her 1960s greatest hits albums are like Bacharach-David greatest hits as well. I'm assuming any fan of this type of music already has those. It's more interesting to me to see what other artists did with their songs.

The collaboration between Warwick on one hand and Bacharach and David on the other really got going in 1963, and lasted for the rest of the 1960s. For the first album I posted, there was only one song that was a big hit for Warwick ("Don't Make Me Over"). But for this album, there's a bunch. That means I had to often try to find non-hit versions, although some songs were so good and popular that multiple people had hits with them. By the way, I think only five songs on this album weren't covered by Warwick.

01 Let the Music Play (Drifters)
02 Blue on Blue (Bobby Vinton)
03 I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself (Dusty Springfield)
04 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (Sandie Shaw)
05 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Cilla Black)
06 Wishin' and Hopin' (Dusty Springfield)
07 Wives and Lovers (Nancy Wilson)
08 A House Is Not a Home (Brook Benton)
09 Saturday Sunshine (Petula Clark)
10 Long After Tonight Is All Over (Jimmy Radcliffe)
11 Message to Martha [Kentucky Bluebird] (Lou Johnson)
12 This Empty Place (Searchers)
13 What the World Needs Now Is Love (Jackie DeShannon)
14 Make It Easy on Yourself (Walker Brothers)
15 Trains and Boats and Planes (Anita Harris)
16 A Lifetime of Loneliness (Jackie DeShannon)
17 Reach Out for Me (Nancy Wilson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17301672/COVRDBACHDAVD1963-1965Volum2_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1WAeBAMd

As I mentioned with the first album in this series, it's easy to find photos of Bacharach by himself, but very hard to find one of him with the publicity-shy David. The photo I've chosen for this album cover seems to be the most popular photo of the two of them together when they were young. I'm not sure what year it's from, but I'm guessing its from before 1969, judging by David's receding hairline compared to other photos.

Note that I cheated a bit with this photo: I moved Bacharach and David closer together so that I could have both of them appear larger. In the actual photo, there's basically no visual overlap of their upper bodies. Also, months after the fact, I found out a way to easily colorize the photo, so I did.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Volume 1: 1957-1963

Here's a big project. Continuing my "Covered" series, this is the first of five albums dealing with songs written by Burt Bacharach and/or Hal David.

I'd like to think that Burt Bacharach is a household name. If he isn't anymore, he should be. If you don't know him, you must know many of his songs. Hal David is much less known, because he avoided publicity while Bacharach has been a public performer and a hobnobbing celebrity. But, generally speaking, Bacharach created the melodies and David wrote the lyrics. Together, they were one of the greatest songwriting teams of all time.

As usual with this series, I don't want to go into great detail about their life stories. Instead, here are their Wikipedia pages if you want to know more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Bacharach

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_David

I feel obliged to say some more, to make clear who wrote what. David was seven years older than Bacharach, and got started with songwriting much earlier. He began writing songs professionally in the early 1940s. I only listened to a few of those early efforts, and I didn't judge any of them worthy of inclusion. He didn't really get on a winning streak until he met up with Bacharach in 1957 and they began collaborating.

Thus, most of the songs on this album were co-written by the two of them. But not all, because sometimes they would collaborate with others. For instance, "Sea of Heartbreak," Broken-Hearted Melody" and "Johnny Get Angry" were all written by David with someone other than Bacharach.

There's a very important point I want to make clear: for all five albums in this series, I have not included any songs performed by Dionne Warwick, unless I simply couldn't find any other versions of a particular song. The reason for that is because Bacharach-David songs are so closely linked to Warwick that her 1960s greatest hits albums are like 90 percent songs by them. She did many albums where virtually every song was written by them. I figure that anyone who is even remotely a fan of Bacharach-David songs has a Warwick's greatest hits at the very least, so I wanted to try something different here and see how their music fared with other singers. (If you don't have that, then please get one now! She really was the best singer for their style of music.)

Generally speaking, I've tried to include the hit versions, unless I deem those not very good. Bacharach and/or David were such successful songwriters that almost all the songs here were hits.

That said, I didn't include all their hits. Sometimes, they could get dangerously close to "easy listening" or Muzak-styled music. I generally don't like that kind of music, and I make these albums mainly for my own listening enjoyment, so if there was something I didn't like, I didn't include it. One example for the time period of this album is "American Beauty Rose," a song co-written by David that was a hit for Frank Sinatra in 1961. It just seemed generic for that kind of music, and not worthy of making the cut.

Each album in this series is about 45 to 50 minutes long.

01 The Story of My Life (Michael Holliday)
02 Magic Moments (Perry Como)
03 Broken-Hearted Melody (Sarah Vaughan)
04 Mexican Divorce (Drifters)
05 Sea of Heartbreak (Don Gibson)
06 I Wake Up Crying (Chuck Jackson)
07 Baby, It's You (Shirelles)
08 Tower of Strength (Gene McDaniels)
09 Please Stay (Drifters)
10 [The Man Who Shot] Liberty Valance (Gene Pitney)
11 Only Love Can Break a Heart (Gene Pitney)
12 It's Love that Really Counts [In the Long Run] (Shirelles)
13 Any Day Now [My Wild Beautiful Bird] (Chuck Jackson)
14 Johnny Get Angry (Joanie Sommers)
16 Blue Guitar (Richard Chamberlain)
18 Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa (Gene Pitney)
19 Don't Make Me Over (Dee Dee Sharp)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17175671/COVRDBACHDAVD1957-1963Vlum1_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/X1EysT49

Photographs of Bacharach are easy to find, because he was a prominent public figure. But photos of Bacharach and David are very hard to find, because David was so low profile. I don't know when or where this photo is from, but I think it's from the early 1960s, judging by the way David's hairline receded over the years. David is standing and Bacharach is sitting at a piano.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.