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Section: Music
Various Artists:
Blue Note Plays Burt Bacharach
By Ron Ehmke
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Various Artists:
Blue Note Plays Burt Bacharach
Blue Note Records
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We should all be blessed with careers as varied as Burt Bacharach’s: Hollywood hack in the 1950s, top of the pops in the mid-1960s, cultural icon by the early 1970s, followed by a couple of decades of low-profile prosperity, only to reemerge as the embodiment of retro hipster cool for a whole new generation in the late 1990s. Then again, we might all be better off if we had the talent to craft even one tune as indelible as any of his classics, much less the 56(!) of them that hit the Top 40 throughout the second half of the last century.
The very titles of Bacharach’s collaborations with lyricist Hal David are enough to fill your head with music: “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” “Walk On By,” “Trains and Boats and Planes,” “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “Promises, Promises,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again”… And those are just the best-known of their seven-year string of compositions for Dionne Warwick; never mind “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” for B. J. Thomas, “The Look of Love” for Dusty Springfield, or “One Less Bell to Answer” for the Fifth Dimension. The list truly does go on and on.
The term pop music carries a negative connotation in this era of pre-fab boy bands and lip-synching girl singers, but there was a time when Bacharach’s irresistible yet musically complex melodies and arrangements were the embodiment of adult sophistication. Hal David’s lyrics might have employed simple language, but they often expressed deep, dark subjects—loneliness, abandonment, adultery—just beneath the surface of suburban happiness.
Those qualities (as well as the familiarity and chart success of the originals) made their songs appealing to jazz musicians throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. Vocalists like Lou Rawls, supper-club acts like Grant Green, and funk guitarists like Earl Klugh all took a shot at Bacharach’s material, and a new compilation on the legendary Blue Note label collects some of the results.
Blue Note Plays Burt Bacharach arrives in stores alongside companion tributes to the Beatles and Stevie Wonder, and cynics are probably correct to assume this is a quick and easy way for the label to dip into its vast back catalog for some extra bucks. Even so, the album is surprisingly consistent in a casual, low-expectations way. Think of it as primo atmosphere for your swinging bachelor pad (even if you’ve got a wife and two or three grown kids), or the perfect accompaniment to your next cocktail party. Press “play” on the Three Sounds’ snappy version of “The Look of Love” and you can practically hear the ice cubes landing in the highball glass.
There are moments when BNPBB rises above mere background music, however. Two of these come courtesy of Nancy Wilson, who delivers a poignant “Alfie” from 1967 and a swinging “Wives and Lovers” from 1964. They’re enough to make you long for an all-Bacharach album from the soulful singer. Then there’s Stanley Jordan’s stunning solo-guitar version of “One Less Bell to Answer,” which would sound right at home on John Zorn’s far more left-field Bacharach tribute album from 1997, part of his “Great Jewish Music” series of avant-garde reworkings of pop tunes. (Of the dozen tracks on BNPBB, only Jordan’s “Bell”and Lou Rawls’ “Any Day Now” were recorded after Bacharach’s mid-seventies decline.)
Jordan is one of the few performers on the Blue Note disc to improvise and thus veer significantly from the better-known pop hit he’s covering. That’s probably because, as critic and music historian James Gavin points out in his liner notes, Bacharach’s songs are so densely constructed, and his arrangements such a part of their overall sound, that they “brought out the melodic side in some very aggressive players [who] play the tunes prettily in their original tempos, adding some ornamentation and trying to work up a swinging groove.”
And that’s pretty much what you get here: slightly tweaked versions of songs you definitely know and probably love. Sometimes the twists are appealing, as when Stanley Turrentine brings out the melancholy inherent in “Walk On By.” Then again, Turrentine is also responsible for pushing “What the World Needs Now” into the realm of pure schmaltz.
If you’re after a reliable collection of Bacharach/David standards—and no home should be without one—shell out for the star-studded, hit-packed 1998 Rhino boxed set The Look of Love. It’s worth every penny. Only after you’ve fully savored its 73 gems (and occasional but instructive clunkers) should you progress to the Blue Note effort, though you may end up wondering if it’s possible to improve on perfection. Me, I’ll take Warwick’s way to “San Jose” over organist Richard “Groove” Holmes’ take any day, but I don’t mind the detour.
RON EHMKE is the Associate Editor of Buffalo Spree and a performer who can next be seen in “The Real Dream Cabaret” at Rust Belt Books in October.
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