The Look Of Love

I was thinking of doing a little something for Valentine's Day and I had the fine idea of searching my archives, looking for "Love"... only I couldn't shake the nagging feeling I'd done something similar before. So I checked.

Okay, that's out, then. Now what?

As it happens, I'd also been pondering the possibilities of posting something to mark the passing of Burt Bacharach. As Simon Reynolds wryly observed in his own tribute to the great man, there's no shortage of musical icons to honor, sadly: "...colossi collapsing left right and centre. One a week at least, and at one point back there it was one a day more or less." I decided a while back I wouldn't attempt to mark the passing of every interesting figure from our collective cultural past. I'd need a whole, separate, balck-edged blog for that. Every now and then, though, there's one that really shouldn't slide by uncomemorated and Burt Bacharach qualifies. 

His music has been as much a part of the weave of my life as the sound of the wind in the eaves and often as haunting. It's the sound of longing and loneliness and existential dread.

Of course, much of that comes from Hal David's lyrics but, as with Elton John and Bernie Taupin, who Mrs. Bhagpuss and I were discussing the other day, one name may as well stand for the other, so closely are they bound. When Hal David passed a decade ago this blog didn't even have a music tag so he's just going to have to share an obituary with Burt. As in life...

I don't suppose every song Bacharach and David wrote was about love but it certainly seemed that way. That's why I had the startlingly unoriginal idea of combining my notes on Bacharach's death with a celebration of St. Valentine. Listening to some of the best-known Bacharach and David numbers this morning, I'm not quite so sure how good a fit it is, after all. It's remarkable how extreme they all are; either love is the world and everything in it or it's loss is the void made manifest. They're songs of obsession and madness as much as love.

The individual elements of the songs are all strong but I beleive the reason they've become so inevitable resides in the astonishing gestalt created between songwriter, lyricist and performer. Have any songwriting teams ever been so blessed by their interpreters as Bacharach and David were by Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield or Karen Carpenter? Well, yes, probably, but it was a rhetorical question.

For this reason, and perhaps unusually, Bacharach's genius is best-represented by the versions of his songs we all already know. It's much harder to discover revelatory new interpretations when you move away from a heartbeat as strong and steady as this. Still, we can but try.

But before we deviate from convention, let's peer behind the curtain to see how the magic was made. This is an absolutely fascinating snapshot of the creative process, Bacharach, David and Dionne Warwick in rehearsal, working on the phrasing and interpretation of Say A  Little Prayer. It looks maybe a little staged - I'm sure they didn't always have a camera crew in the rehearsal studio - but it's revelatory all the same. 

Say A Little Prayer - Dionne Warwick

Wives and Lovers - Cécile McLorin Salvant

From the raw to the cooked, to quote the Fine Young Cannibals, not something I do every lifetime. This a song I've always loved for its loose, loping pace but until today I couldn't have told you what it was called. I think I've only ever heard it on the radio or in snippets on the soundtracks of movies. This version, by Cécile McLorin Salvant, is manicured almost beyond perfection. It wouldn't be my definition of a boombastic jazz style but it has its allure.

 I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself - Marcia Hines

There was a song I wrote, once, where I interpolated the title of this next one into a break between verses. I've always had a fancy for songs that quote other songs. It was back before the days of sampling so when we played it live, which probably only happened two or three times, I had to carry the melody myself. Since, once again, I'd only really ever heard the original coming out of a transistor radio, my phrasing was necessarily approximate. I'd only needed to hear Dusty Springfield sing it the once, though, to realize even a hint would trigger a memory of the sublime in anyone else whrecognized it. It always will. Here, Marcia Hines sings it beautifully, but you can still hear Dusty inbetween the lines.

Walk On By - Isaac Hayes

Isaac Hayes is a force of nature. When he covers a song he rolls it over, guts it, and wears it like a skin. He never sounds like anyone but himself. His take on Walk On By, as it appears on the seminal album Hot Buttered Soul, lasts just over twelve minutes. This sawn-off version from an unidentified TV performance hacks it down to three and a half but still manages to sidestep pretty nearly the entire melody. And yet Burt Bacharach apparently liked it well enough to recommend it in his autobiography, at least if the YouTube comments are to be believed.

Close To You - Frank Ocean

At which point Frank Ocean could be heard to mutter "Hold my beer..."

Me Japanese Boy, I Love You - Pizzicato Five

And finally, as a very special treat for anyone who's stuck with me all the way down to the end of the post, a Bacharach song you most likely never heard of, far less heard, performed by a band we could all do with hearing far more often. In 1964, Bacharach and David somehow came up with a song called "Me Japanese Boy, I Love You", which Bobby Goldsboro took to the dizzy heights of #74 on the Billboard Hot 100. How and more importantly why this happened is a story I'd very much like to hear but the World Wide Web is keeping its counsel. If anyone knows anything, plase do tell.

Having briefly scanned the lyrics, I'd have to say they swerve being outright racist mainly by their sheer, mindblowing naivety. Clearly I'm missing something, though, because Pizzicatto Five deemed it worth the full, straight, reverential performance and they assuredly know what they're about.

And with that, let me wish you all a Happy Valentine's Day until next year, by when I'm sure someone else suitably inspiring will have had the grace to join that great gig in the sky, thereby affording me the opportunity to do this all over again.