Only Lennon-McCartney, Carole King, and a select few others have come close to matching his ability for writing instantly recognizable songs that are still played, sung, and hummed more than seventy years after they were first written.
Burt Bacharach Obituary
One of the final great popular songwriters of the 20th century was Burt Bacharach.
He co-wrote songs with Hal David that went on to become standards in their own right.
Throughout a more than 50-year career, several of them became hits because they were sophisticated, catchy, commercial, and musically intricate.
His tunes survived the rock period; they were never in style but they also were never out of style.
Despite growing up in New York, where his father was a well-known newspaper columnist, Burt Freeman Bacharach was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1928.
When he was a youngster, he became interested in jazz and frequently bluffed his way into various jazz clubs in New York City despite being legally underage.
He pursued music studies in Montreal and California while spending time with composer John Cage, who had a significant impact on him.
The pair appeared to be unstoppable as the 1960s got underway, producing hit after hit for several well-known musicians. The Walker Brothers had a hit with Make It Easy on Yourself, Dusty Springfield had a hit with I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself, and Gene Pitney released 24 Hours From Tulsa.
In the 1980s, Bacharach made a resurgence, teaming up with his third wife, Carole Bayer Sager, to pen successes like the theme song for the movie Arthur.
They later collaborated to write songs for Gladys Knight, Neil Diamond, and Patti Labelle in addition to Making Love for Roberta Flack and That’s What Friends Are For for Dionne Warwick.
Most importantly, his compositions are musically complex and they encouraged complex interpretations from his singers, which is possibly why later generations of songwriters favorably loved him.