Less Common Burt, Part 1: 1952-1968

By request, some (actually, a lot of) less common Burt Bacharach recordings.  I almost typed "Bacharach numbers," but a small number of these are, in fact, little-heard versions of well-known titles.  Familiar titles, renditions you likely never heard.  I'm the man for that kind of thing, if I don't say so myself, he said.

I've included (toward the end of the list) what is, to the best of my knowledge, the first recording of a Burt song--Once in a Blue Moon, as expertly performed on piano by the brilliant Nat "King" Cole in 1952.  I ripped it from my scratched up copy of Cole's Penthouse Serenade EP, and VinylStudio did an extraordinarily good job on the surface noise--I only had to manually remove two or three pops on MAGIX.  VinylStudio is an amazing program whose makers should really consider fixing up--its bugs are a total pain, and an export problem I alerted them to a year ago remains unfixed.  What's up with that?  (Expression of annoyance.)  Oh, if Blue Moon sounds familiar, it's because it's from Rubinstein's Melody in F.

These numbers date from both before and during Burt's household-name period.  It's actually difficult to say exactly when that period started, because Burt and Hal's hugely successful Magic Moments dates all the way back to 1957 (and, therefore, me).  But it wasn't until about 1965 that he started his quick climb to super-stardom as a songwriter in the U.S., though the Brits were already nuts about him--hence, all the Burt tracks recorded by Invasion groups like the Beatles, Manfred Mann, and the Searchers.  And I should note these tracks are all from vinyl in my collection, ripped by me--no CD steals.  My quest for early Burt material started around 2000, a time when much of my thrifting was devoted to finding "wrong" versions of Beatles songs--Burt numbers were popping up along with them on LPs by Engelbert Humperdinck and Petula Clark, and Bacharach titles were showing up in various-artist boxes in a big flea market I visited weekly.  I loved what I was hearing, and I'd already had a group of favorite Burts from back in the day, so I had to find more of these, and I did.  I was completely unaware that I was operating slightly ahead of a trend, so I was slightly stunned, in the midst of my Burt-digging, to find an early-Burt discography on line.  I was thrilled and, to a degree, miffed that this information was easily available, because it took the sport out of my hunting.  But so it goes sometimes.  It took none of the fun out of the music.

About three or four years into this blog, I received a request from a Burt associate for a CD of early titles--for Burt himself!  I gladly ripped one, and I got a lot of cool promo CD sets in return.  Because my memory sucks, I can't tell you the year, but I started this blog in 2005, so it had to be circa 2008.

In terms of song quality, these titles run the gamut from why-didn't-it-become-a-hit? to oh-my-God.  In the former category, there's the magnificent That Kind of Woman, taken from the single (to fulfill David Federman's request), Saturday Sunshine (catchy song, great production), Moon Man (beautifully performed, and a lot more sophisticated than the title suggests), Come and Get Me (a minor chart hit but a great tune, and one of the Burt finds that convinced me to go Burt-crazy), Waiting for Charlie to Come Home (originally recorded by Etta James in 1962), Loving Is a Way of Loiving, and Blue Guitar (yes, it's Richard Chamberlain, and it's a bit corny, but it has that Burt brilliance).  (Oops.  Blue Guitar is in the next playlist. Sorry!) The clunkers hit the deck with the force of a falling bookcase, and for worst-of honors. I'm torn between Take Me to Your Ladder and Joanie's Forever, both of which happen to occur on the same single.  Ladder is coming next post, but we get to endure Joanie this time around.  Keep in mind that the same lyricist, Bob Hilliard, gave us I'm Late (from Alice in Wonderland, and recently featured here in its wonderful Alan Dale version) and Any Day Now, which is to say that he was a gifted person, and only human.  (Maybe he was half asleep here, with the deadline looming.)  Actual lyrics from Joanie's Forever: "My Joanie's forever was less than a week.  She loved me on Friday; by Monday, we didn't even speak."  Joanie's "forever."  Get it?  And the flip is, believe it or don't, far worse.

Other duds: Sad Sack sucks, and not just because Jerry Lewis is singing it, but that doesn't help.  And This Is Mine isn't bad, but Connie Stevens' pitch-straying nearly wrecks it.  Someone Else's Sweetheart is pretty throwaway as a tune, and it's sunk by the over the top production.  I guess we got off fairly easy, this time around, on the really bad sides.

And there are the numbers that rate as perfectly okay--the cute Perry Como single You're Following Me, Alan Dale's I Cry More, which I find simultaneously catchy and annoying, The Morning Mail (which misses its mark but doesn't bomb), and the very clever but too derivative Keep Me in Mind.  Keep Me in Mind is the kind of number that has the critic expecting bigger and better (and more original) things from its writers.  And, in the case of Burt and Hal, that expectation would be majorly rewarded.

Rosemary Clooney's version of One Less Bell to Answer had some chart success, though of course the Fifth Dimension's version two years later was a monster hit.  (I will refrain from using the "hit the right buttons" cliche.)  I remember the latter disc being played almost nonstop on AM radio.  Great song, and Clooney is good, though her voice isn't all there.  This was close to the time of her breakdown, I believe.  I have issues with Let Your Love Come Through, despite my love for the song and Shani Wallis' absurdly over-arranged version.  It's one of my favorite Burt singles, but Burt had to have had Day Tripper playing in the back of his head when he wrote the melody--it's just too close to be a coincidence.  Granted, Burt does tricky things with rhythm throughout the song--that's part of its appeal--and Day Tripper is straight 4/4, but the main hook is still way too close to John Lennon's.  A good argument in Burt's defense, besides the fact that unconscious swipes happen all the time (the brain forgets where it heard a given phrase), is that the riff in question is little more than a a V7 arpeggio.  Personally, I never say "plagiarism" (in this case, accidental, I'm sure) over a single phrase--the similarities have to continue throughout the song, as in My Sweet Lord, for instance.

Anyway, 24 less common tracks by an uncommonly talented songwriter:




LINK: Less Common Burt, 1952-1968






All with lyrics by Hal David, except where noted

That Kind of Woman--Joe Williams, Orch. cond. by Jimmy Jones (Roulette 4185; 1959)
The Morning Mail--The Gallahads w. Billy Mure's Orch., 1956
I Cry More--Alan Dale w. Orch. and Cho. Dir. by Dick Jacobs, 1956
And This Is Mine--Connie Stevens w. Neal Hefti Orch., 1961
Sad Sack--Jerry Lewis w. Chorus and Orch. Dir. Sonny Burke, 1957
You're Telling Our Secrets--Dee Clark, 1961
One Less Bell to Answer--Rosemary Clooney, Arr. and Cond. by Shorty Rogers, 1968
Saturday Sunshine--Johnny Mathis, Arr. and Cond. by Tony Osborne, 1967
Hot Spell (Burt Bacharach-Mack David)--Ernie Felice w. Dennis Farnon Orch. and Cho., 1958
My Heart Is a Ball of String--The Rangoons, 1961
Keep Me in Mind--Patti Page w. Jack Rael and his Orch., 1955
Moon Man--Gloria Lambert, Orch. Cond. by Richard Maltby, 1959
Come and Get Me--Jackie deShannon, Arr. and Cond. by Burt Bacharch, 1966
Waiting for Charlie to Come Home (Bacharach-Hilliard)--Marlena Shaw, 1967
Cryin', Sobbin', Wailin' (Bacharach-Jonas)--Dane Hunter, Acc. by Les Reed, 1965
Loving Is a Way of Living--Steve Lawrence, Arr. and Cond. by Don Costa, 1959
Out of My Continental Mind (Bacharach-Shaw)--Lena Horne w. Anthony Morelli and his Sands Hotel Orch., 1961
Moon Guitar--The 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett, 1966
Somebody Else's Sweetheart--The Wanderers, Arr. and Cond. by Teacho Wiltshire, 1961
Once in a Blue Moon (Burt Bacharach; based on Rubenstein's Melody in F)--Nat "King" Cole, Piano, 1952
You're Following Me (Bacharach-Hilliard)--Perry Como w. Ray Charles Singers, Mitch Ayres Orch., 1961
Liberty Valance--No artist credited (Top Tunes 2-33)
Let Your Love Come Through--Shani Wallis, Arr. and Cond. by David Whitaker, 1967
Joanie's Forever (Bacharach-Hilliard)--Buddy Clinton, 1960

Lee