Bacharach was 94 years old and in his very long career he had won six Grammys and three Oscars.
Burt Bacharach, the popular Oscar-winning composer of songs such as Say A Little Prayer, Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head and many other hit songs, has died at his home in Los Angeles, a spokesman announced.
Considered 'the king of easy listening' in the 1960s, fans considered his music anything but 'easy' due to his use of complex harmonies, meters, rhythms and melodies, partly inspired by late 19th century symphonic composers and jazz.
Bacharach had composed more than half a thousand songs for a thousand artists in a career that began in the 1957s when, compared to American music greats such as George Gershwin and Cole Porter, he worked with Marlene Dietrich and then formed a professional partnership with lyricist Hal David in XNUMX.
It was when Bacharach and David met Dionne Warwick in 1961 that their talents took flight with 39 of the singer’s hits on the charts written by the pair. Bacharach continued to enjoy success for generations of fans thanks in part to the lounge music revival of the XNUMXs.
In 1997 he recreated a new version of I'll Never Fall in Love Again by ironically playing himself in Mike Myers' Austin Powers.
More recently he had collaborated with stars as diverse as Sheryl Crow, Elvis Costello and Dr Dre, proving that his music had never gone out of style. Bacharach came from the heart of America: born in Kansas City (Missoury) in 1928, he grew up in New York and while still a minor he would sneak into jazz clubs to listen to Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie, while studying the music of Stravinsky and Ravel at conservatories in Montreal, New York and California. After a stint in the army, he made his debut as a piano accompanist for Vic Damone, the Ames Brothers and the first of four wives, Paula Stewart (another was the actress Angie Dickinson).
He had worked with Dietrich as an arranger and had accompanied her on tours of Europe in the late 1950s. The songs he created with David have become all-time classics: among them, I Say a Little Prayer, performed by Aretha Franklin, What's New Pussycat? by Tom Jones, The Look of Love by Dusty Springfield, Make It Easy on Yourself by the Walker Brothers.
B.J. Thomas’s rendition of Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head was included in the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and won a Grammy and an Oscar in 1969, while Bacharach’s music won the statuette for best original score. Warwick’s relationship ended in court after Burt and Hal stopped working together, leaving her without music. “It was a costly and unfortunate dispute”, Bacharach admitted in a 2019 interview with the Guardian.
In 1985 the reconciliation led to the single That's What Friends Are For recorded for the cause of the fight against AIDS.
Article published on 9 February 2023 - 18:10
