Junk Box Jury

“Knowing When To Leave” taken from the album “Make it Easy On Yourself on (A&M AMLS 938) 1970

Burt Bacharach | The Unique Sound of a Musical Genius | Suddenly and splendidly there’s a whole new generation of song-makers at work among us, writing the musical accompaniment to our lives. And in this new generation Burt Bacharach seems to me to he unique — unique because his melodic style is so distinctly and unmistakably his.

He has a way of doing unconventional things with time, with the length of a phrase, with chord patterns and the logic by which one note follows another. What he is after is not just “differentness” but fresh emotion, caught in rhythms which are like the pulsings of life. The result is that a Bacharach song is not faintly reminiscent of ten or a dozen other songs. It has a rightness all its own, and power and intensity.

Burt Bacharach | The Unique Sound of a Musical Genius

Burt’s very special voice— honest, unhackneyed, direct, intense and loving, with a kind of underlying urgency even in moments of gaiety — seems remarkably right and characteristic of our time. Since Burt recorded his first A&M album “Reach Out,” nearly two years ago, he and his lyricist-partner Hal David have written the smash Broadway hit, “Promises, Promises.”

Five numbers from that great score are included here, along with two brand-new songs, “Pacific Coast Highway” and “She’s Gone Away” and four Bacharach standards.

There are voices here, including the Bacharach singers and the master’s own rumpled and earnest baritone on “Make It Easy On Yourself.”

But Burt the arranger has seen to it that this outing is primarily instrumental, the better to showcase Burt the melodist, and incidentally Burt plays piano. And the arrangements are as fresh and unhackneyed as the melodies, turning to such unexpected sound-sources as the ocarina, twin flugelhorns, marimba, organ and baroque toy trumpet to beguile the ear.

He even proves that the oboe is a wind that somebody can blow good. The pleasing and characteristic musical intelligence of Burt Bacharach is doubly at work here. — CHARLES CHAMPLIN, Los Angeles Times

Any questions and feedback about the material posted on my website let me know by using the contact form provided.

cost of record: £1.50
from: charity shop