Four CD collection following the songwriting beginnings of Burt Bacharach. Featuring vintage Bacharach interpreted by Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Tony Bennett, Frankie Avalon, Gene Pitney, Andy Williams and many more. Including a CD of Bacharach’s Influences and Inspirations.
Burt Bacharach revolutionised popular songwriting, employing a previously unimagined technical sophistication that would find full expression in the 1960s, when with an astonishing run of memorable hits, he and his lyricist partner Hal David ruled the pop charts.
Inspired by his love of the French Impressionist composers, Brazilian folk music, Bebop and modernist jazz, Bacharach won the respect of everyone from Brian Wilson to Bill Evans, to Frank Zappa, but his early years had been ones of struggle and frustrating compromise. This collection reveals an eclectic apprenticeship (a dizzying world of Frankie Avalonesque US teen idols, male and female soul singers, doo-wop and close harmony groups, B movie theme tunes, torch singers, crooners and novelty records) that culminated in the landmark first hits; ‘Magic Moments’, ‘The Story of My Life’, ‘Make It Easy on Yourself’, ‘Baby It's You’, ‘I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself’ and (with the emergence of Bacharach & David's greatest interpreter Dionne Warwick) ‘Don't Make Me Over’.