Like so many other milestones from the early A&M Records catalog, these records were always a reach away in my pre-digital childhood home — yet rarely were they played. I’ve always put their neglect down to the instant antiquity of ever-changing styles.
An aurally rich respite for those who disliked heavier sounds, Burt Bacharach’s masterfully crafted songs for others, plus small-marvel LPs like these for himself, were hi-fi constants for my parents and their peers in the late ‘60s, along with stacks o’ wax from label co-honcho Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass, plus Brazilian breakthrough star Sérgio Mendes and his yearly outfits. But the soft-pop takeover of the ‘70s, from Bread to Barry Manilow with scores in between, rendered so much of that oft-orchestrated music outmoded kitsch, a mislabeling that stuck for decades.
Hindsight, abetted by Elvis Costello and Austin Powers, has helped even the most hardened ears realize how ruthlessly wrong it was to cast aside these discographies when so much within them was brilliantly conceived and conducted — snazzy sophistication at a level few artists have approached since.
Alpert and his late great partner Jerry Moss, the focus of this series of #TuesdaysWithJerry posts for #VinylTwosDays, were uncommonly savvy, forward-thinking entrepreneurs.
They correctly sensed the record biz, like the film industry, was ripe not only for independent moguls with idiosyncratic visions but also new traditionalists forging their own quiet revolution, counterbalancing the very necessary next phase in rock ‘n’ roll’s radicalization.
No one captured that Woodstock-alternative aesthetic quite like Bacharach. By ‘67, when ‘Reach Out’ (at right) dropped, he was already one of the most accomplished pop composers of the era — a genuine ‘Hit Maker!’ just like his ‘65 UK smash suggested. By ‘69, when ‘Make It Easy on Yourself’ arrived alongside the chart-topping ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,’ his work had become the stuff of future legend.
Would’ve been the case no matter which label put it out.
But, as usual, Herb ‘n’ Jerry knew best.
I said in my previous leg-bait post about Bacharach that I’d say something more specific about ‘Hit Maker!’ and these early collections in general, and I don’t think I have yet. All of them are largely filled with the maestro’s own rearrangements of tunes most people know better via their radio-mainstay renditions, often (but far from exclusively) by Dionne Warwick.
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I admit to never giving them a chance until I was entering my 30s, and then only because of Costello’s work with Bacharach on their superb collaborative album ‘Painted from Memory,’ which is aging like fine Bordeaux. Seeing that pairing live left an even deeper impression — yet still nowhere near as impactful as the week in 2000 I spent in bed getting over the flu and listening over and over again to a 5CD promo box set I’d be sent called ‘The Music of Burt Bacharach.’
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Warwick’s ‘Message to Michael’ was a tear-stained revelation I couldn’t stop pondering and dissecting; hearing Bacharach’s lush, enveloping, intricately detailed instrumentals felt like I was discovering a missing link between Brian Wilson and the High Llamas, among others. I’ve been convinced of his genius and rueful of those who dismiss his talents ever since.