Bacharach:
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and for the song “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” (shared with David).
Bacharach was essentially a pop composer, but his songs became hits for country artists (Marty Robbins), rhythm and blues performers (Chuck Jackson), soul (Franklin, Luther Vandross) and synth-pop (Naked Eyes). He reached a new generation of listeners in the 1990s with the help of Costello and others.
Mike Myers would recall hearing the sultry “The Look of Love” on the radio and finding fast inspiration for his “Austin Powers” retro spy comedies, in which Bacharach made cameos.
In the 21st century, he was still testing new ground, writing his own lyrics and recording with rapper Dr. Dre.
Bacharach knew the very heights of acclaim, but he remembered himself as a loner growing up, a short and self-conscious boy so uncomfortable with being Jewish he even taunted other Jews. His favorite book as a kid was Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”; he related to the sexually impotent Jake Barnes, regarding himself as “socially impotent.”
He was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but soon moved to New York City. His father was a syndicated columnist, his mother a pianist who encouraged the boy to study music. Although he was more interested in sports, he practiced piano every day after school, not wanting to disappoint his mother. While still a minor, he would sneak into jazz clubs, bearing a fake ID, and hear such greats as Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie.
“They were just so incredibly exciting that all of a sudden, I got into music in a way I never had before,” he recalled in the memoir “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” published in 2013. “What I heard in those clubs turned my head around.”
“Burt’s transition is like losing a family member. These words I’ve been asked to write are being written with sadness over the loss of my Dear Friend and my Musical Partner,” Warwick wrote in a statement Thursday. “On the lighter side we laughed a lot and had our run ins but always found a way to let each other know our family like roots were the most important part of our relationship.”
“Music softens the heart, makes you feel something if it’s good, brings in emotion that you might not have felt before,” Bacharach told the AP in 2018. “It’s a very powerful thing if you’re able to do to it, if you have it in your heart to do something like that.”