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Burt bacharach SOMETHING BIG: The Complete A&M Years... And

Rob Stoneman ocean child | Mother Earth, The Milky Way | 11/09/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It was pretty bleak when the Industry made the transition to compact disc. I spent all of the 80's looking for anything out of print.



Burt Bacharach SOMETHING BIG: The Complete A&M Years.. And More!, is big payback.



HIP-O Select and A&M Records are to be commended for assembling and preserving some of the most beautiful music on the Market.



A huge contribution to the Great American Songbook.



It was a bit of a shock to find the collection in a clothbound jacket with a silver embossed portrait of the Artist.



I had to decide if I were going to place the collection in a vault, or risk accruing some cat hairs and being loved to death.



As it turns out, the clothbound jacket prove vital preserving the contents.



Burt Bacharach SOMETHING BIG: The Complete A&M Years... And More! is not an anthology.



7 solo albums by Burt Bacharach in their entirety, including his first solo album originally released in England on Kapp, the Oscar winning Soundtrack for Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, and the very rare A&M 1974 concert, Burt Bacharach Live In Japan.



Unprescedented.



I appreciate the gusto of the initial Amazon customer reviews simply entering the track listing, a litany of fun.



I bought my first Burt Bacharach A&M record Spring of 1969, when I was in fourth grade, age 10. A 45 disc of Herb Albert This Guy's In Love With You.



A #1. Hit.



It cost one week allowance. For the next 7 days I had to curb trips to the comic book and candy rack, a small lifetime for a kid.



I smuggled a piece of manilla school paper and used one of my father's light blue pencils to jot down the lyrics of This Guys In Love With You, line by line, lifting the needle from the record untill I was done.



Testimony Burt Bacharach and Hal David cover all demographics.



I purchased a couple of his albums in the fifth grade, Burt Bacharach Make It Easy On Yourself cost a month's allowance. Around ten dollars by today standards. I had to pull alot of weeds to get it.



The Soundtrack for Butch Cassidy & The Sundance kid was my main birthday present when I turned 11, Spring 1970.



My parents let me cart the family Hi-Fi into my room. I'd listen to the records before bed, no outside interference that way.



I phased out my old vinyl a long time ago, but the recordings are still a nice way to unwind.



I've enjoyed the wealth of Burt Bacharach books, CD's and DVD's to flood the Market the last decade.



Before Chat Rooms, I only had a A&M Promo disc with four simple commentaries by Burt Bacharach to draw from.



I committed the quotes to memory, I shared them with friends and Music Teachers for many years.



They opened doors for me.



"Always look for the most individualistic thing that you can get from a instrument, or from a Instrumentation. If you're doing it as a Instrumental, the more voices you put on or the more instruments you put on carrying a melody, the less personal it becomes. That's why I've always loved the trumpet played very delicately, you know... A singular instrument- that's expressive of getting close to where a human voice is, and undercutting notes a little bit. Scooping up to notes the way a voice can do, became more personal to me than 16 Violins playing the lead".



Listen to the instrumental Don't Make Me Over, Track 3, CD 5, the brass lead always stops me dead in my tracks. The song is also one of my favorite examples how snatches of vocals are used to full effect.



"I remember the first album that I did, before I came to A&M, I did an album on Kapp, and I did it in England, and it was a successful album there, and it had no success, so to speak, here, untill the A&M albums sort of took off and they re-issued it, and I think it did kind of well. And, I had alot of trouble with that first album, trying to get a point of view, because I was so closely associated to a word that went with a note, and if you took the word out, then what did it do to the note, and the emotion of the note, or notes, or a phrase, or something like that... and there was just some songs in that first album I had to just go to, uhm... snatches of vocals, not from a singular voice, but from, for Girls, it gave me something remotely, what Dionne gave me, you see?"



After recording a string of hits with Dionne it must've been liberating to come out with his first solo album, the Orchesra is put to full use on 24 Hours From Tulsa, a song that leaves my heart throbbing.



Burt Bacharach also had some fun releasing singles on Kapp like Tony Middleton My Little Red Book (All I Do Is Talk About You), a personal favorite of mine laden with lots of echo and kettle drum.



As Burt Bacharach continued writing and recording his audiance increased, a huge Pop Star, fun music, with all kinds of unaccredited flourishes.



Look for the instrumental, Are You There With Another Girl, Track 4, CD 1.



The principal character in the song is having trouble getting a hold of her love interest, if he doesn't answer the phone soon, her jealousy may escalate with a trip around his place to see if he's there, the truth of the matter is, her man is probably preoccupied and taken the phone off the hook.



Burt Bacharach uses a miked organ to replicate the sound of Bell Telephone's famous busy signal... brilliant!



"Well, I don't think just sitting down and writing Pop Songs is really kind of the answer, you know. You write a Pop Song and your publisher takes it out and shows it to a Artist. And that's not the right way, I would suppose the right way would be to have more control when you show it to somebody like I did in the past. I would want to do more Theater if the things around it were more pallatable. I mean, like the economics of the Theater are so bad now. And also, there's something about the impermanence, and it's also very hard to keep a performance terrific. But the thing I love about Film's see, and of course Record too... you know if you got it once, it's gonna' be there, you got it forever. It's not gonna' change".



Burt Bacharach's comments were said with lots of passion like they had been churning over in his guts. They're very powerful words, they drove me to scour retail record racks for welcome new product for many years, untill I manage to find a comfortable platform trading services with Amazon.



I would like to think Burt Bacharach is passionate about trading products online like I am.



The following entry says alot about the man.



"Well, I really don't know, what really influenced me, you know, what music sources influenced me, you know, I've always had a feeling what you write and what you are able to convey is a certain general gathering, or stockpile of what you feel, rather than anything specific. I just think it's a whole stockpile of your life. What you feel, and what you feel about People, and how you react to everything around you. To your family life, and, uh, the amount of happiness, or unhappiness. Stress, or nonstress in your life, and, you're just like a sort of a sponge, and then you write accordingly. I do think you do get influenced, and you have to be subconsciously influenced. I don't care who you are... I mean... I've talked to Songwriters, and they've said, (and a woman), and he says, they never listen to the radio because they don't want to hear anything that might kind of subconsciously manifest its' way in his work, you know, not that he's afraid of coming up with somebody's ideal, but just to be unconsciously influenced. I mean, I don't feel that way. I feel I got to listen to the radio as much as I can. I don't at home, I listen to the news at home, and I listen in the car, to music, when I drive. I drive alot to the beach and back to Los Angeles. Then I can hear alot of the music that I would hear at home".



No doubt, Burt Bacharach remains in full command.



In addition to his significant contribution to Popular Music in the 60's, A&M Records produced a number of albums in the 70's that are huge life cycle accomplishments for Burt Bacharach.



Freefall, And The People Were With Her, Long Ago Tomorrow and Monterey Penninsula... A marvelous way to kick off the early 70's, culminating in the albums Futures, with a sleuth of guest musicians, and Woman, recorded live in one four-hour session with the Houston Symphony Orchestra.



Major works.



look for Tracks 1 through 18 on CD 3.



Where Are You, Us, When You Bring Your Sweet Love To me, Woman, There Is Time and The Dancing Fool are some of the loveliest pieces in the Burt Bacharach canon.



Burt Bacharach made good on his word.



"You know, I keep saying, keep thinking, that maybe... you know, I'm going to do something in greater proportion- not meaning greatness, but greater proportion in time, like for a big Orchestra, or, for a Symphony size Orchestra. I haven't done it yet, but that doesn't mean I won't. The important thing is to keep writing and not get your time too dissapated doing other things".



Burt Bacharach has proven to be quite a family man, the references to his children off Burt Bacharach At This Time are endearing.



It's fun to see what pops up on Amazon MP3. The public is fortunate he never quit working.



Burt Bacharach said he started arranging and producing his own material out of self defence.



Cover versions that don't have his personal stamp are a bit of a punch in the stomach.



In addition to his work with A&M, round off your collection with albums featuring Elvis Costello, Ron Isley, and his recent work with The Sydney Symphony Orchestra.



You can always count on Burt Bacharach to deliver the goods.























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Bacharach Solo Greatness

Jon Holcombe | 03/27/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This collection follows Burt's solo work from the early sixties into the 70's. Understand, this is the artist performing his own works. It is not a greatest hits collection of his famous songs performed by Dionne Warwick, Jackie DeShannon, Jerry Butler, and others. See Rhino's "The Look Of Love: The Burt Bacharach Collection" (a fantastic companion piece) if that is what you are looking for. I consider this work essential if you are a Bacharach fan. His mid 70's, post Hal David albums "Futures" and "Woman" are here in their entirety, as well as his A&M solo work, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", and so much more. I do not consider this "elevator music". Bacharach melodies provided the soundtrack for the 1960's. His innovative use of horns, vocal and musical arrangements, different time signatures, make this music as fresh now as it was 40 years ago. Much of this music is instrumental, which is perfect for me as I spend my day working in front of my computer.



I purchased the Henry Mancini box set "Days of Wine and Roses" a few years back, and although there are some great songs on the collection, I was struck by how dated, "kitcshy", and gimmicky many of the songs were. I've never felt that way about Bacharach's music, any of it, from the 60's or 70's.



I am still hoping that someone releases the "Together?" album, an movie soundtrack from 1979 that I was lucky enough to find on record album a couple of years ago. The songs were written by Baracharch and Paul Anka and are also very good."