Hal David, Burt Bacharach's Songwriting Partner, Dies at 91
Source: LA Times
Breaking News: Hal David, Burt Bacharach's songwriting partner, dies at 91
Hal David, the renowned pop music lyricist whose prolific collaboration with composer Burt Bacharach produced a wealth of enduringly memorable hits in the 1960s and early 70s, including Walk on By, What the World Needs Now Is Love and Raindrops Keep Fallin on My Head, died Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 91.
David died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of complications from a stroke, announced his wife, Eunice.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., David wrote a number of hit songs with other collaborators before teaming with Bacharach in 1956. They scored their first hit together in 1957 with Marty Robbins recording of The Story of My Life, which was followed by a 1958 hit for Perry Como, Magic Moments.
The songwriters continued to collaborate with others over the next few years but began an exclusive partnership after discovering their "magical interpreter," as David once described her: a young backup singer named Dionne Warwick.
In 1962, Warwick recorded their song Dont Make Me Over, which became her first hit single. Her long string of pop classic hits by David and Bacharach includes Walk on By, Alfie, Reach out for Me, Message to Michael, Trains and Boats and Planes, I Say a Little Prayer, Do You Know the Way to San Jose and Ill Never Fall in Love Again.
Read more: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/09/hal-david-dies-burt-bacharach.html
Faygo Kid
(21,478 posts)Dionne Warwick nailed that one. Many memorable songs here, and great memories.
MichiganVote
(21,086 posts)SaveAmerica
(5,342 posts)is love sweet love, it's the only thing that there's just too little of".
SaveAmerica
(5,342 posts)BumRushDaShow
(128,740 posts)What a great ballad artist and he will be missed.
Condolences to his family and R.I.P. sir.
bayareaboy
(793 posts)But lets not forget Ms Soul Aretha Franklin and her singing a little prayer.
Vidar
(18,335 posts)turtlerescue1
(1,013 posts)This duo kept my teen years do-able. Like Simon & Garfunkel, some folks just do something together that the rest of us can' t even get close to.
Of course NOW I'll be once again having these songs run through my head and likely out my mouth.
Peace to you Hal David.
and thanks for the memories.
Ebadlun
(336 posts)The trick to writing good lyrics is to make them sound so natural that it seems anyone could have said them - but to do that with the exact combination of stress accents to fit the music, avoiding clusters of consonants, thinking about vowel assonance takes real graft. And to then fit them to the complex melodies with shifting time signatures that your songwriting partner is throwing at you is something else again.
At the risk of sounding a grumpy old fart, I don't believe there's anyone in the current pop scene who can still do it.
msongs
(67,381 posts)latebloomer
(7,120 posts)re Eastwood- "A chair is still a chair/ Even when there's no one sitting there". . .
He was too ill to be present at the recent White House tribute to him and Bacharach.
Sure did give us a lot of fabulous songs.