Burt Bacharach: selected early lesser-known songs, part one 1955-1960
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- See Songbook’s Burt Bacharach index for additional feature pages on the composer
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The page Burt Bacharach: a selected discography at bacharachonline.com lists two recordings involving Bacharach prior to 1955:
1952
Once in a Blue Moon – adaptation by Burt Bacharach of Rubenstein’s Melody in F (1858) – Nat King Cole, Penthouse Serenade (LP Capitol H-322)
1954
Mama Don’t Cry at My Wedding (Helen Hudgins) – recorded by Barry Frank with Burt F. Bacharach & Orchestra, Bell single 1063
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1955
Keep Me In Mind (Burt Bacharach & Jack Wolf)
(These) Desperate Hours (Burt Bacharach & Wilson Stone)
1956
I Cry More (Burt Bacharach & Hal David)
The Morning Mail (Burt Bacharach & Hal David)
1959
With Open Arms (Burt Bacharach & Hal David)
Make Room for the Joy (Burt Bacharach & Hal David)
Don’t Unless You Love Me (Burt Bacharach & Paul Hampton)
Write Me (Lonely Girl) (Burt Bacharach & Paul Hampton)
Faker, Faker (Burt Bacharach & Hal David)
1960
Boys Were Made For Girls (Burt Bacharach & Hal David)
Take Me to Your Ladder (Burt Bacharach & Bob Hilliard)
Joanie’s Forever (Burt Bacharach & Bob Hilliard)
Along Came Joe (Burt Bacharach & Hal David)
- Burt Bacharach: selected early lesser-known songs, part two 1961
- Burt Bacharach: selected early lesser-known songs, part three 1962-1965
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1955
Keep Me In Mind (Burt Bacharach & Jack Wolf) was one of Burt Bacharach’s earliest songs to be recorded. Originally released on the album The Voice of Patti Page (LP Mercury MG 20100), Keep Me in Mind was also issued as a single, but with the songwriting erroneously credited to (Zing-Wexler) on the label. A possible source of the “Zing” credit: A different song with this title, credited to Benny Goodman and Adrian Zing, had been recorded by Peggy Lee with Goodman and his Orchestra on 2 December 1947. Goodman had a personal manager at this time named Elliot Wexler.
Bacharach couldn’t have hoped for a more successful artist to record the song. Patti Page was in the midst of a string of more than fifty-five (55) top 40 hits in the decade following her first, 1948′s Confess. She continued to chart well into the next decade. She’d had two #1 hits in 1950, All My Love (Bolero), and Tennessee Waltz, and averaged over eight hits per year from 1951-1954. The single failed to chart. A cover by British vocalist Alma Colgan also fell short of the charts.
Patti Page – 1955
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(These) Desperate Hours (Burt Bacharach & Wilson Stone) — used to promote the 1955 film The Desperate Hours
Serene Dominic, author of the comprehensive guide Burt Bacharach, Song by Song: the ultimate Burt Bacharach reference for fans, serious record collectors, and music critics (2003), indicates that Paramount hired the songwriters to write “what was called an “exploitation song,” meant to promote the movie’s title on radios and jukeboxes” (p. 17) but not to be used in the film itself.
Mel Tormè – dated October 1955 by Dominic (release date, I presume). Decades later, the groove reappeared on a 1999 compilation titled Mel Tormè At the Movies.
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1956
The Morning Mail (m. Burt Bacharach, w. Hal David)
The Gallahads – B-side of The Fool * (Naomi Ford, Lee Hazlewood) (Jubilee 45-5252) released August 1956; this song and I Cry More, released in September 1956, appear to have been the first two Bacharach & David songs to be recorded.
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I Cry More (m. Burt Bacharach, w. Hal David)
I Cry More was one of three songs performed by Alan Dale in the film Don’t Knock the Rock, released 14 December 1956 in the US. A single, Coral 61699, had previously been released in September.
Alan Dale
The most distinctive element of this early Bacharach arrangement is the group of vocalists choo-chooing along with a set of hi-hat cymbals during the beginning bars of the song. The employment of non-verbal imitative vocalizations was characteristic of many early Bacharach songs, as was whistling.
In his book Burt Bacharach, Song by Song (2003), Serene Dominic is pretty harsh on Dale with respect to his leading part in Don’t Knock the Rock, saying
The fictional icon is portrayed by Coral recording artist Alan Dale, a guy who couldn’t rock if you stood him on the San Andreas Fault and sawed off the heel of his left shoe.
Dale was actually an exceptional vocalist, with far above average range. On his 1955 hit Sweet and Gentle he sounds more than a little like Bing Crosby. But he certainly doesn’t have the presence of a rock and roll star in the clips I’ve seen from the film. He looks more like a vacuum cleaner or Veg-O-Matic salesman. And there’s something quite creepy about his Cheshire Cat-like grin throughout the entire two and a half minutes of another song in this film, One of These Days.
Wikipedia notes that Dale felt he’d been blackballed by the industry when opportunity stopped knocking in the late 1950s. Eventually, he made some of his grievances public in a 1965 autobiography titled The Spider and the Marionettes, “in which he listed names of people [including Ed Sullivan apparently] who were trying to affect his career adversely, with descriptions of their activities toward this end.”
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1959
With Open Arms (Burt Bachararach & Hal David) — This is the lone hit included in this page, but it just barely made it, peaking at #39.
Jane Morgan with orchestra directed by Frank Hunter, Kapp single 284
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Adam Faith released this cover of the song in 1960, Parlophone 45-R 4689. Faith’s version omits the lush back vocals of Morgan’s, but includes a touch of Bacharach-esque whistling near the end.
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Make Room for the Joy (Burt Bacharach & Hal David)
Jack Jones — from the film Juke Box Rhythm (1959), single Capitol F4161
Presently unavailable
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Don’t Unless You Love Me (Burt Bacharach & Paul Hampton)
Paul Hampton – released June 1959 – B-side was another by the same songwriting pair, Write Me (Lonely Girl), Columbia single 41396
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Faker, Faker (Burt Bacharach & Hal David)
The Eligibles — 1959 Capitol 4265
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1960
Boys Were Made For Girls (Bacharach & David)
Everit Herter
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I Could Make You Mine (Bacharach & David)
The Wanderers — 1960 — flip side of I Need You More (Cub single 9075)
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Take Me to Your Ladder (Burt Bacharach & Bob Hilliard)
Buddy Clinton b/w Joanie’s Forever (Monroe single 114), released November 1960
.Joanie’s Forever (Burt Bacharach & Bob Hilliard)
Recorded by Buddy Clinton – flip side of Take Me to Your Ladder (Monroe 114), 1960. Buddy Clinton is a pseudonym adopted by the songwriter Clint Ballard, Jr., for these two sides.
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My Joanie’s forever
Was less than a week
She loved me on Friday
By Monday we didn’t even speak
Joanie’s forever
Is only one love scene
‘Cause Joanie’s forever
Is a word she doesn’t mean
She’s yours for the moment
But don’t play the fool
You’ll find out she’s heartless
That Joanie, oh, she’ll break every rule
Joanie’s forever…
She doesn’t mean ’til the end of time
She doesn’t mean ’til the seas run dry**
If you believe what she says on Friday
By Monday your heart will cry
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Along Came Joe (Burt Bacharach & Hal David) Recorded by Merv Griffin (Carlton 545), released June 1961
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* A 1956 recording of The Fool by Sanford Clark became Lee Hazlewood’s first hit as songwriter and producer. On the single label (Dot 45-15481), Naomi Ford alone was credited as songwriter. According to an article on Clark at rockabillyhall.com, “Hazlewood gave his wife (Naomi Ford) the songwriting credit for The Fool, because it was a time when you couldn’t be a producer, manager and writer at the same time.” Hazlewood and Ford shared songwriting credits on the label of the recording by The Gallahads (Jubilee 45-5252).
** The lyric comes from the comprehensive Bacharach recordings and lyrics site The Hitmaker Archive: Burt Bacharach which has “seas run dry” where Clinton sings “sea runs dry.” Also, he sings “On Monday” in the last line, instead of “By Monday.” The lyric provided by Bacharachonline.com is identical to that given by The Hitmaker Archive.
