What the world needs now

Burt Bacharach, who composed the music that was the soundtrack to the lives of people all over the world for generations, is gone. He died yesterday at 94.

The beautiful thing about Burt Bacharach’s songs is that they were so widely heard yet made such intensely personal connections. Which is why, as I list my favorite Burt Bacharach songs and interpreters, someone else might have an entirely different short list of equally great Burt Bacharach songs and interpreters. You just can’t go wrong with his body of work.

My introduction to Burt Bacharach’s songs came on the TV variety shows of the ’60s. Those were regular viewing at our house. I may have known the singer before knowing the composer, but I knew the songs.

“Walk On By” — Dionne Warwick, 1964. Probably the first song by Bacharach (and lyricist Hal David) that I came to know. A year later, the Baja Marimba Band covered it on one of the last albums my dad ever bought. You may not be familiar with this instrumental or this group, but it’s seared into my head. We played the bejeezus out of that record when we were kids. Plus my dad and I heard Dionne Warwick sing it live 15 years ago.

“Walk On By,” the Baja Marimba Band, from “Baja Marimba Band Rides Again,” 1965.

“What’s New Pussycat?” — Tom Jones, 1965. We kids would have had to have heard this on those old TV variety shows. How else would we have learned to sing “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” When we saw Tom Jones in Indianapolis last year, this was the fourth song in his set. He introduced it with a winding and good-natured retelling of the story of how he initially wasn’t impressed with the song, which Bacharach brought to him in 1965. “What’s New Pussycat?” became a sing-along, with Sir Tom directing the choir from his perch on the stage.

“What’s New Pussycat?” Tom Jones, from “What’s New Pussycat?” 1965.

“One Less Bell to Answer” — Keely Smith, 1967. Which is a perfectly fine version. But for me, the definitive version is by Marilyn McCoo with The 5th Dimension in 1970. It starts cool but turns into a scorcher of a torch song. I’d listen to Marilyn McCoo read the phone book. (Oh, yeah, dating myself there.) The 5th Dimension is one of the great (and underrated and underappreciated) singing groups of our time. Just watch them in “Summer of Soul,” the Questlove documentary on the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969.

“One Less Bell to Answer,” The 5th Dimension, from “Portrait,” 1970.

“What the World Needs Now Is Love” — Jackie DeShannon, 1965. That version is great, but the one that sticks with me is the one I heard so often on the radio in 1971 — “What the World Needs Now Is Love/Abraham, Martin and John” — a remix/mashup produced by Los Angeles DJ Tom Clay. Fierce social commentary and a contemporary American history lesson laid over/juxtaposed with Bacharach’s gentle, elegant classic. This version is sung by the Blackberries, the great West Coast trio best known as much-in-demand backup singers — Venetta Fields, Sherlie Matthews and Clydie King.

“(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me” — Lou Johnson, 1964. Don’t remember hearing this original soul version, (on which Cissy Houston, Dee Dee Warwick and Doris Troy sing backup) or British pop singer Sandie Shaw’s cover later in 1964, or even R.B. Greaves’ cover in 1970 (which I discovered almost 40 years later). No, I don’t think I came to know this one until it became an MTV-driven synth-pop smash for Naked Eyes in 1983, and that is my definitive version.

“Casino Royale” — Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, 1967. Late to the party on this one, too. Always knew it was a cool instrumental. Never connected the dots to Burt Bacharach, though.

Four, maybe five years ago, my friend Jeff bought my copy of the “Casino Royale” soundtrack. Instant seller’s remorse. Wasn’t too long before I bought it back from him.

Burt Bacharach was married four times, once memorably to Angie Dickinson. They were the super cool, super glamorous couple of their time, the late ’60s and throughout the ’70s. But now Burt is gone and the gorgeous Angie is 91.

Say a little prayer for them both.

Three under the tree, Vol. 45

Long ago, during the first three years of this blog’s existence — I may have been writing it on stone tablets — there was a long series of Christmas music posts when each December rolled around.

There was so much Christmas music in my collection that I posted it here three songs at a time. “Three under the tree” was the name of that 44-part series, which started in 2007 and ended in 2009.

Thirteen years on from the last installment, here’s another.

New to me this year

One of my regular Saturday afternoon stops is “Chris Carter’s British Invasion” on the Underground Garage channel on Sirius XM.

Heard this a couple of weeks ago. Couldn’t believe I’d never heard this Beatles cut. Turns out it’s the not the Beatles. It’s the Fab Four, a Beatles tribute band out of California. Enjoyed it nonetheless.

“Blue Christmas,” from “Hark! (Classic Christmas Songs Performed in a Beatles Style),” 2008. Apparently released only on CD.

On a related note: My friend Joe hosted a program featuring Beatles Christmas music last Sunday morning on 103.3 Asheville FM. Joe (a retired librarian who is Joey Books on air) and his co-host played “From Then To You,” the 1970 comp of Beatles Christmas messages, along with cuts from the new expanded reissue of “Revolver.” To listen, search the station’s archives for “The Sandbox Hour,” which aired from 8 to 9 a.m. on Dec. 18, 2022.

New to me last year

Did you know Art Carney invented rap in 1954? Neither did I, but listen to the evidence. Heard this on another of the Sirius XM music channels last year.

“‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” Art Carney, Columbia 7-inch, 1954. It’s the B side of the single, “Santa and the Doodle-Li-Bop.”

Perhaps new to me, but I think I knew it existed

Came across this today. The Big Lead sports/pop culture blog offered a feature titled “Here Are The Two Worst Christmas Songs You Probably Don’t Know Exist.”

Randy Bachman reworked BTO’s “Takin’ Care of Business” as “Takin’ Care of Christmas.” It’s not that bad. I enjoyed this, too.

“Takin’ Care of Christmas,” Randy Bachman with singer Beverley Mahood, a fellow Canadian. This was the last cut on “Song Book,” a 1998 comp, and the title cut on Bachman’s Christmas album of the same name, released in 2008.

Can’t say I enjoyed the other song, though. Kylie Minogue and Iggy Pop cover “Christmas Wrapping” by the Waitresses. Proceed at your own risk.

No stickers? Hey, no problem

“Oh, man! I don’t even have any stickers to give you!”

“Don’t worry about it. I took some pictures.”

That was my final exchange with one of the friendly gents as I checked out here, at Friends of Sound Records in San Antonio, Texas, earlier this month.

We were in town for our nephew’s wedding, and I took a couple of hours to go record digging on the day before the wedding. It was quiet at Friends of Sound early that Friday afternoon. A couple of guys were doing a photo shoot, perhaps for a local magazine, so I worked around them as they worked.

All along that beautiful back wall are 45s. I sent a couple of pictures to my friend Larry in New Jersey. “That looks like a place where I could have some fun,” he said. Indeed.

But I’m not a 45 guy. I like LPs, and I had the time to look at a lot of them.

“Wow, you’re really checking everything out,” the same friendly gent said.

“Yep, I’m from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Doing a little record store tourism.”

He found that an interesting notion. I said traveling gets me into the neighborhoods and often offers chances to see records I don’t usually see.

Sure enough, I found one at Friends of Sound.

Then I stopped at one more place.

Everything I read about San Antonio record stores said Janie’s Record Shop was a must stop. Janie’s is a little roadside storefront about 3 miles west of Friends of Sound, more or less right on the way back to my hotel, as it turned out.

Juanita “Janie” Esparza, who died last fall at 94, put her 14 kids through high school, then in 1985 realized her dream of opening a record shop. Janie and the shop became south Texas legends. She sold a rich selection of regional music genres — among them Tejano, conjunto, ranchera and the Westside Sound (aka Chicano soul) — supported the artists and preserved and shared its history.

It was cool to see a shop full of those styles of music — even if I know only a little about them — and the people running the shop were really nice. They also had rock, R&B and soul records and soundtracks, so I dug through those. I found these records.

Went all the way to San Antonio, Texas — 1,400 miles from home — to find four records from Chicago. At Janie’s, I found a copy of this Five Stairsteps LP without its jacket and these baseball instructional records with the Cubs’ Billy Williams and Ernie Banks on the covers.

Back at Friends of Sound, I found this one. Had never seen it before.

Willie Henderson is a sax player who started leading the studio band at Brunswick Records in Chicago in 1968, working there until 1974. He also did arrangements for Tyrone Davis, Barbara Acklin, Jackie Wilson and the Chi-Lites and produced Davis and Acklin.

Here’s a cool cut.

“Off Into a Black Thing,” Willie Henderson and the Soul Explosions, from “Funky Chicken,” 1970.

The Record Event Of The Year!

50 years ago today, on Wednesday, Sept. 1, 1971, this long, tall ad in the Green Bay Press-Gazette proclaimed that “The Record Event Of The Year” was happening at Woolworth’s.

For just $3.68, you could get any one of these three record albums by Rare Earth. (That’s $24.62 in 2021 dollars, and some new records go for that these days, so not much has changed for record buyers in 50 years.)

In the newspaper business, this was known as a co-op ad. In this case, the record company — the Rare Earth label — ponied up the money to hype its records via an ad from Woolworth’s. The label may have paid for part of the ad or all of the ad. Fairly common stuff.

Even though Rare Earth was mostly a singles band as September 1971 began, and even though free-form FM radio was in its infancy, the ad hyped some of Rare Earth’s popular long jams.

Let’s listen!

“#1 One World contains the hit single ‘I Just Want To Celebrate’ and a seven-minute version of the incredibly funky ‘What’d I Say.'”

This was the newest Rare Earth album featured in the ad. “One World” had come out three months earlier, at the beginning of the summer of 1971. It eventually went gold, but didn’t chart as high as the other two albums hyped here, peaking at No. 28 on the Billboard 200.

“#2 Get Ready contains the full 21 minute version of the hit ‘GET READY.'”

“Get Ready” had been released two years earlier, in July 1969, went platinum and reached No. 12 on the Billboard 200. “What’d I Say,” of course, was a Ray Charles cover.

“Get Ready,” the single, also appeared in slightly different form on “Dreams/Answers,” Rare Earth’s obscure debut album from 1968. I wrote about that record last year. Rarest Earth, you might say.

“#3 Ecology contains the complete 10 minute version of the hit ‘(I Know) I’M LOSING YOU.'”

“Ecology” had been released in the winter of 1970, so it was a year and a half old. It went gold and reached No. 15 on the Billboard 200. “(I Know) I’m Losing You,” of course, is a Temptations cover.

Rare Earth’s next record? The mighty “Rare Earth In Concert,” a double LP released in December 1971. It features LONGER versions of everything here except “What’d I Say.” Whether the studio version or the live version, all were free-form FM radio staples in the ’70s. I dug them then and I dig them now.

Stiller’s final closeout

Our story so far: In February 1970, the Stiller’s Top Ten singles chart suddenly disappeared from the Green Bay Press-Gazette after running in the paper every Friday for almost five years.

The Stiller Co. had sold records in downtown Green Bay for years. It was the place to go digging for 45s and LPs, a place where performers made in-store appearances, a place from which local radio stations did shows and remotes.

But the Stiller family, which had run the store since the turn of the century, was retiring. New owners were taking over. New owners with new ideas.

May 21, 1970 — a week shy of five years since the first appearance of the Stiller’s Top Ten chart — saw this offer from “Green Bay’s moving and grooving house of music!”

July 14, 1970 — The Stiller Co. was blowing out “really bad” 45s — a grab bag of 10 for a dime — at the summer sidewalk bazaar in downtown Green Bay.

Sept. 8, 1970 — “Every record must be sold.” The closeout begins.

Oct. 11, 1970 — The final closeout, slashing prices on LPs to $2.

A month later, as the store marked its 72nd anniversary, the records were gone.

“A new sound department has opened, replacing the former record department,” the Press-Gazette reported on Nov. 8, 1970. “The department will feature sound equipment and components for stereos, radios and tape recorders.”

Two years later to the day — Nov. 8, 1972 — the new owners of The Stiller Co. filed for bankruptcy.

They blamed their predicament on having lost business to suburban shopping centers, on having too many people on the payroll, on high overhead and on “creditors that were too easy on the firm.”

Before the year was out, in the days just before and after Christmas 1972, everything in the store was sold at a bankruptcy auction.

If you want it, here it is, come and get it
But you’d better hurry ’cause it’s goin’ fast

Which, fittingly, was the last song on the last Stiller’s Top Ten chart.

“Come And Get It,” Badfinger, from “Magic Christian Music,” 1970.