Wishin' and Votin' - the BURT BACHARACH SONGBOOK Poll Results

First underdog in the top 20? Not sure I know it.

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius),

just want to say this is very surprising -- in my memory it was big...I know I'd heard it many times before I got the Rhino box in 1998 but now I can't say where.

xp I remember that Milsap version! I should have thought of it when I was putting together the big spotify playlist.

I'd cut Hal David a break on those "Royale" end-credits lyrics... clearly meant to be a throwaway, and I'm sure most of the audience had long fled.

The Milsap one was on my ballot before I cut the song

I'd cut Hal David a break on those "Royale" end-credits lyrics... clearly meant to be a throwaway, and I'm sure most of the audience had long fled.

or The Odd Couple lyrics

OK, last one for today -- tomorrow the big finish, full orchestra, backup singers, everything.

https://i.imgur.com/UrjhRtj.jpg

16. Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa — 409 Points, 10 Votes
Lyric: Hal David
Gene Pitney, 1963 Musicor single, 250 points — https://youtu.be/jIjUaxP7PPE
Dusty Springfield, from A Girl Called Dusty (1964), 89 points — https://youtu.be/ne9UuzivW1A
Burt Bacharach, from Plays His Hits (1966), 70 points — https://youtu.be/5qaR6-iZe-Q

The graphic has Dusty's points wrong, it's 89 for her.

My number 4, a bit of an outlier for Bacharach i think but it's a classic for a reason. The lyric absolutely works.

I gave this one a lot of points, but settled on Burt's wordless version as I enjoyed pretending it was the score to a western or something.

The lyrics are good though. It's somewhat tangled up with "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" in my mind. No doubt due partly to the specific place names, but also the way travel, separation and guilt are handled in each. I seem to like the idea of the USA as a land of endless highways with people being sad, or at least contemplative, in distant hotel rooms, as "Check Out Time" involves something quite similar! :)

promise us anything

"Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa" has this weird, mesmerizing beat that I also associate with "Down in the Boondocks," but I can't think of any other songs that have it. Dusty edged out Gene for me to come in at #10.

Good morning, top 15 today! At least until tomorrow, I'll never run a poll again!

https://i.imgur.com/HfUoDp6.jpg

15. (They Long To Be) Close To You — 426 Points, 12 Votes
Lyric: Hal David
The Carpenters, 1970 single, 410 points — https://youtu.be/iFx-5PGLgb4
Gwen Guthrie, 1986 single, 16 points — https://youtu.be/VRMYxp86mOU

Extended version of the Gwen Guthrie version, I guess this was on the 12" single — https://youtu.be/l0VWo8g5Y_o

https://i.imgur.com/8etQvsO.jpg

14. Wishin' and Hopin' — 441 Points, 11 Votes
Lyric: Hal David
Dusty Springfield, 1964 single, 441 points — https://youtu.be/gAdTsAKvVTU
Dusty and Martha Reeves duetting on "Ready Steady Go - The Sound of Motown", 1965 — https://youtu.be/CXP7tt7TQUk

My #2

Are there any gender swap versions of this? Trying to decide if that would work or not.

Dusty was a great girl with a really soulful voice, but she was very hard to record. We were both perfectionists but Dusty was much harder on herself than she needed to be and I think that if we had ever tried to do an album together, we would have destroyed one another.

xp - The Merseybeats do a version. They're gonna wear their hair just for her.

Also The Bad Boys, a weirdly slow version.

https://i.imgur.com/2o9xCag.jpg

13. Don't Make Me Over — 495 Points, 10 Votes
Lyric: Hal David
Dionne Warwick, b-side of "I Smiled Yesterday," 1962, 467 points — https://youtu.be/LEgxuE7WD6U
Sybil, 1989 single, 28 points — https://youtu.be/fvb6ovTNQPk

Dionne live tv version, 1967 — https://youtu.be/nFvLcCDvdEA

Fun fact: I have no recollection of hearing "Close To You" before Kim Gordon chose it in a Desert Island Discs type segment on radio here in the early 90s. I don't remember hearing Bacharach at all earlier in childhood, with exactly two exceptions: "Raindrops..." and one other that's presumably coming up soon. I'm not sure how I managed this lack of exposure.

Burt on "Don't Make Me Over" --

We cut the song at Bell Sound, and when Hal and I brought it to Florence Greenberg, she cried. Not because of how much she liked the record. Florence cried because of how much she [i]didn't like it. Both of us were really taken aback by her reaction but there was nothing we could do or say to make her change her mind. She wound up putting out "Don't Make Me Over" as the B-side of "I Smiled Yesterday," a song we had cut at the same session.[/i]

https://i.imgur.com/RixxQlU.jpg

12. My Little Red Book — 523 Points, 10 Votes, 1 first-place vote
Lyric: Hal David
Love, 1966 single, 434 points — https://youtu.be/f-SuGfLhqo4
Manfred Mann, 1965 single, 89 points — https://youtu.be/se7Ywa668aw

Don't Make Me Over was my number 2, would be number 1 some days

The way Dusty sings "you will be his" on Wishin' is absolute joy

if Don't Make Me Over has any flaw it's that the first two lines are the peak, really

Hadn't thought of that, but it really does announce itself from the start.

It's the soul of the song, the rest is - admittedly beautiful - elaboration

What was the first recorded version of “My Little Red Book”?

The Manfred Mann version.

I gave my points to Manfred Mann's. It's BB's preference too, apparently. Love simplified some chords too much for his liking, or something!?

Paul Jones, the vocalist on the track:

Manfred Mann could read music and he was a jazz piano player and a jazz fan and wrote a fortnightly column in Jazz News, but he couldn't play Burt's stuff. The story about Burt having to move Manfred off the piano bench is absolutely true. In fact, it was slightly more subtle than that. Burt said to Manfred, "Look, I tell you what. You play the left hand and I'll do the right hand." Then they switched and Manfred did the right hand and Burt did the left hand and eventually Burt was sitting at the piano alone. Manfred didn't hold it against Burt for a moment, and has actually said that he admired the tactful way he had been edged out.

I voted for the Manfred Mann version too. It was Love 8, Mann 2.

"Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa" has this weird, mesmerizing beat that I also associate with "Down in the Boondocks,"

really sharp observation

https://i.imgur.com/GMfOvlH.jpg

11. Do You Know the Way to San Jose — 576 Points, 12 Votes
Lyric: Hal David
Dionne Warwick, 1968 single, 538 points — https://youtu.be/CnzTgUc5ycc
Frankie Goes to Hollywood, from Welcome to the Pleasuredome (1984), 38 points — https://youtu.be/wgy3p-L8RRg

upthread there was a suggestion of a side poll for songwriters that write like burt. i think arthur lee and bacharach definitely have an affinity. i think "a house is not a motel" is almost certainly a BB reference, i think it's significant that the first love single was a burt tune, and i think it helps to explain the really quite sophisticated and sometimes baffling chord changes on "forever changes" if you imagine arthur lee sitting around the house and plunking out the melody lines to various BB songs on the piano

xp

impossible for me to untangle "san jose" from childhood, but dionne's version is something i cherish

love the little organ flourishes around "and all the stars that never were ... "

love the tone of the kick drum

Ah, I had no idea that Burt had something to do with the Manfred Mann version, with which I was barely familiar with, voted for the other one. Always figured there was some kind of Scepter artist or someone else in the US that he had done it with first, now I see that it was recorded for What’s New Pussy at? One tiny extra thing in favor of the Love version for me is that it morphed through a game of Red Telephone into “Interstellar Overdrive.”
i think "a house is not a motel" is almost certainly a BB reference
Was thinking the same thing yesterday

Agree with both your posts about “San Jose”

San Jose is one of my karaoke faves. LA is a great big freeway has always been powerfully evocative to my small town arse. Put it at 5

From the Mann himself: https://www.manfredmann.co.uk/?story=the-1960s-my-little-red-book

If "The Last One To Be Loved" doesn't place, I'll be very sorry I didn't vote.

you should be sorry either way !

Waiting For Eric (To Come Vote)

xps Nice. Interesting that a jazz background would make unaccented chords hard.

https://i.imgur.com/9aYh17X.jpg

10. What the World Needs Now Is Love — 584 Points, 13 Votes, 1 first-place vote
lyric: Hal David
Jackie DeShannon, 1965 single, 524 points — https://youtu.be/IQ2SAtkEsqU
Burt Bacharach and The Posies, from the Austin Powers - International Man of Mystery soundtrack, 1997, 60 points — https://youtu.be/u7uh15s23nQ

xps Nice. Interesting that a jazz background would make unaccented chords hard.

xp to nv

agree about the freeway lyric. also love the imagery of "parking cars and pumping gas"

i have no problem saying that i just love the mythology of the song, the mystique of going west to make it big, the fatigue, the disillusionment, the small town that welcomes you back with open arms. i love its wistfulness