Burt Bacharach: A Look Under the Hood

Posted on Jan 16, 2006 | 2 comments
Filed under: Bacharach, Popular Music

Lately I’ve been listening to this Burt Bacharach compilation I bought several years ago (now that I have a car with a CD player). This three-disc Look Of Love compilation spans from the earliest part of his career in the ’50′s (theme song from The Blob anyone?) up to the mid-Seventies, when he produced some truly cloying and awful stuff (“Living Together, Growing Together” …ugh… deliver me!).

For my taste, Bacharach was in his prime in the Brill Building days of the early Sixties, when he helped to pioneer the use of orchestral instruments in pop music. These songs are really worth studying, as there’s a lot of hidden sophistication buried in them.

It’s been pointed out many times that he was a bit of an odd duck in those days, with the occasional use of changing meters, etc, but for me, what really makes him stand out as a songwriter is a rare contrapuntal depth heard in those early songs. Bacharach studied with the likes of Martinu and Milhaud, and certainly knew what he was doing. Since he did his own arrangements, the vocal lines and instrumental lines interact and inform each other in ways not achieved in most pop music. Melodic lines in the orchestration share equal space with the vocal line, and are in some cases more interesting. In fact, I usually sing along with the countermelodies, but then, I’m pretty weird. (Can you listen to “Walk on By” without singing that staccato “answer” in the trumpet?)

I thought it would be fun to take a little-known song from this compilation, “It’s Love That Really Counts”, as recorded by the Shirelles, and try to explain what I think is so cool about it. Well several things, actually. For one thing, I’m not positive, but I believe the melody is entirely pentatonic. We like that. But, it’s mostly orchestration and counterpoint. The arrangement is in impeccable taste — a lesson in self-restraint. For the first verse it’s just bass, guitar and very sparse percussion (mostly vibraslap!). The piano comes in only to lightly parallel the title line “it’s love that really counts”, and otherwise is left out. He’s consistent about that too: the piano only comes in for that line throughout the song.

As is typical with Burt, violins come in for the second verse, but they don’t do too much — just sustained chords. The next “love that really counts’ refrain is where the arrangement is truly inspired: whereas a typical arrangement would probably have the violins parallel the vocal line with lush chords, Burt has them holding tremolo chords sul ponticello with a dramatic swell.

Now, as the song winds up toward a close, the violins take on a contrapuntal role. The vocal line is relatively bland, but the violins upstage it with a magical leap of a minor 10th. It’s too hard to describe….

Listen to the Excerpt (click the “play” triangle icon below)
love_that_really_counts_excerpt.mp3
(requires Flash plugin)

First, it’s the refrain with the tremolo violins. Then, around “so take me in your arms”, listen to what the violins are doing. Listen a few times.

I haven’t heard Burt’s new album At This Time yet. Perhaps I’ll mention it here if I ever do. I did enjoy his collaboration with Elvis Costello, Painted from Memory, at first, but then I got really sick of it.

Still… can’t get enough of this 60′s stuff.