Pretty much as soon as I heard the news that Burt Bacharach passed away last week at the impressive age of 94 I realized I needed to write this weeks post about him. I'm guessing for many of you, you have zero clue who Burt Bacharach was. Perhaps you recognize his name from that one time he was in an Austin Powers movie (clip shared later in this post). Then again, maybe you are a child of the 60's/70's and you actually know who he is.
Either way, he is the main focus of my post today, so prepare to remember or learn.
Burt Bacharach was born in 1928 and as I mentioned earlier in the post, he passed away last week at the age of 94. He was a pianist, composer, and producer having written hundreds of pop songs starting in the 1950's. Even if you aren't familiar with his work, there is a good chance you have heard at least one of his songs.
Burt won six Grammy's, three Academy Awards, and his songs have been recorded by thousands of artists. If you want to learn more about him, check out his wikipedia page here. It's where I got most of the information for this.
He collaborated quite a bit with Elvis Costello and Dionne Warwick. In fact, most of the songs that made Dionne Warwick famous were composed by Burt Bacharach.
This is actually a really great clip of both Dionne and Burt doing a medley of some of their most famous songs. Burt actually can be credited for discovering Dionne. She was a session singer when he decided to start a group with her and her sister.
It's interesting because when I told @mrsbozz that he had passed away she didn't know who he was. I was listing some of the songs he wrote and I started looking on line and I didn't realize just how many famous songs he had written. My wife actually got sick of me shouting out song names and told me to stop! :)
You might be thinking "wait, why are you sharing a song by Naked Eyes when this is a post about Burt Bacharach". Well if you guessed it is because he wrote this song, then you would be right! Spanning the decades from the 50's to the 80's and beyond, you can't deny that Burt had a prolific career.
I could sit here and list all of the songs that he wrote, but that would honestly take forever.
That's What Friends are For the epic super collaboration with Dionne Warwick and pretty much everyone who was someone back in the day was also written by Burt. Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, need I say more?
Call me crazy, but I serious get chills watching the video above. It's just that epic to me.
Listen, I get it. Burt Bacharach's music might not be your preferred style. After this post, you might never listen to a Burt song again, but you have to admit, he was talented and he must have had a pretty epic career.
I bet he threw some pretty epic parties back in the 60's and 70's.
I could totally make this about a million posts if I wanted to list all of the awesome songs that he has written.
Did you think that I forgot to share the post from Austin Powers? Here you go, Burt and Elvis, a winning combination! Meyers was quoted as saying having Burt participate in this movie was like having Gershwin in your movie. He also admits that the first film in the Austin Powers series was inspired by Burt's song "The Look of Love".
Burt actually appeared in all three of the Austin Powers movies.
So there you go. #threetunetuesday sponsored by @ablaze. A tribute to Burt Bacharach
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