I’ve been featuring songwriting duos from the Sixties in my last few Forgotten Music posts. I started with Goffin and King here, Mann and Weil here, and Greenwich and Barry here. But maybe my favorite songwriting duo is Hal David and Burt Bacharach. Songs like “Don’t Make Me Over,” “Any Day Now,” “Tower of Strength,” “Only Love Can Break a Heart,” “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With My Self,” and a dozen other hits became part of the soundtrack of the Sixties for me. Who can forget Joanie Sommers’s “Johnny Get Angry”? This 2-CD set costs $13.99 on AMAZAON and it’s packed with 60 songs. Lots of great listening here! What’s your favorite Hal David/Burt Bacharach song?
TRACK LIST:
Disc: 1
1. Don’t Make Me Over (Dionne Warwick)
2. Any Day Now (My Wild, Beautiful Bird) (Chuck Jackson)
3. Tower Of Strength (Gene McDaniels)
4. Baby It’s You (The Shirelles)
5. Only Love Can Break A Heart (Gene Pitney)
6. The Answer To Everything (Del Shannon)
7. Forgive Me (For Giving You Such A Bad Time) (Babs Tino)
8. My Heart Is An Open Book (Carl Dobkins Jr)
9. Mexican Divorce (The Drifters)
10. Make It Easy On Yourself (Jerry Butler)
11. You’re Telling Our Secrets (Dee Clark)
12. Crazy Time (Gene Vincent)
13. I Looked For You (Charlie Grace)
14. Sea Of Heartbreak (Don Gibson)
15. Johnny Get Angry (Joanie Sommers)
16. Dream Big (Sonny James)
17. Winter Warm (Gale Storm)
18. The Story Of My Life (Michael Holliday)
19. Sittin’ In A Tree House (Marty Robbins)
20. Loneliness Or Happiness (The Drifters)
21. Another Tear Falls (Gene McDaniels)
22. I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself (Tommy Hunt)
23. Anonymous Phone Call (Bobby Vee)
24. The Blob (The Five Blobs)
25. Two Hour Honeymoon (Paul Hampton)
26. Keep Away From Other Girls (Helen Shapiro)
27. I Smiled Yesterday (Dionne Warwick)
28. Waiting For Charlie (To Come Home) (Etta James)
29. True Love Never Runs Smooth (Gene Pitney)
30. The Love Of A Boy (Timi Yuro)
Disc: 2
1. Please Stay (The Drifters)
2. Wishing And Hoping (Dionne Warwick)
3. Broken-Hearted Melody (Sarah Vaughan)
4. (You Don’t Have To Be) A Tower Of Strength (Gloria Lynne)
5. Donna Means Heartbreak (Gene Pitney)
6. It’s Love That Really Counts (The Shirelles)
7. This Empty Place (Dionne Warwick)
8. I Wake Up Crying (Del Shannon)
9. Don’t Envy Me (Joey Powers)
10. Boys Were Made For Girls (Everit Herter)
11. Feelin’ No Pain (Paul Evans)
12. Come Completely To Me (Steve Rossi)
13. Third Window From The Right (Dean Barlow)
14. Three Friends (Two Lovers) (The Turbans)
15. (There Goes) The Forgotten Man (Jimmy Radcliffe)
16. Someone Else’s Sweetheart (The Wanderers)
17. The Breaking Point (Chuck Jackson)
18. In Times Like These (Gene McDaniels)
19. Warm And Tender (Johnny Mathis)
20. Loving Is A Way Of Living (Steve Lawrence)
21. Magic Moments (Perry Como)
22. (It’s) Wonderful To Be Young (Cliff Richard)
23. Love In A Goldfish Bowl (Tommy Sands)
24. Don’t You Believe It (Andy Williams)
25. Out Of My Continental Mind (Lena Horne)
26. Faker Faker (The Eligibles)
27. Don’t Unless You Love Me (Paul Hampton)
28. Along Came Joe (Merv Griffin)
29. Take Me To Your Ladder (I’ll See Your Leader Later) (Buddy Clinton)
30. Three Wheels On My Wagon (Dick Van Dyke)
Of course “Sea Of Heartbreak”!
Though I found all of their songs rather “kitschy” – they somehow knew what people wanted …
Wolf, I’m surprised at the range of these early songs. There’s a little of something for everyone in this collection.
I certainly can’t forget “Johnny Get Angry,” though god knows I’ve tried!
Bob, “I want a brave man, I want a cave man” is so true to Life!
Jackie has a list of “beat me, hurt me” songs by women she likes to make fun of, and “Johnny Get Angry” is right up there.
Favorites? (Lucky for them they got a lot of great singers to do their material, like Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, and Gene Pitney.)
Only Love Can Break a Heart
Anyone Who Had a Heart
Walk on By
Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head
(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Vallance
But there are so many others too. I listen to my Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, Gene Pitney, Shirelles CDs regularly.
Jeff, and these are only songs from the Sixties. Hal David and Burt Bacharach kept turning out hits into the Seventies.
Does Jackie’s list include Stand by Your Man, For the Love of Him, and the Vicky Carr classic, Let It Please Be Him? They’re not really beat me, hurt me songs so much as they are “woman, sublimate yourself to a forceful man” songs. My friends and I used to belt these ones out at parties. Good times.
Years ago (let me check the date – it was 1979) we went to see Phyllis Newman’s solo show THE MADWOMAN OF CENTRAL PARK WEST, and she did a very entertaining medley of songs on the topic. I remember “You Are Woman” (from FUNNY GIRL) – When she did the line “I am taller, so you can be smaller than,” she crouched down. There were definitely Bacharach and David songs in there, like Wishin’ and Hopin’ (“Wear your hair, just for him”) and “Wives and Lovers.”
To answer, yes, Vicky Carr’s “It Must Be Him” (“Or else I die”) has always been at the top of her list too. She hates it.
Of course, Deb, Burt wrote the music so isn’t responsible for the awful lyrics.
Jackie also collects the more misogynistic songs like “If You Wanna Be Happy” (“for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife”) or Marv Johnson’s “You Got What It Takes” (co-written by noted feminist Berry Gordy) with the great lyrics, “You don’t drive a big fast car, you don’t look like a movie star, and on your money we won’t get far, but baby, you got what it takes” with the subtext “because you put out.”
Some pretty obscure stuff here!
Bill, I head songs on these CDs I hadn’t heard in 50 years!
Bill, for $6.99 you can get the cream of the crop in this collection
Jeff, it won’t surprise you to learn I own this CD, too.
I think Wishing and Hoping would be my favorite, though I prefer Dusty Springfield. There were more I hadn’t heard of (at least by title) than I did remember hearing. And a quite varied group of singer – merv griffin and dick van dyke!!! Disk one had many more I remembered.
Maggie, I didn’t recognize many of these songs until I listen to the music…then the memories came flooding back!
I can’t believe Bacharach-David wrote Three Wheels in My Wagon, if it’s the song I’m thinking of–a novelty song about a settler being pursued by “injuns”. It would be better for my love of Burt Bacharach for it to be a different song.
Fave BB-HD song? Walk on By, although there are so many others.
Btw, I hope Martin Edwards sees your post. He’s a huge Bacharach fan.
Deb, yes you’re right about “Three Wheels in My Wagon” being the “injuns” song. I remember hearing it as a kid and had completely forgotten about it for 50 years until I played that CD. I hope Martin Edwards sees this post, too!
Indeed some memorable music from my youth. I started to pay attention to music in 1964 at age 12. Oh how the music and world would change beyond the mid-60’s. Anyway, fond memories also surface, in looking at the album picture, of my days through the late 60’s hugging my little transistor radio to listen to music and baseball games. Boom boxes and iPods be damned – I still listen to some music and baseball games while cutting the lawn and such on a little transistor radio parked on top of my back yard picnic table.
Roy, my students have no idea what a “transistor radio” is. Everything revolves around their smartphones!
I might have written about these fond memories of mine already:
German radio stations would not have these pop songs – only German folk music and Schlager!
Only AFN and Radio Luxemburg (available in the evenings …) transmitted this what some people would call “Negro Music” (yes, that’s what they called it) so I recorded it on my tape recorder and built a small AM transmitter (medium wave, and illegal of course) so I could listen to it out in the garden on my transistor radio …
Btw the first record I bought – and I was very proud of it!
What’d I say part 1 and 2 by Ray Charles