I have two things for you in honor of Burt Bacharach, the legendary songwriter who died Wednesday at 94.
First is his appearance on my radio show in January, 2006, when we talked about his career and then-new CD, “At This Time.” After several decades of hits — from the earliest collaborations with Hal David and Dionne Warwick to his more recent work with Elvis Costello and others — this was the first time Bacharach had written his own lyrics and become political. Listen to the conversation here.
The other is an item I originally posted in March, 2020, shortly after the world was shut down by the COVID pandemic.
On a flight home from her truncated college semester at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee College, senior composition major Shelbie Rassler had an idea — get her peers who are sheltering at home to each record a piece of her arrangement of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David classic, “What The World Needs Now.” So, she posted on her Facebook page:
“Your job is to just take a video of yourself singing (literally pick any part/the whole song/just 10 seconds/riff to the gods/up to you!!), playing your instrument along to the track, choreograph a dance to the music, anything your heart desires, and I’ll cut everything up create an arrangement from what y’all send me, and share it with you all because WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS LOVE SWEET LOVE Y’ALL LETS MAKE IT HAPPEN.”
Seventy-four of her fellow students responded and, after they’d all done their parts, Shelbie edited them together and produced this beautiful result. Some of these performers are amazingly good…