Post by erik on Jan 1, 2022 18:49:22 GMT -5
One of the big hit collaborations of Dionne Warwick and the songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David is in this first Pop Music Hits Spotlight segment of 2022.
WALK ON BY (Dionne Warwick; Scepter; 1964)—In a long career that included such hits as “Don’t Make Me Over”, “Anyone Who Had A Heart”, “You’ll Never Get To Heaven”, and many others, the team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David can be said to have had their greatest overall success with R&B/pop singing legend Dionne Warwick. Their hit making skills with her extended all the way out to the winter of 1969-70, when her recording of “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again” was a massive hit (it would later earn her the Grammy for Best Contemporary Female Vocal Performance). One of the duo’s most masterful collaborations with Warwick was on “Walk On By”, which she recorded at New York City’s A&B Recording Studios during the same sessions in December 1963 that were to yield “Anyone Who Had A Heart”. With a backing session crew that included pianist Paul Griffin, organist Artie Butler, and tenor saxophonist Paul Winter, “Walk On By” managed to find a huge audience, even with all the radical changes being wrought by the Beatles and their British Invasion brethren, when it was released in April 1964. In reaching #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June, it helped to accelerate Warwick’s position as one of the great pop and R&B stylists of all times. She would continue to have hits courtesy of the Bacharach/David team throughout the rest of the decade, although her highest charting record was actually with a Dory Previn-penned movie hit, “Theme From Valley Of The Dolls’” in the spring of 1968. After her late 1970 hit version of “Make It Easy On Herself”, Warwick didn’t have another major hit until she collaborated with the Spinners on “Then Came You”, which hit #1 on the Hot 100 in October 1974. Meanwhile, “Walk On By”, besides being a big hit for her, was also recorded by Memphis R&B legend Isaac Hayes in a vastly extended version for his landmark 1969 album Hot Buttered Soul; it managed to reach #30 on the Hot 100 in October 1969 as the B-side of his version of Jimmy Webb’s “By The Time I Get To Phoenix”.
WALK ON BY (Dionne Warwick; Scepter; 1964)—In a long career that included such hits as “Don’t Make Me Over”, “Anyone Who Had A Heart”, “You’ll Never Get To Heaven”, and many others, the team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David can be said to have had their greatest overall success with R&B/pop singing legend Dionne Warwick. Their hit making skills with her extended all the way out to the winter of 1969-70, when her recording of “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again” was a massive hit (it would later earn her the Grammy for Best Contemporary Female Vocal Performance). One of the duo’s most masterful collaborations with Warwick was on “Walk On By”, which she recorded at New York City’s A&B Recording Studios during the same sessions in December 1963 that were to yield “Anyone Who Had A Heart”. With a backing session crew that included pianist Paul Griffin, organist Artie Butler, and tenor saxophonist Paul Winter, “Walk On By” managed to find a huge audience, even with all the radical changes being wrought by the Beatles and their British Invasion brethren, when it was released in April 1964. In reaching #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June, it helped to accelerate Warwick’s position as one of the great pop and R&B stylists of all times. She would continue to have hits courtesy of the Bacharach/David team throughout the rest of the decade, although her highest charting record was actually with a Dory Previn-penned movie hit, “Theme From Valley Of The Dolls’” in the spring of 1968. After her late 1970 hit version of “Make It Easy On Herself”, Warwick didn’t have another major hit until she collaborated with the Spinners on “Then Came You”, which hit #1 on the Hot 100 in October 1974. Meanwhile, “Walk On By”, besides being a big hit for her, was also recorded by Memphis R&B legend Isaac Hayes in a vastly extended version for his landmark 1969 album Hot Buttered Soul; it managed to reach #30 on the Hot 100 in October 1969 as the B-side of his version of Jimmy Webb’s “By The Time I Get To Phoenix”.