Customer Reviews

Burt Bacharach: Song By Song (Omnibus Press)

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Serene Dominic has written the book that anyone interested in Bacharach (or popular music of the 20th century) has been waiting for. This amazingly complete discography is written in such a breezy, amusing style you won't be able to put it down. Reproductions of period graphics, such as record jackets and sheet music covers help readers place the songs in the context of their times. Burt Bacharach himself vouches for the book's accuracy on a cover blurb. Well-researched, informative, colorful, and fun to read, this is sure to become a classic of pop music literature.

I found this book fascinating but flawed. Author Dominic has done a great service to those interested in the music of Burt Bacharach. Via this tome, I discovered several Bacharach tunes previously unknown to me. I also found that the original versions of certain songs were not the hit versions.
There is more trivia than a person could ask for scattered throughout this book. If it were written more seriously, with less attempts at puns, cutdowns, shaggy dog stories and quips, I think it would be a far stronger work. Dominic just cannot resist any opportunity to make a funny. At times, his quips are amusing, but more often, they invalidate his critical voice.
Another problem I had with the book was its organization. Dominic groups the Bacharach songs into periods of two to three years. Within those periods, the songs are presented in chronological order, as they were first recorded and released. This is fine, and I salute Dominic's scholarship.
But [and you knew there would be a 'but'!] there is no other way to cross-index the songs. Thus, eyestrain and brainstrain set in as the reader scans pages and paragraphs in search of a certain song. Many readers are not going to have this chronology in their heads. Had Dominic included an alphabetical song index in the back of the book, he would have made his work easier to access and more usable.
The post-1970s chapters are rough going, as Bacharach sinks into MOR mire, and Dominic struggles to find something of value to say about this work. He perks up considerably when Elvis Costello's collaboration occurs in the 1990s.
This book is loaded with interesting memorabilia--record sleeves, labels, etc.--and is well worth owning and reading. I just wish the tone had been less jocular and more refined. Sometimes I could hear the voice of Groucho Marx narrating the book as I read it. Comedy is a fine thing, but it is a strange bedfellow of scholarship.
This book is a valuable resource for anyone else attempting to write a 'song by song' volume for other composers. I appreciate the groundwork Dominic has achieved with this book.

So promises the cover. "For fans, serious record collectors, and music critics." Song by song, we presume.

What we get, instead, is snarky rock-style journalism--to be sure, many of Bacharach's early titles are trashed for (among other crimes) not being rock and roll. (What were they supposed to sound like??) Not that anyone ever went broke critiquing music from a rock-good/pop-bad perspective, but shouldn't there have been some warning that this was the same cliched, mean-toned prose to be found everywhere else?

Song analysis is next to none, and what little we get is occasionally bizarre. Ferrante and Teicher made a career of contrary-motion glissandos, claims the author, for example. I make a point of avoiding such inane, reductive journalism, and I had every reason to expect something more from this volume. Otherwise, I'd happily give it two or three stars, just for the fun photos and facts. Because of the false advertising, one star.

In an amazing feat of research and Bacharach fandom, Dominic Salerno traces the maestro's every songwriting move, from 1952 to the present. Going in, I considered myself a knowledgable Bacharach fan, but there I was, surprised and delighted by some new fact or tidbit on nearly every page. As Burt admits in a back-of-the-book interview, Dominic knows more about the back catalog than he does himself. Highly recommended!

I'm in the middle of reading this book for the fourth time since I got it in 2004. I keep coming back to it because it's so full of information and so entertaining at the same time. I have to disagree with some of the other critics who fault Dominic for his sense of humor. I found that the humor keeps you reading but doesn't distract from the purpose of the book.

I have many favorite examples of Dominic's sense of humor from the book - here's one. When describing "I Live In The Woods", a 1977 collaboration between Bacharach, Libby Titus and Carly Simon, Dominic describes the song as "a character sketch of a mysterious divorced single mother who's gossiped about by the town folk. The men are drawn to Carly's strange idiosyncracies, while the women think she's dangerous - about the same reaction husbands and wives would have to picking up a risque Carly Simon album cover." If you find that as funny as I do, then you'll love the book. If not, then perhaps you should pass.

In addition to his cheeky sense of humor, Dominic is adept at putting some of the subtleties of Bacharach's best work into words. He describes the difference between Bacharach's production of Dusty Springfield's "The Look Of Love" and Dusty's own production this way: "Audiophiles... prefer [Bacharach's version] for its dry, in-your-lap vocals and the closeness with which the sax solo was miked... Naturally, Dusty has the last word on her remake, which has sustained strings and just a hint of reverb... she achieves a vulnerability with her phrasing here that apparently she had a hard time capturing the song's composer present." Dominic's knowledgeable critiques have given me much greater insight into Bacharach's work than I would have gathered on my own.

Walking the line between funny and serious is challenging, but Dominic is more than up to that challenge. Highly recommended for Burt fans.

For anyone out there who is truly interested in the "nuts and bolts" connected with the vast amount of work that Burt Bacharach has blessed us with- this is the book for you!
What is so fascinating about this book,is that it simply tells about every song that Mr. Bacharach wrote, even if they were not with Hal David. The songs later in life seemed the most fascinating to me, as I was very unaware of them. For example, I was completely unaware of the fact that he wrote a song for "Chicago 26", or that 5 songs on the Neil Diamond album "Heartlight" are Bacharach/Diamond/Bayer/Sager compositions.
Even the songs I'm very familiar with, often have an interesting story associated with them. I found it very difficult to put this book down. If you are a fan, this book is a must!

this is the kind of Book if you are a Burt Bachrach fan then this is a must have and read. it covers his many,many,many classic songs and you get a story behind so much of it as well. Serene Dominic does a wonderful job here.