Burt Bacharach

Biography

Burt Bacharach composed the music that went with the lyrics of Hal David in a series of hit songs for singer Dionne Warwick in the 1960s. These hits included “(They Long to Be) Close to You” (1963); “Walk on By” (1964); “A House is Not a Home” (1964); and “What the World Needs Now is Love” (1967). These songs have also been performed and recorded by other artists – “Close to You,” for example, is perhaps best remembered as the breakthrough hit for Karen and Richard Carpenter, who recorded their version of it in 1970.

Bacharach is also a prolific composer of movie soundtracks. Among the movies he has scored: “What’s New Pussycat?” (1965); “Casino Royale” (1967); “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969); “Lost Horizon” (1973); and “Arthur” (1981).

In 1998, Bacharach told an interviewer about his early days working with Hal David. “We’d work together in a room with a window that didn’t open and a kind of beat-up piano, both of us smoking.”