Burt Bacharach obituary: Composer worked with stars including Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield and Tom Jones during seven-decade career

Composer Burt Bacharach – perhaps best known for his Oscar-winning song Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head – has died aged 94.

Hailed as one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century, he wrote more than 500 songs, which were performed by more than 1,200 different artists, across his seven-decade career.

Despite numerous collaborations, it was the songs he wrote in the 1960s and 1970s with lyricist Hal David and performed by singer Dionne Warwick that achieved the greatest recognition, establishing all three as musical stars in their own rights.

His music – which was often described as ‘easy listening’ or ‘elevator music’ thanks to its catchy melodies – was inspired by an early love of jazz.

But fans of his work would argue that although instantly memorable and addictively hummable, the mixed meters, complex melodies, unusual chord progression and asymmetrical rhythms mean his work was far from ‘easy’.

An accomplished pianist as well as a composer, Bacharach arranged, conducted, and produced the majority of his own songs.

A six-time Grammy Award winner and three-time Academy Award winner, his composing skill earned him comparisons with American music greats including George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers.

Early collaborations included Perry Como and Jerry Butler, going on to work with stars including Frank Sinatra, Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones and the Carpenters.

Some of his biggest hits include the Oscar-winning Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, (They Long to Be) Close to You, Anyone Who Had A Heart, Always Something There To Remind Me, and What the World Needs Now Is Love.

Hollywood also played its part in amplifying his career, with many of his songs going on to become soundtracks to major films.

The Look of Love, which was used in the 1967 spy parody of a James Bond film, Casino Royale, became a gold record for Dusty Springfield and Brazilian musician Sergio Mendes, and was also inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Many years later, the spoof movie would lead to cameo roles for Bacharach in all three Austin Powers films, with Mike Myers calling him a “lucky charm” for the films.

What’s New Pussycat? – which featured in the 1965 Woody Allen film of the same name – gave Welsh singer Tom Jones his second top 40 US hit and was also nominated for an Oscar for best original song the following year. It went on to be sung by stars including Barbra Streisand, The Four Seasons and The Wailers.

His mention in Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life was proof of his rightful place in pop culture, as well as his reputation as a ladies man.

‘I did not want to disappoint my mother’

Born Burt Freeman Bacharach on 12 May 1928, in Kansas City, Missouri, his father was a newspaper columnist and his mother an amateur painter and pianist.

The family moved to New York when he was three. A Jewish family in a largely Catholic neighbourhood, Bacharach said in his 2013 autobiography, Anyone Who Had A Heart: My Life And Music, that he kept his faith to himself, and “didn’t want anybody to know about it”.

It was thanks to his mother’s love of music that Bacharach undertook piano lessons as a child. He hated them with a passion, but later told fans during gigs that he persevered as “I did not want to disappoint my mother”.

He went on to study music at Montreal’s McGill University, Quebec, Canada, before completing his training at Mannes School of Music, in New York, and at the Music Academy of the West in Montecito, California.

Not a fan of the classical music he would play in his classes, he would later sneak into jazz clubs as a teenager, with the style going on to influence his songwriting later in his career.

Drafted into the US army for two years in 1950 during the Korean War, and stationed in Germany, he got his first taste of working in music serving as a pianist at officer’s clubs and arranging music for dance bands.

Hitting it off with big band singer and actor Vic Damone during his time in the military, he went on to work with him as a pianist and conductor following his discharge.

Touring with Hollywood royalty

From there he began to play with other artists, including actress Marlene Dietrich who is said to have called working with him “seventh heaven,” according to the 1989 biography Marlene.

Looking back on his time with her in his autobiography, Bacharach wrote: “We went to Russia, Israel, the Middle East. Going with Marlene was like going in with a conquering army.”

As the Hollywood star’s musical director, arranging and conducting her nightclub shows, he gained greater public prominence, however their working relationship came to an end in the early 1960s, when Bacharach decided to devote himself to his own songwriting full time.

Looking back to the start of his career, Bacharach said he initially thought songwriting was “so startlingly simple, I thought I could write five or six a day”.

However, after a year or so of working, and “about a thousand” rejection letters, he concluded: “It’s hard to be simple.”

Without doubt, his most enduring and fruitful professional relationship was with lyricist Hal David, who he met in 1957. In the early and mid-sixties alone, the pair wrote over 100 songs together.

Work with Hal David and Dionne Warwick

But it was in 1961, when they discovered Dionne Warwick who was working as a session singer, that their partnership really took off.

During their time creating songs for Warwick, they wrote 39 of her chart hits including Don’t Make Me Over, I’ll Never Fall In Love Again, Walk On By and Do You Know The Way To San Jose.

In 1969, Bacharach and David ventured into theatre, writing hit musical Promises, Promises, based on the 1960 film The Apartment. Their first and only Broadway show, it won them a Grammy.

Less auspicious was their soundtrack for the 1973 movie Lost Horizon, a massive flop which led to lawsuits between the pair and their professional breakup.

In turn, their parting of ways led Warwick to sue them for failure to honour their contract working with her on her music. It was finally settled out of court in 1979 for $5m (£4.1m).

In 1975, Bacharach worked briefly with David again, producing a Motown album together.

And in 1985, Warwick and Bacharach were reunited too, when she sang his hit That’s What Friends Are For.

Co-written with his then-wife Carole Bayer Sager, the track featured Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and Gladys Knight and went on to win a Grammy for Song of the Year.

Warwick described her relationship with Bacharach at the time as: “Not just friends. We’re family.”

The three would work together once more in 2000, on songs for film Isn’t She Great, based on the life of Valley Of The Dolls novelist Jacqueline Susann.

In the 1980s, Bacharach’s music inspired many of the songs coming out of the post-punk era, and in the 1990s his work was introduced to a whole new generation of fans thanks to a lounge music resurgence, led by bands including Divine Comedy and The Mike Flowers Pops.

Named the “Sexiest Man Alive” by People Magazine in 2000, the noughties saw remixes and samples of his work high in the charts on numerous occasions.

An American Idol

A guest vocal coach on American Idol, an entire episode was also dedicated to his hits in 2006.

More modern collaborations include Sheryl Crow, Elvis Costello, Noel Gallagher and hip-hop producer Dr Dre.

In June 2015, Bacharach played the main stage at Glastonbury Festival, 15 years after he had been forced to pull out of the event due to a shoulder injury.

Bacharach was awarded the Johnny Mercer Award, the highest honour in the Songwriters Hall of Fame In 1996.

Other honours include the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Musical Achievement from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Grammy lifetime achievement award, where he was proclaimed music’s greatest living composer, in 2006.

A performer as well as a composer, Bacharach played concerts all over the world throughout his career, often accompanied by large orchestras.

Not known for his political songs, he made an exception in 2018 with Live To See Another Day, dedicated to the survivors of gun violence and with proceeds going to a charity run by the families of some of those killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

In late 2022, a New York dance troop celebrated Bacharach’s music in an evening of dance titled The Look Of Love, named after one of his biggest hits.

Even his pastime of horseracing – he was an owner and breeder of thoroughbreds for over 30 years – was influenced by his love of music, naming one of his champion horses Heartlight No. One after his Neil Diamond collaboration, inspired by film E.T.

Bacharach was married four times, first to TV actress Paula Stuart between 1953 and 1958, then to actress Angie Dickinson between 1965 and 1980.

Bacharach and Dickinson had one daughter together, Nikki, who took her own life in 2007, aged 40, after battling with Asperger’s Syndrome from a young age.

His third marriage to lyricist Carole Bayer Sager lasted from 1982 to 1991, and they adopted a son, Christopher.

His fourth and final marriage was to former ski-instructor Jane Hanson, 32 years his junior, with whom he has a son and a daughter – Oliver and Raleigh.

Bacharach is survived by ex-wives Dickinson and Bayer Sager, his wife Jane, and children Christopher, Oliver and Raleigh.