Feb. 9, 2023
From the World of Entertainment. Raindrops. ‘La La Lala La La Lala La’. The piano trill on ‘Close to You’. Doesn’t take much of a musical cue before you find yourself singing right along.
Burt Bacharach died today at 95. His songs were marvelously positive and he was prolific, writing hundreds of songs for hundreds of artists.
Perhaps his most well known writer/singer pairing was with Dionne Warwick – ‘Walk on By’, ‘I’ll Never Fall in Love again’, ‘Alfie’, ‘San Jose’ and ‘Say a Little Prayer’.
He wrote with Hal David, ‘My Little Red Book’ (rec. by Manfred Mann), the drop dead, call the cops ‘The Look of Love’ for Dusty Springfield, ‘Promises, Promises’, and ‘I’ll Never Fall in Love Again’ for the Broadway musical. And with Carole Bayer-Sager (I Had a Crush on You – that’s not a song, I did have a crush!), ‘Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)’, performed by Christopher Cross. He was married to Bayer-Sager and also to Angie Dickinson.
It doesn’t stop. To put all these titles – even a selection – on his tombstone would require sinking a caisson. He gave us a melody, a beat and smile.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/burt-bacharach-composer-top-10-hits-dies-94-rcna14833
Turkey. Please say a prayer for an unimaginable 20,000 Turkish citizens who perished Monday in a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. The search for survivors is still going on.
https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/earthquake-turkey-syria/2023/02/09/id/1107925/
Random/1. In the 60s, my Uncle Walt worked for Alberto-Culver in Melrose Park, Il – he was was a professional painter. We had an endless supply of Alberto-VO5, Command Hair Grease (smelled good, red tube), Hollywood Pomade (attracted bugs) and whatever else he ‘procured’ from the place while he worked.
He was a farm boy from Ohio who served as a gunner in WWII – second day into Normandy, if I remember. He married my mom’s sister and spent a happy life in the western and southwest suburbs of Chicago.
The random thought I had was when he switched jobs and worked for Wilson Sporting Goods. I got a baseball glove. My cousin, a jock, got, among other items, a revered Wilson A2000 mitt. The Wilson building was brick, but the top of it was wrapped in bright blue, corrugated metal. Uncle Walt’s job was to paint that blue metal. From start to stop took him almost a full year. Then he did it again. I never saw him unhappy. It sure beat firing at Germans in the woods from a flatbed truck.
Random/2. Remember the song ‘Shannon’, by Henry Gross? Woke up to it this morning, thinking, wow, does he sound like Brian Wilson.
Gross, a session guitarist from Brooklyn, wrote and recorded the song in 1976 as a tribute to Carl Wilson’s dog, who died that year. He still tours at 71, and bills himself as ‘The One-Hit Wanderer’.
Last Not Least. Buffalo Bills defensive back, Damar Hamlin, is calling for prayer at football games after being brought back from a devastating heart attack on the field last month in Cincinnati.
At football games? Yep – take a knee and this time, pray. How ’bout all sports venues? In fact, let’s pray, America! Everywhere – schools, malls, in the car, on the way to work, at work and at home. Let’s see what happens!
One more. Do you think The Zingles is a good name for a band?