Burt Bacharach’s early albums with Dionne Warwick “seemed to say that you didn’t have to sacrifice moral and emotional ambiguity for aural coherence, that a smooth sound wasn’t perforce a simple one,” Hilton Als writes.
, whose various complexities—and the apparent ease with which they poured forth—no doubt inspired some of the complexity Bacharach brought to pop music, which he began to explore after a stint as an Army dance-band arranger in Germany. Back in the U.S., he became an accompanist for the singer Vic Damone, and worked with Dietrich and others, before he and his then collaborator Hal David realized that Warwick, who was cutting demos for them, was really a star.
Those records—“Make It Easy on Yourself,” “Walk On By,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” all written and recorded between 1962 and 1968—did something profound to my way of hearing pop. They seemed to say that you didn’t have to sacrifice moral and emotional ambiguity for aural coherence, that a smooth sound wasn’t perforce a simple one. As a trio, those three gave music a different kind of voice; it wasn’t limited to one genre—not soul, not country, not standards.
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