Like many other people, the recent news of Burt Bacharach's death sent me to youtube to remind myself of his achievements. And the thing which particularly caught my eye was a clip of a studio rehearsal before Dionne Warwick's original recording of I Say a Little Prayer.
I don't know whether this particular bit of footage is already well known - it seems to have come from a documentary - but either way it makes for fascinating watching and listening. An enthused, immersed Bacharach (at the piano) and Hal David are present, along with a trio of backing vocalists, and even though the performance isn't quite fixed yet, it's essentially already there. This tantalising glimpse into the creative process is followed by what appears to have been the very first time the song got a public airing in live performance, before the record was released.
I didn't hear Dionne Warwick's recording at the time; it was "a total bomb in the UK", according to a Bacharach forum, which would explain it. And when I eventually came across it after long exposure to the Franklin reworking it seemed a tad ... well, polite in comparison: the tempo seemed brisk, and when she sang along wordlessly to the melody, as though absent-mindedly, that brought it uneasily close to the kind of anonymous easy listening numbers which used to clog up nighttime programming on Radio 2.
That was my initial reaction, anyway. Now I incline more to the idea that the performance fits: despite thoughts of her lover it makes sense that the song's dominant rhythm should that of the no-nonsense working day, with those other ruminations fitted into such downtime as she can find: the commute, the coffeee break. And once you accept that reading then the point at which she hums along with the tune is easily accepted accepted as one of those moments. She's not succumbing to a frenzy of passion so much as having the occasional warming thought which makes the rest of the day tolerable.
And I'm assuming something approximating to such an interpretation makes sense for a lot of people as I've seen on a music forum comparing the two performances that many people do prefer Dionne Warwick's original, even though it's the Franklinised version which tends to crop up on compilations.
The world is big enough for both, of course. But the reason I wanted to bring this piece of film to the attention of anyone who might have missed it is that, whichever way you incline with regard to the rival versions, to hear Dionne Warwick singing it in the clip, accompanied only by Bacharach's piano, may be something of a revelation: despite the stops and starts it sounds more soulful to my ears than the final recording. And if Aretha Franklin happened to catch that documentary, assuming it was broadcast, then the blueprint for her interpretation was already there.
Warwick's first attempt at singing the song live, in a Boston nightclub, which follows the studio footage, is not quite so thrilling as her initial stabs at it. If the final studio recording could be described as brisk then what's initially presented to an audience is almost - well, not sluggish, exactly, but maybe a little too leisurely, too staid.
Anyway, see what you think:
I also came rather late to the knowledge that Dionne Warwick recorded the original demo of (There's) Always Something There to Remind Me. I can still remember first hearing Lou Johnson's recording in the early seventies, having only been acquainted before then with Sandie Shaw's UK hit version. Presumably both Johnson and Shaw benefitted from Warwick's groundwork, if the close interaction between writers and performer in the clip above is any guide, but I didn't know anything about that at the time. What surprised me then was that the restrained passion of Johnson's performance made the number much more affecting and revealed it as a soul song, not a pop song.
Shaw's is not a bad performance but it is certrainly brighter, brasher; whatever he may owe to Dionne Warwick' s example Johnson's take feels real. The arrangement is largely the same on both records but in Johnson's case there's an additional hint of foreboding suggested by the strings' plunge downward at the end, suggesting a loss which might just spiral into obsession. It's a coda which is not to be found on Sandie Shaw's version - nor, for that matter, on the recording eventually released by Dionne Warwick.
Was it on the latter's demo, I wonder, or was it something adlibbed when Johnson was rehearsing the number which Bacharach subsequently deemed good enough to keep and rework the arrangment around? Could it have been the composer's invention in the first place? Whatever, it gives a unique flavour to this release. And because Johnson is more restrained in his delivery than, say, Chuck Jackson might have been then the announcement of his vow never to forget his former lover is all the more unexpected and disturbing.
There is marvellous use made of Sandie Shaw's recording in
Peter Moffat's play Iona Rain. During a reunion of schoolfriends two men share the memory of the school's Sandie Shaw Appreciation
Society which meant that whenever you heard the song, inconveniently
floating into the classroom from a workman's radio or whatever, you were duty-bound
to stand to attention (not sure about removing the footwear).
At the end of the play one of them finds release in playing the record and
standing to attention; I won't spoil the story but let's just say that in the context of the play it's a moment of
emotional breakthrough.
That is a wholly inadequate summary of an excellent play, which can be
found in an
edition (above) with Moffat's later Nabokov's Gloves, which also
features grown men talking in a very adolescent but amusing way about
pop music - the old bonding-without-intimacy thing which some males seem
to be so good at. So I've heard.
In the case of the latter play Nick tells his friend Joe that he likes to put his favourite recordings to "the walking test": how far across Waterloo Bridge he is able to process while listening to each one on a Walkman (it was written in the nineties). Comparing Betty Everett's and Cher's versions of It's in His Kiss presents no problems:
The Cher version is two minutes and forty seconds long. Betty's is ten seconds shorter. Eight lamp-posts with Cher ... five only with Betty. Quicker walk with Cher ... it's the better version. It's a good test. It's applied mathematics.
Another record, however, defeats such measurements:
Nick: Walk On By. I saved it for the last because it was the easiest.
Joe: Very Easy.
Nick: Very. It's a long song. Three and a half minutes. But with Dionne ... listening to Dionne ...
Joe: Yes?
Nick: It's very weird. When the song ended ... When I stopped walking and came back to the world ...
Joe: What?
Nick: I was at Elephant and Castle.
Joe: In three and a half minutes.
Nick: I know. I think I flew.
Hmm ... Mr Moffat seems to have added on half a minute, unless there is some album version of which I know not, but let us not quibble.
Going back to I Say a Little Prayer, I wonder whether I'm alone in feeling a little cheated by the Aretha Franklin version. I always expect one more "Forever, forever" eruption at the end but instead she subsides into a reprise of the "Answer my prayer" segment. This is not a problem with the Dionne Warwick recording for the reasons outlined above: it's more about the odd snatched moment of daydreaming than fiery passion.
And before I ever heard the earlier release I can remember wondering, when Aretha Franklin came on the radio, "Hang on - oh, they've edited this down." But they hadn't. Or not as far as I know, anyway. There's no doubt it's a great performance but is it a perfect marriage of performance and song?
Not that it's really necessary to come to any firm conclusion. And let's gently prise the song away from those two great artists in order to end on a lighter note. I am not a particular fan of romcoms, but having seen the clip below on youtube I felt impelled to buy a copy of the film. If you are unfamiliar with the storyline then you may be puzzled by the meaningful looks which pass between two of the characters, which I shall explain in a moment. The main point is that it's entirely plausible that this song should be immediately familiar to a large crowd of people of different ages, a testament to the strength of the Bacharach-David partnership.
Sometime ago I wrote about my one and only experience of singing at a karaoke night, and how certain songs lent themselves better than others to such occasions. Anthemic songs did well, and more pretentious numbers were cruelly exposed. I Say a Little Prayer isn't an obvious anthem, yet it doesn't seem wrong as the choice in the film. It's about something in one way small and trivial - a woman at work daydreams about her boyfriend - and yet universal: we all need someone to make our daily routine bearable, to offer hope of something better, to - well, answer our prayer.
Here is the clip from said romcom, My Best Friend's Wedding, and here's what I wrote about it in an earlier post about Hal David (link below).
The details of the plot don't matter too much for the purposes of this post. The person seated opposite Julia Roberts' character is her former lover, about to marry someone else (Cameron Diaz), hence the looks which pass between them as the song progresses. Rupert Everett is masquerading as Roberts' boyfriend, and the impromptu song is part of this deception, intended to fool Diaz's family, gathered together at this pre-wedding, getting-to-know-you meal.
It is based on Aretha Franklin's version of the song with its gospel-style call and response, despite Rupert Everett's character invoking Dionne Warwick because he launches into it, but as Warwick had already done most of the heavy lifting in her original recording that seems entirely appropriate.
Links:
No comments:
Post a Comment