Burt Bacharach, Legendary Composer and Songwriter, Dies at 94
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Burt Bacharach, the composer considered among the greatest songwriters of the 20th century, has died. He was 94.
The musician died of natural causes at his Los Angeles home on Wednesday, his publicist Tina Brausam confirmed Thursday.
Bacharach leaves behind an astonishing legacy of more than 500 songs, including the hits “Walk on By,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” and “I Say a Little Prayer.” Over the course of seven decades, Bacharach had dozens of Top 40 hits and won three Academy Awards and six Grammys.
He began his songwriting in the 1950s and went on to pen songs for the likes of Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin, Tom Jones, and many others. Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, and Elvis Presley recorded their own covers of Bacharach’s work.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1928 and raised in New York City, Bacharach was the son of a pianist mother who encouraged him to study music himself. He was classically trained, including at the music conservatory at McGill University in Montreal, but his love of music really blossomed when he would sneak into jazz clubs while still a minor.
“They were just so incredibly exciting that all of a sudden, I got into music in a way I never had before,” Bacharach wrote in his memoir Anyone Who Had a Heart, published in 2013. “What I heard in those clubs turned my head around.”
After spending time in the Army, Bacharach pursued music professionally, touring with artists including the Ames Brothers and Paula Stewart, who would become his first wife. He also worked as an arranger with Marlene Dietrich, traveling with her on world tours in the late ’50s and early ’60s.
But Bacharach’s songwriting career was transformed in 1957 when he met Hal David, the lyricist with whom he would write so many of his signature songs, including Dionne Warwick’s hits “Walk on By,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” and others. Bacharach and David also wrote classics for other artists, like Tom Jones’ “What’s New Pussycat?” and Dusty Springfield’s “The Look of Love.”
The pair also shared the 1970 Academy Award for Best Original Song for B.J. Thomas’ track “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” which featured in the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Bacharach also won the Oscar for Best Original Score for the movie. In 1982, he and his then-wife Carole Bayer Sager also won Academy Awards for “Best That You Can Do,” the theme for the film Arthur.
Bacharach was married four times. Before lyricist Sager, to whom he was married between 1982 and 1991 and adopted a son, Christopher, Bacharach was married to actor Angie Dickinson between 1965 and 1980. Together they had a child, Nikki Bacharach, who died by suicide at 40 in 2007. He later married Jane Hansen in 1993, with whom he had two more children, Raleigh and Cooper. They remained together until his death. Bacharach’s first marriage to Paula Stewart lasted just five years, between 1953 and 1958.
Despite having fewer hits after the 1980s, Bacharach continued to perform and create new work into the 21st century, collaborating with the acts like Dr. Dre, Sheryl Crow, and others.
“I try to see humor in everything,” Bacharach told the Daily Beast in 2013. “I try to see the lightness in everything. I try to instill that in my family life, with my kids. It’s a serious world out there, so let’s celebrate lightness and humor.”
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