LINER
NOTES FOR
DIONNE WARWICK'S HERE I AM
By
Richie Unterberger
After
an initial flush of
hits that had made Dionne Warwick one of the hottest artists of 1964,
she cooled off quite a bit in the following year, with none of her
releases reaching the Top Forty. But the production team of Burt
Bacharach and Hal David, who were also responsible for writing the
lion's share of her material, stuck with her. All but three of the
songs on the Warwick LP that appeared in late 1965, Here I Am, were Bacharach-David
compositions. While none of them were smashes on the order of "Walk On
By" and "Anyone Who Had a Heart," three of them were moderate hits. In
common with her other early albums for the Scepter label, several of
the others were first-rate Bacharach-David songs and Warwick vocal
performances that remain primarily known only to fans of Warwick or the
songwriters.
"We
had a
flexible and equal relationship from the off," commented Warwick to
Lois Wilson in Record Collector
about her remarkably strong and lengthy collaboration with
Bacharach-David. "If a particular word didn't fit a note then I'd
change it. I was left to interpret their songs my way. No one demoed
them beforehand. They were written specifically for me. [Hal David] is
a beautiful lyricist. He writes to the
heart, not at it. He's a genius. I was very proud to be a part of what
would later be known by the music industry as the 'triangle marriage.'"
As was customary for albums by pop-rock stars of the
mid-1960s, several of the songs on Here
I Am had already come out as singles, starting with the title
track, which peaked at a mere #65 in mid-1965. Demure even by the
standards of Bacharach-David-penned Warwick ballads, it was in keeping
with the team's drift toward lush adult pop, though it does pep up with
their trademark near-bossa-nova rhythms after a while. It might well
have reached more listeners as a part of the soundtrack album to What's New Pussycat?, which went to
#14 in the LP charts. The far more assertive, uptempo "Looking with My
Eyes" was no more of a success later in 1965, reaching only #64, and
perhaps had a few too many melodic twists and turns to be a big AM
radio hit. For those who savor Bacharach-David's risky sophistication,
however, it's an obscure nugget, particularly in those passages where
it suddenly changes gears to a stuttering, melancholy jazzy piano lick
wholly unrelated to other parts of the song.
The Bacharach-David number that returned Warwick to
the Top Forty (though only just) shortly after its release in late
1965, however, was "Are You There (With Another Girl)." Noted as one of
the more vengeful items in the Warwick-Bacharach-David catalog, it
reached #39 in early 1966 and marked a welcome return to some of the
R&B flourishes that the singer and songwriters had deftly
incorporated into their earlier work. "Yeah, we had a lot of fun doing
that song, especially the 'oom pah pah pity the girl' bit," Warwick
recalled in the liner notes to The
Look of Love: The Burt Bacharach Collection. "My cousin Myrna
did that part. Burt wanted her to sound like a whistle. It's just one
of those good songs."
Like Warwick's previous albums, the record contained
several Bacharach-David songs that, with the benefit of hindsight, seem
about as appropriate choices for singles as the ones that came out on
45s. "In Between the Heartaches" in particular sounds like a hit-worthy
lost gem, with some of Warwick's most affecting high vocals and an
ultra-dramatic arching orchestrated arrangement, particularly at the
points where she's joined by angelic backup singers and drums boom for
emphasis. Jazz artists Stan Getz and Richard "Groove" Holmes covered
the song in the 1960s, as did easy listening group the Anita Kerr
Singers, though it took veteran soul singers Phyllis Hyman and Ronald
Isley to put the song back into the public eye somewhat via vocal
renditions in the early 2000s. "If I Ever Make You Cry" was another
ballad whose unpredictably zigzagging melody, as pleasing as it was,
perhaps disqualified it from candidacy for 45 status, though both
Warwick and Bacharach have cited both tunes as among their favorite
non-hit collaborations of the era.
The more conventional and accessible "Don't Go
Breaking My Heart" was, more than anything else on the album, typical
of the lightly swinging bossa nova rhythms often heard on Warwick's
mid-to-late-'60s recordings. The song had actually been recorded
slightly earlier by Bacharach himself, who released it on a single in
May 1965 (with female vocalists handling the singing). As a testament
to its listener-friendliness, Latin jazz-influenced easy listening
stars Herb Alpert and Sergio Mendes both recorded cover versions
shortly afterward. "The biggest influence in pop music for me could
have been the Brazilian people," commented Bacharach about the bossa
nova flavor of songs such as these in the liner notes to The Look of Love: The Burt Bacharach
Collection. "They were wonderful. When I was conducting for
[Marlene] Dietrich years and years ago, I was listening to people like
Jobim and Milton Nascimento. I always loved hearing Brazilian music."
Of the other trio of Bacharach-David songs, "Window
Wishing" resembles some of the slicker Warwick hits to follow in the
next few years, while "How Can I Hurt You?" uses the mock-circus
rhythms with which the pair sometimes punctuated their compositions.
Those circus rhythms are so pronounced on "Long Day, Short Night," the
tempo so frantic, and the backup vocals so much closer to the style of
1962-63 Shirelles than 1965 Dionne Warwick, that one's tempted to
wonder if this might have been recorded earlier than the rest of the LP.
Warwick had never stuck exclusively to
Bacharach-David compositions on her albums, and the three songs from
outside sources on Here I Am
were indicative of her occasional taste for both Broadway and gospel.
Written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, "Once in a Lifetime" had
been popularized by the early-'60s musical comedy Stop the World, I Want to Get Off,
and in fact Dionne had covered another song by the same composers ("Who
Can I Turn To") on her previous album, The Sensitive Sound of Dionne Warwick.
"I Love You Porgy," of course, came from the even more popular musical Porgy and Bess. With "This Little
Light," however, Warwick flashed back to her gospel roots, playing
piano on the track as well.
Though Here I Am
contained no big hit singles, it did pretty well on the album charts,
reaching #45 in the pop listings and going all the way to #3 in the
R&B ones. While Warwick, Bacharach, and David would continue to
collaborate in the studio for years to come, Dionne was also making
quite a mark as a live performer, presenting popular Bacharach-David
songs and some outside material that didn't find a home on her studio
releases. That side of her work was documented in the 1966 album Dionne Warwick in Paris, also
reissued on CD by Collectors' Choice Music. -- Richie Unterberger
unless otherwise specified.
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