Burt Bacharach

Burt Bacharach (born May 12, 1928, Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.—died February 8, 2023, Los Angeles, California) was an American songwriter and pianist who from the late 1950s wrote dozens of hit popular songs and also composed for stage and film, mostly in collaboration with lyricist Hal David.

Bacharach studied under Darius Milhaud, Bohuslav Martinů, and Henry Cowell. In the 1950s he wrote arrangements for Steve Lawrence and Vic Damone and later toured with Marlene Dietrich. In the late 1950s he began his long association with David, which would produce many hits especially for singer Dionne Warwick, including “Walk On By,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” and “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” He and David created the successful musical Promises, Promises (1968), and their score for the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) won an Academy Award, as did the movie’s song “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.”

Bacharach later cowrote (with Carole Bayer Sager, among others) the Oscar-winning song “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)” for the comedy Arthur (1981). He and Sager subsequently collaborated on a number of hits and were married from 1982 to 1991. His later works included the album Painted from Memory (1998), a collaboration with singer-songwriter Elvis Costello; the score for the film A Boy Called Po (2016); and the EP Blue Umbrella (2020), which he made with songwriter and producer Daniel Tashian.

Bacharach received a number of Grammy Awards throughout his career, including for song of the year for “That’s What Friends Are For” (cowritten with Sager). In 2009 he was honoured with a Grammy for lifetime achievement, and three years later he and David shared the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Bacharach’s memoir, Anyone Who Had a Heart (cowritten with Robert Greenfield), was published in 2013.