Burt Bacharach Releases Six CD Career-Spanning Set

Few songwriters have had the success that Burt Bacharach has had over the last 50 years. Along with songwriting partner Hal David, their music has scaled the pop, rock, R&B and country charts with music that has become a major part of the rock era songbook.

Burt Bacharach Anyone Who Had A Heart

Many of those hits are collected on the new album The Art of the Songwriter: Anyone Who Had a Heart – The Best of Burt Bacharach, a 2-CD set being released by UMe on May 28.

While we’re yet to get the definitive box set of Bacharach’s hits as done by all of the artists that made them famous, this album does gather quite a few of the biggest. Unfortunately, the full cannon of Dionne Warwick’s indelible versions of his songs are not included with only her Anyone Who Had a Heart making the cut. Instead, we get Aretha Franklin’s I Say a Little Prayer (no real complaint on that one), Sybil’s Don’t Make Me Over, the Marvelette’s Message to Michael and Gloria Gaynor’s Walk on By.

Fortunately, for those who are willing to pay import prices, there is a six-CD version of the album being released in Europe that picks up three additional Warwick hits and a whole lot of what is missing here along with a two-CD set with a different track list from the U.S. version.

The six-CD set is of particular interest as it spreads the hits over four of the discs while adding a fifth with Bacharach’s versions of many of the songs and a sixth dedicated to mainly jazz artists.

So, as we did when the Rolling Stones released the various configurations of GRRR!, we’ve put together a chart to try and decipher the various versions of these Burt Bacharach retrospectives.

Track List:

Tagged as: 1960s, 2010s, Aretha Franklin, Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager, Christopher Cross, Cilla Black, Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, Engelbert Humperdinck, Gene Pitney, Gloria Gaynor, Hal David, Hollies, Isaac Hayes, Mel Torme, Michael Jackson, pop, Sandie Shaw, Sybil, The Marvelettes