Burt Bacharach – That’s What Friends are For (Piano Solo arr.) sheet music

Burt Bacharach

Burt Bacharach (Kansas City and Kansas City, May 12, 1928 – Los Angeles, February 8, 2023) was a composer, pianist, record producer and singer who composed hundreds of pop songs from the late 1950s until the 1980s, many in collaboration with lyricist Hal David. Bacharach’s songs have been recorded by more than 1,000 different artists.

He is considered one of the most important composers of popular music of the 20th century.

In 2015, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Bacharach and David at number 32 on their list of the ‘100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time’.

He was born in Kansas City, in the bosom of a Jewish family; he was the son of Irma M. Freeman and Mark Bertram ‘Bert’ Bacharach, a well-known syndicated newspaper columnist. When he was small, they moved to Kew Gardens (Queens), in New York.

Thanks to his talent, he obtained scholarships that allowed him access to good conservatories, where he received lessons from composers such as Darius Milhaud or Bohuslav Martinů.

After completing his military service in a marching band, he began his artistic career working as a pianist, arranger and musical director for Marlene Dietrich.

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Bacharach was born in Kansas City and grew up in the Queens borough of New York.[10] His father, Mark Bertram ‘Bert’ Bacharach, was a successful journalist and his mother, Irma, née Freeman, painted and composed songs as an amateur. She gets Burt to give piano lessons.

The family is Jewish, but not practicing. ‘The children I met were Catholic,’ he said. ‘I was Jewish, but I didn’t want anyone to know.’ After high school at Forest Hills High School (New York) which he completed in 1946, he entered the New School for Social Research in New York where he took lessons from Darius Milhaud, then at the Mannes School of Music in New York York where he took lessons from Bohuslav Martinů, eventually being accepted to McGill University in Montreal where he earned a Bachelor of Music (B.A.).

Marlene Dietrich hired Bacharach as a musical arranger in the mid-1950s; together they staged a theatrical number and an ambitious one-woman show. Bacharach’s arrangements are better suited to Dietrich’s alto register; with what he calls during his show ‘my director’, the star recorded four albums and several singles between 1957 and 1964 (What happened to those flowers?) adapted in French by René Rouzaud and Francis Lemarque ), Bitte geh nicht fort, cover of Jacques Brel’s Ne me quitte pas, Blowin’ in the Wind, cover of Bob Dylan).

Trijntje Oosterhuis, Gene Pitney, Tom Jones, Aretha Franklin, BJ Thomas, Dusty Springfield, Carpenters, Barbra Streisand, Isaac Hayes, Sacha Distel, Claude François, The Isley Brothers, The Stranglers i Diana Krall, they have all sung with Bacharach.

The emblematic performer of the tandem is Dionne Warwick, whose name is closely related to the repertoire and in particular to the success Walk On By.

Burt Bacharach is also known to have collaborated with other authors such as Elvis Costello.

His name is associated with cinema, as he composed scores for films (What’s New, Pussycat?), 1965; The fox escapes at three, 1966; Casino Royale, 1967; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969 ).

He won the Polar Music Prize in 2001.

In 2008, he was one of the most vocal critics of US presidential candidate John McCain.

Most successful works

Baby, It's You (The Shirelles, 1962)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Gene Pitney, 1962, extret del film homònim ⁰)
Don't Make Me Over (Dionne Warwick, 1962)
Make it Easy On Yourself (Jerry Butler, 1962)
Twenty-Four Hours From Tulsa (Gene Pitney, 1963)
Blue on Blue (Bobby Vinton, 1963)
Anyone Who Had a Heart (Dionne Warwick, 1963)
Wives and Lovers (Jack Jones, 1963)
Walk On By (Dionne Warwick, 1964)
Wishin' and Hopin' (Dusty Springfield, 1964)
(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me (Sandie Shaw, 1964, després Naked Eyes, 1982)

A House is Not a Home (Dionne Warwick, 1964)
What the World Needs Now Is Love (Jackie DeShannon 1965)
What's New Pussycat? (Tom Jones 1965)

Alfie (Cilla Black, 1966)

This Guy's is Love Eith Yout (Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass 1967)
I Say a Little Prayer For You (Dionne Warwick, 1966)
The Look of Love (Dusty Springfield 1967 from Casino Royale)


Do You Know the Way to San José (Dionne Warwick, 1968)
Promises, promises (Jill O'Hara, 1968 i Dionne Warwick, 1968)

La banda sonora de Broadway li va fer guanyar un Grammy el 1969.

Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head (from the film music of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)

I'll Never Fall in Love Again (Dionne Warwick 1969, from the musical Promises)
(They Long to Be) Close to You (The Carpenters 1970)
One Less Bell to Answer (The 5th Dimension 1970)
You'll Never Get to Heaven (The Stylistics 1973)
Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do) (Christopher Cross, 1981, OST Arthur)

On My Own (Patti LaBelle & Michael McDonald (1986)
That's What Friends Are For (1982)