Carole King has written an excellent remembrance of Burt Bacharach for The Washington Post, but it’s also on her Facebook page for free.

Carole writes:

In 1962, the lyricist (and my then-husband) Gerry Goffin and I were driving up the Garden State Parkway when we heard Dionne Warwick’s recording of “Don’t Make Me Over” for the first time. We were stunned into silence. If we hadn’t been in the left lane between exits, it would have been a pull-over-to-the-side-of-the-road moment.When the song was over, I exclaimed: “What was that?”By “that” I meant the time signature changes, the instrumentation, and the unpredictable chords that allowed the melody to flow over them and carry the power of Warwick’s performance downstream.Gerry turned off the radio. I knew that he was already thinking about lyrics for a song in which we would aspire to rise to the standard of what we later learned was the songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

The rest of the piece is on Facebook.

Carole and Gerry Goffin, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, not to mention Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil were all part of what seems now like a quaint era of post Tin Pan Alley writing teams that came from New York and reinvented pop culture.

Along with the Motown teams in Detroit, and the Stax powerhouse couple of Isaac Hayes and David Porter, plus the Beatles, Paul Simon, and Bob Dylan, then Elton John and Billy Joel, they laid out the foundation for everything that followed. They were Gershwin’s and Cole Porter’s descendants. When you look at the contemporary music scene, you could cry for how far we’ve fallen.

Paul McCartney wrote today on Twitter: Dear Burt Bacharach has passed away. His songs were an inspiration to people like me. I met him on a couple of occasions and he was a very kind and talented man who will be missed by us all. His songs were distinctive and different from many others in the ’60s and ’70s…When we met not too long ago he reminded me that he had been the musical director for Marlene Dietrich when The Beatles shared the bill with her at the London Palladium. He was a lovely man. Nancy and I send lots of love to his family.  

It’s funny how Goffin and King wanted to be Bacharach and David, Lennon and McCartney wanted to be Goffin and King, and so on. Lightning struck that generation. We’re so lucky it happened.

There are plenty of great hits written by Burt Bacharach not sung by Dionne Warwick, Jackie DeShannon, or Dusty Springfield. Here are six, and I’m not even including “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” by BJ Thomas or “They Long to Be Close to You” by the Carpenters.

These were all hits, and I guarantee you will start humming them all the time. There’s nothing like Marilyn McCoo singing “One Less Bell.” Nothing.

Dionne Warwick has posted her thoughts on the passing of Burt Bacharach to Twitter:

“Burt’s transition is like losing a family member. These words I’ve been asked to write are being written with sadness over the loss of my Dear Friend and my Musical Partner. On the lighter side we laughed a lot and had our run ins, but always found a way to let each other know our family, like roots, were the most important part of our relationship. My heartfelt condolences go out to his family, letting them know he is now peacefully resting and I too will miss him.”

Dionne, Burt, and Hal David had an unprecedented collaboration, scoring dozens of hits like “I Say a Little Prayer” and “Walk on By.” She was their muse, and she had no other writers throughout the Sixties. Most artists wouldn’t even attempt a Bacharach- David song unless Warwick had done it first.

The cracks in their relationship only started to show in 1970, when the Carpenters released “Close to You” and BJ Thomas recorded “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” By 1974 Warwick hit it big with The Spinners on “Then Came You.” She went through a dry spell until Clive Davis signed her to Arista in 1979 and a whole new chapter began.

But Bacharach also hit a dry spell. After the Fifth Dimension hit number 1 with “One Less Bell to Answer,” the team took a backseat to 70s classic rock and the advent of the singer songwriters like Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, and Carole King.

There was also a lawsuit filed by Warwick against the pair of songwriters. She’d signed a deal at Warner Bros. Records that was contingent upon them writing for her. But the team suffered a setback after working on a movie bomb, “Lost Horizon.” They stopped working for a while and reneged on their promise to Warwick. Somehow it was all settled out of court.

Meantime, the Warwick era needed time to settle in and become classic. It happened pretty fast, as the records never went out of style all that time. They never have, to this day, and never will.