{"id":1712,"date":"2010-12-29T23:25:33","date_gmt":"2010-12-30T04:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1712"},"modified":"2015-09-25T20:00:32","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T00:00:32","slug":"walk-on-by","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1712","title":{"rendered":"The Greatest Song(s)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theme Songs Page<\/a>\u00a0| Previous Theme Song<\/a>\u00a0| Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n

The Greatest Song(s)<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Walk On By<\/em>, by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Sung by Dionne Warwick 1964, Encountered 1964<\/h3>\n

Trying to talk about my encounter with the rock and pop music of the 1960s forces me to resort to metaphor.\u00a0 Sixties music smacked me in the face, it rocked my world, it turned my world upside down.<\/p>\n

For all of that, it was a gradual process, though it started with a bang.<\/p>\n

As my earlier pieces make clear, I was not much into 1950s rock \u2013 not in the 1950s, anyway.\u00a0 Some of my friends were, and what the 1960s held in store for them musically cannot have been quite as overwhelming as it was for me.\u00a0 I was behind the curve.<\/p>\n

To catch up, I first had to picture myself as someone capable of being receptive to that kind of music.\u00a0 And initially I couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 My failure of imagination was due to two rather different factors.<\/p>\n

First, there was the force, for good and ill both, of my parents\u2019 tastes.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve read about my earlier Theme Songs, you know the sorts of things I had<\/em> been listening to: mostly a selection from what my parents had made available to me.[1]\u00a0 It was musically nourishing, all right,\u00a0overly so in fact.\u00a0 Up to that point it had left me too fulfilled to look around.\u00a0 That was coming to an end now.\u00a0 Though I didn\u2019t recognize it just yet, my parents had “gone about as fer as they could go.”\u00a0 Oh, my stepdad might buy my mom the latest original cast albums from Broadway musicals, but he basically left off with early Sondheim.\u00a0 Judy Garland and Marlene Dietrich, about whom I\u2019ve already written, were still singing, but doing nothing new and exciting.<\/p>\n

My folks\u2019 radio stations were WJR in Detroit and the University of Michigan station, WUOM.\u00a0 WJR, to the limited extent it was about music at all, was kind of middle-of-the-road-ish<\/a>, and WUOM was for classical music, educational fare, and Michigan football<\/a>.\u00a0 There was nothing wrong with them, but again, they were just not breaking new musical ground.<\/p>\n

That was okay with my folks: they didn\u2019t want any truck with new musical ground.\u00a0 And here we come to the second factor I had to overcome: parental disdain.\u00a0 Both my mom and my stepdad entertained a visceral revulsion toward the ever-so-slightly-oppositional-defiant style of 1950s American youth icons (think James Dean, Elvis Presley, and Marlon Brando).\u00a0 To them, this wasn\u2019t a minor matter of style, it was a fight for the very soul of our society.\u00a0 Such revulsion not only left out of the question any serious parental attempt to listen to or hear what the first generation of rockers were providing, but also extended to expressions of disgust in which I was expected to share.<\/p>\n

And, out of sheer loyalty, that\u2019s what I did.\u00a0 For a while.\u00a0 My parochial school, which covered twelve grades, had but one cafeteria, and I remember sitting there as a grade schooler in the late 1950s and making scornful remarks about the high school girls in their signature bobby socks and saddle shoes (standard wear for girls of that era who might be listening to Elvis and his ilk) \u2013 about them and<\/em> their music \u2013 really for no other reason than that that was what my mom would have done. \u00a0Nobody else ever joined in, but I never took the hint.<\/p>\n

Becoming an adolescent would inevitably entail my beginning to think for myself.\u00a0 And that, in turn, would inevitably involve me in an embrace of a lot of things my mom hated.\u00a0 All the same, one generally does these things by steps.\u00a0 And I\u2019m pretty sure that the first step of my initiation came through WJR, the station my mom with all her musical prejudices found comfortable to listen to almost every day.<\/p>\n

In 1964, however, WJR opened up a little bit, rehiring (from a spell in San Francisco) the slightly adventurous DJ and all-around radio personality J.P. McCarthy<\/a>, who had both the Morning Music Hall and the Afternoon Music Hall programs.\u00a0 McCarthy, if I remember correctly, was not orthodoxly opposed to new sounds.\u00a0 And a lot of new sounds were happening in 1964.\u00a0 April of that year saw Barbra Streisand charting with People<\/a><\/em>, and Dionne Warwick charting with Walk On By<\/a><\/span><\/em>,[2] both of which I am pretty certain I first heard on McCarthy\u2019s program.[3]\u00a0 I remember Mother commenting with astonishment but not disgust at the then-new Streisand phenomenon.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember her saying anything about Warwick.[4]<\/p>\n

If she had looked into Warwick, though, she\u2019d have known that Warwick was the test pilot for many of the songs produced by Brill Building tunesmiths Burt Bacharach and Hal David, but also that Bacharach was just coming off a six-year occasional gig as the conductor for \u2013 Marlene Dietrich\u2019s orchestra!<\/a>\u00a0 Walk On By<\/em> was full-throated 60s pop, but it was also not rock, as one might expect from Bacharach\u2019s Dietrich pedigree.\u00a0 (That non-rock pedigree may have had something to do with the song appearing on WJR.)<\/p>\n

I remember being blown away by both songs, but being aware, immediately, that Streisand\u2019s and Warwick\u2019s hits came from entirely different musical countries.\u00a0 The former was my parents\u2019 music continued, maybe freshly repackaged.\u00a0 The latter, on the other hand, was \u2013 well, what was it?<\/p>\n

That is actually a surprisingly tough thing to say.\u00a0 Here\u2019s how the very articulate Alec Cumming phrases it in his notes to the wonderful 3-CD Bacharach anthology The Look of Love<\/em> (1998):<\/p>\n

\u201cWalk On By\u201d has the ability to stop you dead in your tracks.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s the fl\u00fcgelhorn.\u00a0 Or those pounding doubled-piano breaks.\u00a0 Or maybe it\u2019s the echoed background singers, with their desperate little joke (\u201cDon\u2019t. Stop. Don\u2019t. Stop.\u201d) Or the strings that at one instant swell up like a sea of tears, then next moment slink away.<\/p>\n

In less than three minutes, Bacharach takes you on what seems like a compressed tour of the whole territory of heartbreak, courtesy of his amazing mastery of the pop orchestra.\u00a0 He composes, he orchestrates, he conducts, and he creates a sound that is uniquely his, one I would come to know as the quintessential sound of 60s pop.<\/p>\n

Part of the wonder is the rhythmic uniqueness of it.\u00a0 When you look at the sheet music, it seems to be in 4\/4 throughout.\u00a0 But the introductory rhythm break ups the bars in a way you can only hear, not count.\u00a0 It feels as if there\u2019s a shift every half-bar, as if fragments of bars are being fused in weird places.\u00a0 It should slow the singer and the fl\u00fcgelhorn and the strings down to a halting crawl, but somehow it propels them to lyrical heights.\u00a0 Don\u2019t ask me how he does it.\u00a0 Nearly half a century later, it still seems wondrous to me.<\/p>\n

Which is not to say it\u2019s all about the composer and the orchestra.\u00a0 It\u2019s also about the lyricist and the singer.\u00a0 Especially the singer.\u00a0 In commenting about each of them, though, I\u2019m even more at a loss for words than I was in talking about the music.\u00a0 What can one say about utter perfection?\u00a0 For once I am not even going to try.<\/p>\n

In the years since then, I\u2019ve heard lots and lots of songs.\u00a0 This one remains my very favorite.<\/p>\n

And when I first heard it, early in 1964, as a high school freshman, I knew immediately I\u2019d found something my parents knew nothing about and wouldn\u2019t care to, but that I desperately wanted more of.<\/p>\n

And so, at age 14, I started to explore.<\/p>\n

\n

[1].\u00a0 Oh, I had<\/em> made my parents buy me the occasional 45 hit that I\u2019d been exposed to by one or another friend or at school, or maybe even heard on the radio stations my folks listened to.\u00a0 Examples I can think of are Sixteen Tons<\/a><\/em> by Tennessee Ernie Ford (1955), Oh-Oh, I\u2019m Falling In Love Again<\/a><\/em> by Jimmie Rodgers (1958), and The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don\u2019t be Late)<\/a> b\/w Alvin\u2019s Harmonica<\/a><\/em>, by Ross Bagdasarian\/David Seville\/The Chipmunks (1961), not to mention the Singing Nun LP<\/a><\/em> (1963).\u00a0 But none of these qualified as precursors of the pop and rock revolutions.<\/p>\n

[2].\u00a0 There is an excellent YouTube slide show of the complete song here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[3].\u00a0 Also three or four Beatles songs, but that\u2019s another story (see the next entry).\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I ever heard the Beatles on WJR.<\/p>\n

[4].\u00a0 Warwick apparently became Warwicke in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn<\/p>\n

Theme Songs Page\u00a0<\/a>| Previous Theme Song<\/a>\u00a0| Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In less than three minutes, Bacharach takes you on what seems like a compressed tour of the whole territory of heartbreak, courtesy of his amazing mastery of the pop orchestra. He composes, he orchestrates, he conducts, and he creates a sound that is uniquely his, one I would come to know as the quintessential sound of 60s pop. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,968],"tags":[1957,1966,1954,1950,1955,1942,1965,1968,1944,1945,1949,1959,1943,1952,1948,1963,1550,1548,974,1962,1953,1967,1951,1960,1971,1235,1961,1972,1964,1969,1956,1970,1958,1941,1946,1947],"class_list":["post-1712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closeup","category-theme-songs","tag-alec-cumming","tag-alvins-harmonica","tag-barbra-streisand","tag-bobby-socks","tag-brillbuilding","tag-burt-bacharach","tag-christmas-dont-be-late","tag-david-seville","tag-dionne-warwick","tag-dionne-warwicke","tag-elvis-presley","tag-flugelhorn","tag-hal-david","tag-j-p-mccarthy","tag-james-dean","tag-jimmie-rodgers","tag-judy-garland","tag-marlene-dietrich","tag-marlon-brando","tag-oh-oh-im-falling-in-love-again","tag-people","tag-ross-bagdasarian","tag-saddle-shoes","tag-sixteen-tons","tag-souer-sourire","tag-stephen-sondheim","tag-tennessee-ernie-ford","tag-the-beatles","tag-the-chipmunk-song","tag-the-chipmunks","tag-the-look-of-love","tag-the-singing-nun","tag-time-signatures","tag-walk-on-by","tag-wjr","tag-wuom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1712"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5466,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions\/5466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}