-----Original Message----- From: zorn-list-admin@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:zorn-list-admin@mailman.xmission.com]On Behalf Of skip Heller Sent: Monday, July 01, 2002 8:11 AM
Is it just my taste, or has anyone else noticed how few between effective versions of his compositions are when he's not somehow involved?
Geoffrey O'Brien makes the exact same argument in a piece in the New York Review of Books just after the Tzadik tribute came out (possibly the finest thing I'd ever read on Burt and Hal). It had to do, in any case, with the Bacharach paradox: how to make a complex melody sound catchy and effortless. O'Brien argued (I'm totally paraphrasing here) that Bacharach melodies simply did not lend themselves well to any sort of improvisation. Untrue, of course (a performance of "What The World Needs Now" by the Susie Ibarra Quartet comes to mind), but it makes sense that a "straight" run-through by either him or Dionne Warwick perhaps sounds best of all. Later, Ben http://members.tripod.com/~tamad2/ ICQ: thewilyfilipino / Yahoo!: sunny70