One could list a few of the formal accolades: a Grammy; an academy award; the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. You could list some of the stars who recorded the music Sinatra; Dionne Warwick; Tom Jones; Marty Robins; the Carpenters; Barbara Streisand. You could look back on decades of Top 10 lists … or you could just close you eyes and think about the pop songs you know. If you are 35 or older, you probably know some of the lyrics Hal David made famous.
David died last week at age 91. According to Jim Steinblatt, spokesman for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, or ASCAP, David died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of complications from a stroke.
A native of Brooklyn, New York, David began his songwriting career in the late 1940s, collaborating with writers he met at Manhattan’s renown Brill Building, which at the time was widely regarded as the center of the pop music industry.
David’s most sustained collaboration was with Burt Bacharach. The pair began working together in the late 1950s. Together they scored movies, winning the 1969 academy award for Best Song. The tune, written for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, is inescapably catchy: Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.
The there’s the Broadway musical, Promises, Promises, for which they won the 1969 Grammy in the best score from an original cast show album category. The most notable song from that project was another timeless pop classic I’ll Never Fall In Love Again. The play returned to Broadway in 2010 starring Kristin Chenoweth and Sean Hayes.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Some of the legendary duo’s other hits included: What the World Needs Now Is Love; I Say a Little Prayer; Do You Know the Way to San Jose and; (They Long to Be) Close to You. Even though David and Bacharach parted company in the early 1970s, David went on to work with other composers. With Albert Hammond, he wrote the hit, To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.
A cursory glance at David’s song catalog is astounding. He published over 700 songs with innumerable partners. At the risk of cloying admiration, it is no overstatement to suggest David was a pillar of American popular music. The songbook of pop classics would very different without his broad influence.
Perhaps his songs bore no great philosophical depth, but they readily transport us to a place of great emotional depth. This is particularly so, if you are of a certain age — say 50-something. If so, David provided much of the soundtrack of your teenage years. Maybe your tastes followed a different path, but there’s no denying his presence in the culture. On this point, one may recall the sage words of Henry David Thoreau: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
Suffices to say Hal David not only heard a different drummer, but a different vocalist. Fortunately, he a had a rare gift for showing us that unseen path and entreating us to take it with him. Sixty years of wonderful songs later, we are glad we did.