60 YEARS AGO, I BOUGHT A RECORD...
"Walk On By" by Dionne Warwick was a Top 10 hit on May 7, 1964 and my life has never been the same...
Life is full of “If’s…”
If… an up-and-coming songwriter Burt Bacharach hadn’t heard a young singer named Dionne Warwick on an Atlantic recording session in 1962 in New York singing background vocals with her younger sister Dee Dee and Doris Troy (a year on from “Just One Look,” her classic anthem) for The Drifters on a song called “Mexican Divorce” and been so impressed that he asked Dionne if she’d be up for doing some demos for compositions he’d written with then-new partner lyricist Hal David…
If…Dionne hadn’t begun doing said demos, traveling into Manhattan from her home in East Orange, New Jersey and putting her velvet tones on new Bacharach & David compositons like “It’s Love That Really Counts” which Burt played for the owner of the independent label Scepter Records, one Florence Greenberg, who declared she didn’t care too much for the song but was impressed with the singer…(although Scepter’s major hitmakers The Shirelles did record it a few months later…)
If…Burt & Hal hadn’t signed Dionne to their production company and followed it with a recording contract with Greenberg’s Scepter Records and then had her record the song “Make It Easy On Yourself” as her likely first single…
If…Dionne wasn’t listening to her car radio one summer afternoon in 1962 while driving and heard hitmaker Jerry Butler singing “Make It Easy On Yourself” and then headed into Manhattan to tell Burt & Hal exactly how she felt about having the song they’d promised to have as her first Scepter recording and then uttered the words, ‘don’t make me over!’ after which lyricist Hal used the phrase to work out a song with Burt…
If…on a rainy August night in 1962, Dionne hadn’t cut songs at Bell Sound Studios on W. 54th St., for her first ‘official’ recording session for Scepter including “I Smiled Yesterday” and “Don’t Make Me Over” with a full orchestra live with the rhythm section and background singers featuring sister Dee Dee and aunt Cissy…
If…the original 45 with “I Smiled Yesterday” as the ‘A’ side hadn’t made any impact at radio and Scepter decided to flip it and “Don’t Make Me Over” became the topside and subsequently by January 1963 started its’ climb into the US R&B Top 10 and Top 30 charts and Dionne Warwick’s recording career began in earnest…
If…noted film star and entertainer Marlene Dietrich hadn’t hired Burt Bacharach as her conductor for a show at The Olympia Theatre in Paris and Burt hadn’t arranged for his new musical star Dionne to be a special guest on the show in November 1963 during which Dionne performed her then-latest US single, “Anyone Who Had A Heart” for an audience that included Brian Epstein, the manager of The Beatles, John Lennon & Paul McCartney there to see Marlene Dietrich’s show…
If…Brian hadn’t had a copy of Dionne’s new Scepter recording sent from America and had Beatles’ producer George Martin take Liverpudlian singer Cilla Black, also managed by Epstein into the studio to record her own version of Dionne’s ‘Anyone Who Had A Heart’…
If…I hadn’t had an argument at Kilburn Grammar School with one of my classmates Roger Walters (no, not the famous one!) in which he declared that Dionne’s original version of the song was easily the better one and that my defending Cilla’s cover version was because I had a crush on red-headed Cilla…
If…the “Anyone Who Had A Heart” recording session that Bacharach & David produced hadn’t also included two then-new compositions, “Any Old Time Of Day” and “Walk On By” and Scepter’s Florence Greenberg wanted the former to be the ‘A’ side, then asked popular New York radio DJ, Murray The K to play both sides of the record and ask listeners to call in and vote for their favourite of the two songs with an overwhelming ‘yes’ for “Walk On By”….
If…”WalkOn By” hadn’t so captivated me that I bought the Pye International 45 in the week of April 22nd 1964 and played it over and over again on the gramophone in my parents’ bedroom when I came home from school, night after night…
If…on May 7th 1964, “Walk On By” became a Top 10 hit in the UK and on May 23rd. Pye hadn’t released a composite album, “Presenting Dionne Warwick” and Mrs. Frances Nathan, my Mother hadn’t given in to my begging her for the then-massive sum of 1 pound, 13 shillings & six pence to buy the LP from Musicland (the record shop on Willesden Lane round the corner from where we lived above Crusoe’s, the fish and chip shop my Dad managed at which I would work on Saturday mornings to earn pocket money)…
If…the songs such as “Put Yourself In My Place,” “I Could Make You Mine,” “Getting Ready For The Heartbreak” and “I Cry Alone” hadn’t become my solace and comfort as an angst-filled teenager in love with Marilyn Woolf who went to the girls’ school across the road and knew nothing of my unrequited love for her…
AND if…”Walk On By”( which I still have to this day from the time I bought it in 1964) and the LP (still a prize possession albeit a little worse for wear!) hadn’t impacted me so deeply as I struggled with being a hopeless romantic (having written my first love story at the age of eleven) that I began my real life journey into the world of American R&B in earnest, buying my first Motown LP, “Come & Get These Memories” by Martha & The Vandellas and then seeing Mary Wells perform as a special guest on tour with The Beatles in October 1964 in the cinema next door to where I lived…
….Well, if all those ‘ifs’ hadn’t been, in my world of no coincidence, my fabled ‘you-couldn’t-make-it-up’ life of devotion to soul music and its creators may have been very different! That I would get to spend countless hours with Dionne over the decades, writing volumes about her music and seeing her perform in Thailand, Italy, Argentina, all over the US and the UK remains beyond any ‘if’ I could have made up!
(Photo backstage at the London Palladium with my Mother, 1984)
I celebrate the 60th anniversary of “Walk On By” as the entry point into this ongoing soulful journey with joy and happiness…and it remains as ever my favourite recording of all time! Thank you, Dionne, Burt & Hal…oh, and all those New York radio listeners in early 1964 who let Florence Greenberg at Scepter Records to make it the ‘A’ side!
Grateful and ever thankful.
© 2024, David Nathan/Blue Butterfly Entertainment Ltd. (UK), All Rights Reserved
Fate and its ever-twisting roads that lead us to our destinies. Seldom understood during the journey, the path to the destination can be described as both "of course" and "I can't believe it," as the road interpolates between the predictable and the unexpected.
In any case, I thank the fates because if you hadn't become the "Ambassador of Soul," David, I would have never read a particular liner note by you, which lit a passion and hunger in me to explore more soul, r&b, Motown, and Disco genres. And by doing so, I would discover a wealth of songs, artists, and albums, that could express everything in me that I could not (as a teenager) and made me realize the power of music.
Love this story, we’ve all got stories with if ... being a major part of it ❤️