I Say A Little Prayer

I've written before on these pages about how some longtime friends of mine have sponsored a series of acoustic concerts in their home. The series is called Folkhouse and it features singer-songwriters playing a solo concert in the living room. It's an intimate musical environment to say the least, and often provides the songwriter with an opportunity to let us in on how certain songs were written and the circumstantial stories behind them. Plus, the artist gets 100% of the admission and all the proceeds from CD sales. If there is anything like this happening in your city, I would highly encourage you to attend a show soon. Once you do, you'll wonder what took you so long. Live music needs your support to flourish.

Darden Smith and his well-worn, great sounding, Collings guitar

This past weekend, my wife and I attended a house concert by singer-songwriter Darden Smith, who happens to be a fine song craftsman on his own, but also has co-written many successful songs; not the least of which being "Angel Flight" which he wrote with Radney Foster and a soldier who was a veteran of the Iraq war. Boy, is there a story behind that one, but we'll get to that in just a minute. It'll be worth the wait.

During his performance, Darden told us a great story about going to see Burt Bacharach in concert with a symphony, and being rendered speechless by the sheer quantity of Burt's songs that were major hits; some of them going as far as defining the time in which they appeared. After the concert, Darden and his family went out to dinner, during which many libations were consumed. When he awoke the next morning, he said, the first thing he saw was his iPhone on the bed next to him, which led to the first question, "Who did I call?" Nope, didn't call anybody. Next question was, "Who did I text?". Nothing there either. But the third question was, "What did I download?", and bingo, there it was. About $50 worth of Dionne Warwick songs!

Hal David, Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach

But who can blame him? Dionne Warwick was fortunate enough to have recorded many of Burt Bacharach's songs before anyone else got the chance to, leading to a whole lot of hit records for her, and for Bacharach. From 1962 through 1971, Dionne Warwick charted no less than 33 Burt Bacharach-Hal David songs for Scepter Records. It wasn't an exclusive relationship; she had 6 other charting singles during her time at Scepter, and Bacharach & David wrote many hits for other artists, but it was, and still is, the most consistent and successful semi-exclusive collaboration of singer and songwriters in the history of Pop music.

By all accounts, Bacharach thought of Dionne as his demo singer by default. She was fortunate enough to have had the skills necessary to be able to sing his songs the way he heard them in his head. But make no mistake, Dionne Warwick certainly had her own identifiable vocal style that made her instantly recognizable to even the most non-musically inclined listener.

Intended by lyricist Hal David to convey a woman's concern for her beau who was serving in the Vietnam War, "I Say A Little Prayer" was recorded by Dionne Warwick on April 9, 1966.

Although Bacharach's recordings with Warwick typically required no more than 3 takes, often needing just 1, Bacharach did 10 takes of "I Say A Little Prayer", and still felt the completed track was rushed. The song went unreleased until September of 1967 when it was introduced on the album "The Windows Of The World", which largely consisted of older material. But it was Scepter Records' owner Florence Greenberg, rather than Bacharach, who wanted "I Say A Little Prayer" added to the album. from which it had a single release in October of 1967 as the B-side of the newly recorded track "Theme from Valley Of The Dolls". But the brisk sound of "I Say A Little Prayer", which Bacharach disliked, proved to be hitbound magic for Warwick as "I Say A Little Prayer" became the preferred side of the single, reaching #4 that December on the Billboard Hot 100. It was Warwick's first Top 10 appearance since "Message To Michael" in the spring of 1966. "Theme from Valley Of The Dolls" would have to wait its turn to become a hit until after the success of "I Say A Little Prayer"; reaching #2 in February of 1968.

"I Say A Little Prayer" was given a far more soulful, and arguably more popular makeover in the summer of '68 by Aretha Franklin, who was certainly capable of making any song her own. However, the single of Aretha's recording only managed to match Dionne's on the charts by peaking at #4. Nonetheless, this version sounds like nobody but Aretha. I have to wonder if this version had the feel that Bacharach said was missing from the Dionne Warwick sessions. It's certainly one of Aretha's best-ever vocal performances.

With a significantly re-invented arrangement from the Warwick original via Clayton Ivey's piano work, plus the solid backing vocals of The Sweet Inspirations, who first gave Aretha the notion that she should cut the song, this fine rendition was intended as the B-side of the funky July 1968 single, "The House That Jack Built", but it quickly began to accrue its own airplay. It was a Top 10 hit by October. I find it very interesting that the same song was first issued as a B-side for both Dionne and Aretha, but became a hit either prior to, or very shortly after the A-side. But this also happened during a time when singles had much greater potential to be a double A-side hit, due in no small measure to the embarrassingly high level of talent at the time. You'll recall that The Beatles also had a very good run with double A-sides. Here's Aretha!

So now, we've come full circle, back to Darden Smith, who included his interpretation of  "I Say A Little Prayer" on his latest album, "Love Calling", as a bonus track. It was recorded for Sirius XM for exclusive airplay on their acoustic Coffee House channel, but obviously it was too good to be left unissued.

The story Darden told us about the Bacharach concert and his mild iPod indiscretion was the lead-in to his performing the song just about exactly as you hear it on this recording. The fact that the song works just as well in the simplest of settings, regardless of the singer's gender, speaks volumes about what a truly great song this is. Enjoy.

Darden Smith is also the founder and creative visionary behind Songwriting With Soldiers, whose mission is to help military service members tell their stories and transform their lives through collaborative songwriting. Some of the other participating songwriters that you may have heard of are Beth Nielsen Chapman, Radney Foster, Greg Trooper, Mary Gauthier, and Gary Nicholson. As fine a group of songwriters as you could hope for.

Songwriting With Soldiers pairs wounded active duty and veteran soldiers with professional songwriters in retreat settings to write songs based on their experiences of combat and returning home. From invisible battle scars, to a spouse's isolation, to the surge of adrenaline before a dangerous patrol, the resulting songs are as diverse as the participants themselves. The songs are recorded on-site and given to the soldiers. so that they might be shared with their families and communities. The soldiers talk. The songwriters listen. Together they create the songs. The songs tell the truth; a truth that provides healing in the telling.

You can listen to, and buy the recordings from the Songwriting With Soldiers series at Bandcamp. Please do so.

Nearly 30 years worth of music from Darden Smith is available at Amazon, or preferably, Darden's online store. We like to see musicians get paid directly for their work, don't you?

Coming soon on sweet vinyl goodness!

Many of the original, now-classic albums by Aretha Franklin are available in both CD and vinyl. If you're not of the completist mindset, but still need to fill that gaping hole in your Soul collection, get this excellent 2 CD anthology. It's very affordable, sounds great, and not a pooch in the pack. For you vinyl junkies, the all killer, no filler, "Aretha's Gold" album in 180 gram premium vinyl is due out on June 24th!

As it is with Aretha, there are several collections of Dionne Warwick out there. I went with this one, as it's fairly complete and sounds great, despite its 1989 vintage. Some more thorough collections and boxed sets of Dionne's original albums are, not at all surprisingly, available as imports.

There are more Burt Bacharach collections on the market than anyone would know how to make sense of. His songs have been recorded by so many singers and bands that assembling all of them would require a boxed set of mammoth proportions, along with licensing nightmares of equal stature. So we're left to settle for what we're given. This recent collection provides a good overview outside of the Warwick recordings. There's also this fine 2 disc import set that has some great stuff on it and isn't too spendy. The same goes for this one, although it has 3 discs. If you want to take the cheap way out, there's a single disc "Best Of" available, but it only represents the tip of the iceberg.

Oh, and don't miss this super fun Bacharach tribute album from the now-defunct Pop label, Big Deal. Yes, it's long out of print, but available very cheaply, both new and used. It's well worth hunting this one down!