Day 2: Burt Bacharach – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

 

Today’s disc is the 1969 album the score/soundtrack to the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid by Burt Bacharach. Pictured is our family copy – I don’t know whose record it was particularly, maybe one of my brother’s, but we all loved the film (and we watched it about once a year for much of the 1970s). There weren’t many things we enjoyed watching together (me aged say, 7, one brother 11, another 18, and my Mum, aged 50) but this was one of them. It had adventure, romance, beautiful people, shooting (one brother in particular was a fan of things with shooting, still is as far as I know). And it had this music. There are a lot of albums from my childhood that I haven’t hung onto but this one somehow has stayed in my ever-shrinking collection (vinyl is heavy, I’ve moved a lot – see this series).

The movie was directed by George Roy Hill and written by one of Hollywood’s most famous screenwriters, William Goldman. Wikipedia tells us the story is ‘based loosely on fact’ and that Goldman researched it on and off for a good few years before writing the screenplay. It was quite a change from your average western – a good part both rom com and brom com for a start – and it had very distinctive music. Picking Bacharach to write the music for this movie was an inspired choice – it contributes to making it feel so different. The man behind Walk on by and Anyone Who Had a Heart? Not typical western music really.

Of course the big song from the movie and this album is Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head – sung by B.J. Thomas*. Written by Bacharach and Hal David, it won the Academy Award for best original song (Bacharach also won for best original score) and it is a song I somehow really care about. I’ve written in blogland before that when our daughter was born in 2000 and I suddenly realised I needed something to sing as a lullaby the first thing that popped into my cradling repertoire was this one. I knew most of the words, though I hadn’t heard it for years, and it had the right kind of feel so off I went (and I didn’t make a conscious decision to sing it, it just sort of happened). I guess this is a song with a strong family feel to it for me – some happy memories of my fairly unusual childhood family watching something together and enjoying it (if for different reasons). Plus it’s just a lovely song: “The blues they send to meet me/Won't defeat me/It won't be long/Till happiness steps up to greet me.” 

And on that, ahem, note, see you tomorrow for another disc.

For the first intro post to this series go here. It has links to previous January projects (music, poems, stories etc.).

*B.J.Thomas is perhaps best known for this song but he did have other hits. He also sang Hooked on a Feeling in 1968 (written by Mark James, who also wrote Suspicious Minds). Hooked on a Feeling was later covered by Blue Swede, amongst others, (and that version made it into the popular Guardians of the Galaxy film in 2014).