Sunday Music – Anyone Who Had A Heart

Today’s music video is ‘Anyone Who Had A Heart’ from Dionne Warwick.

This video was posted to You Tube by dibotis

This beautiful song was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for Dionne Warwick, and is probably the best known version of the song, but it is a source of minor contention between the two artists who sang the song on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Dionne Warwick released the song in late 1963 in the U.S. The song was also picked up in the UK by George Martin, who as Producer/Arranger had an expanding list of artists, foremost among them, The Beatles.

Martin arranged the song for a new young talent in the UK, Cilla Black (Priscilla White) and her cover version of the song was released in early 1964, a week before the Warwick version was also released in the UK.

This gave Cilla Black an important start, and her song rocketed up the charts in the UK, while the Warwick song charted for only a few weeks. The Cilla Black version made it to Number One in the UK, and her career skyrocketed from that point on. At one stage, while the Cilla Black song was at that Number One position, a third version of the same song also entered the UK charts, sung by Mary May.

Dusty Springfield also recorded a cover of the song, but it was only for an album, and did not see release as a single.

Another top selling English artist, Petula Clark also recorded the song in a couple of foreign languages which charted in non English speaking Countries on the European Continent.

Shirley Bassey also recorded the song as well for later album release, making it a virtual who’s who of the English female superstars who recorded this song.

Warwick was a little disgruntled that the Black version of the song ‘made it’ in the UK, while hers didn’t, and while Cilla Black took the song to Number One, the best that the Dionne Warwick song did was Number Eight on the two mainstream major US Charts. Warwick later said that the Cilla Black version was an absolute carbon copy of her version, even down to the ‘style’ the song was sung in. However, the Cilla Black version features different lyrics in the chorus, and while the instrumental break in Warwick’s original is done on Saxaphone, the Cilla Black version features the Bassoon for this short instrumental break, so they are in fact not all that similar.

The Cilla Black cover of the song sold more than one million units for the Single in the UK.

This was the first major hit for both Warwick and Black.

Around the World, the song became a hit for both, although the Warwick original was better known.

The Cilla Black version was virtually unheard in the U.S.

While the original composers Bacharach and David had an already huge career with a number of Major hits, their teaming with Dionne Warwick led to a number of their songs being written for and recorded by Dionne Warwick at that time in the early/mid 1960’s.

Both singers had huge careers spanning the decades, and both versions of this same song are good in their own right.

The song has since been recorded by around 30 other artists and bands.

This next clip shows a young Cilla Black singing her version of this song with an orchestral backing.

This video was posted to You Tube by sukes58

Tagged: Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Cilla Black, Dionne Warwick, Music, Music Video

Posted in: Music, Videos