LEGENDARY composer and Oscar winner Burt Bacharach has died at 94.
The talented musician, known for hits including Walk on By, and Do You Know the Way to San Jose passed away on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles.
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He died of natural causes, his publicist Tina Brausam said Thursday.
He had a run of top 10 hits from the 1950s into the 21st century, and his music was heard everywhere from movie soundtracks and radios to home stereo systems and iPods, whether Alfie and I Say a Little Prayer or Ill Never Fall in Love Again and This Guys in Love with You.
Dionne Warwick was his favorite interpreter, but Bacharach, usually in tandem with lyricist Hal David, also created prime material for Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones and many others.
Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Frank Sinatra were among the countless artists who covered his songs, with more recent performers who sang or sampled him including White Stripes, Twista and Ashanti.
Walk On By alone was covered by everyone from Warwick and Isaac Hayes to the British punk band the Stranglers and Cyndi Lauper.
The innovative musician grew up on jazz and classical music and had little taste for rock when he was breaking into the business in the 1950s.
He was an eight-time Grammy winner, a prize-winning Broadway composer for Promises, Promises and a three-time Oscar winner.
He received two Academy Awards in 1970, for the score of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and for the song Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head (shared with David).
In 1982, he and his then-wife, lyricist Carole Bayer Sager, won Oscars for Best That You Can Do, the theme from Arthur.
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His other movie soundtracks included What’s New, Pussycat?, Alfie and the 1967 James Bond spoof Casino Royale.
Bacharach was a swinger, as they called such men in his time, whose many romances included actor Angie Dickinson, to whom he was married from 1965-80, and Sager, his wife from 1982-1991.
Married four times, he formed his most lasting ties to work.
He was a perfectionist who took three weeks to write Alfie and might spend hours tweaking a single chord.
Sager once observed that Bacharachs life routines essentially stayed the same only the wives changed.
Bacharach was essentially a pop composer, but his songs became hits for country artists (Marty Robbins), rhythm and blues performers (Chuck Jackson), soul (Franklin, Luther Vandross) and synth-pop (Naked Eyes).
He reached a new generation of listeners in the 1990s with the help of Costello and others. Mike Myers would recall hearing the sultry The Look of Love on the radio and finding fast inspiration for his Austin Powers retro spy comedies, in which Bacharach made cameos.
In the 21st century, he was still testing new ground, writing his own lyrics and recording with rapper Dr. Dre.
He was married to his first wife, Paula Stewart, from 1953-58, and married for a fourth time, to Jane Hansen, in 1993.
He is survived by Hansen, as well as his children Oliver, Raleigh and Cristopher, Brausam said.
He was preceded in death by his daughter with Dickinson, Nikki Bacharach.
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