2017 Burt Bacharach And Tonio K. – Original Demos

Burt Bacharach And Tonio K. first began writing songs together in 1995. The idea of a collaboration was put forward by their co-publishers at Warner Chappell Music in Los Angeles: Bob Fead at Hidden Valley Music for Burt, and Jolene Cherry and Daniella Capretta at Cherry Music for Tonio. The idea probably stemmed from the fact that both Bacharach an K. had written songs for the Allison Anders film (and soundtrack CD), Grace of My Heart. Burt had contributed the great “God Give Me Strength”, co-written with Elvis Costello, and K. had written “Love Doesn’t Ever Fail Us” (performed by the Williams Brothers) with Larry Klein, the film’s music Producer.
Bacharach was familiar with two of K’s current (1994-ish) songs on the radio, “Love Is”, by Vanessa Williams and Brian McKnight, and “You”, by Bonnie Raitt. Tonio K, having come of age musically in the 1960s, was, of course, more than familiar with Bacharach’s catalogue. You could not own a radio in America in the 1960s without knowing Burt Bacharach’s music, whether you knew it or not.
After an initial meeting in Los Angeles to make sure they were “simpático”, Burt invited Tonio to this beach house to “chech out a few musical ideas”. As Bacharach began playing down some of those ideas, K. says he began to smile and had to restrain himself from laughing. He explained to Burt, saying, “Man, if I had been blindfolded, marched into a room with a gun to my head and given one chance to guess who was playing piano, I would have said: Burt Bacharach! You sound just like Burt Bacharach! B.B. laughed and said he hoped that was a good thing, as it’s all he knew how to do.
That particular musical riff became the first of many songs the two would write together over the coming years. It wound up being called “If I Should Lose You” and was immediately recorded by the group Chicago. They were of a good start.