Steve Tyrell: "Back to Bacharach"

Steve Tyrell, whose appearances in the two “Father Of The Bride” movies, and whose albums “A New Standard” and “Standard Time” established him as a premier contemporary interpreter of the Great American Songbook, now turns his attention to one of the legendary composers in all of pop music: Burt Bacharach.

Steve has a personal stake in these classic songs. As a young man breaking into the record business in the 1960s, he became head of A&R and Promotion at Scepter Records, the history-making independent label that released the famous hits written by Bacharach and his lyricist partner Hal David, and recorded by the great Dionne Warwick. Tyrell was present at the creation of standards like “Walk On By,” “Alfie,” “I Say A Little Prayer,” and many others. Moreover, he produced B.J. Thomas’ Oscar-winning recording of Bacharach-David’s “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.”

One can only categorize Tyrell’s performances on “Back To Bacharach” as definitive. His supporting cast includes the top session players on two coasts, as well as guest collaborators Herb Alpert, Patti Austin, Dionne Warwick, James Taylor, Rod Stewart, and Martina McBride. Steve’s own singular vocal style, drenched in the Texas tones of his sophisticated R&B approach, is perfectly suited to these great hits. He sings the songs exactly the way everyone wants to hear them. To top it all of, Maestro Bacharach himself appears on three tracks as a performer and two as co-producer.

Steve Tyrell’s “Back To Bacharach” makes the case for adding Burt Bacharach to the roster of all-time great creators of the previous generation of American Songbook immortals—Porter, Gershwin, Berlin, Kern, and Ellington. And it does so with supreme style, taste, and expertise.
- Arnaud LEGER

Presiding Spirit at Party: Geniality
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: November 9, 2008

New York cabaret traditionalists may call it heresy. But the late fall slot at the Café Carlyle that once belonged to Bobby Short has been taken over by a gruff insurgent, Steve Tyrell. Mr. Tyrell, who last week began his fourth season at this White House of Manhattan nightclubs, is a good ole boy from Houston with an aw-shucks charm and an easygoing machismo, who worships at the temple of Ray Charles.

Make no mistake. Mr. Tyrell’s ascendance represents a significant changing of the cultural guard in which his mentor, Burt Bacharach, has superseded Mr. Short’s beloved Cole Porter, as a guiding spirit. When you think about it, the transition isn’t so radical. In pop-history shorthand, Mr. Bacharach’s sophisticated songs, which Mr. Tyrell delivers with the growling, rough-hewn soulfulness of Mr. Charles’s acolytes like Joe Cocker and Dr. John, are really Cole Porter with a beat.

Although Mr. Tyrell has little in common with Mr. Short, who died three years ago, they share one important similarity. Like his forerunner Mr. Tyrell knows how to warm up the elegant cafe until it becomes a party destination where he is the host and all feel welcome. On Wednesday, his second night of an engagement that continues through New Year’s Eve, the Carlyle was crawling with fans, including many well-dressed, attractive female admirers. Where Mr. Short’s loyalists made up a rarefied cross-section of Manhattan high society, jazz and Broadway aficionados, Mr. Tyrell’s appear to be upscale Americans from all over the country.

His new show is easily his strongest. Gone was the sense from earlier seasons that he was not fully prepared and singing songs by rote with the casual bonhomie of Rod Stewart, whose standards albums he has co-produced. Although I find his non-psychological approach, in which raw tunefulness and a friendly attitude trump interpretive subtlety, can quickly wear thin, it goes all the way back to the original prime mover of jazz singing, Louis Armstrong.

While Mr. Tyrell made detours to Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Rodgers and Hart and others, his deepest connection emotionally was with Mr. Bacharach’s songs, especially “This Guy’s in Love With You,” “What the World Needs Now Is Love” and “One Less Bell to Answer,” in which Mr. Tyrell’s customary geniality, took on crying-blues intensity.

The arrangements for his excellent sextet, which featured the trumpets of Matt Fronke, took him from Hollywood (“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” which he recalled bringing to B. J. Thomas to sing in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”) to New Orleans (a Mardi Gras-flavored “What a Little Moonlight Can Do”) and back.

And so, the tradition, although profoundly altered, continues. The party is on.

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