Podcasts by Hal David Interview

For over 60 years, Hal David (1921-2012) wrote the words America loves to sing. His career spanned the decades from the swing era to the age of hip-hop and took him from Hollywood to Broadway to Nashville. He wrote his first hit song in 1947 and continued to score hits throughout the 1950s, writing for artists as varied as Marty Robbins, Perry Como and Sarah Vaughan. In the 1960s, his partnership with composer Burt Bacharach produced an incomparable series of pop classics such as “Don’t Make Me Over,” “What the World Needs Now” and “Do You Know the Way to San Jose.” Bacharach and David enjoyed some of their biggest hits with singer Dionne Warwick, the ideal interpreter of Bacharach’s music and Hal David’s lyrics. Simultaneously with their reign over the pop charts, Bacharach and David enjoyed success in Hollywood and on Broadway, winning an Oscar for their song “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and writing the score for the hit Broadway musical Promises, Promises, with its signature song “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again.” In the years that followed, Hal David crafted hit songs with other composers in a variety of genres, including country hits for singers such as Ronnie Milsap. David scored an international crossover hit with “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before,” sung by Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias. In every decade, in every style, his lyrics captured the humor and the whimsy, the passions and the sorrows -- the romance of American life. Born in New York City, Hal David died in Los Angeles at the age of 91. In 2010, the Academy of Achievement honored Hal David as the Dean of American Songwriters. In this podcast, recorded on that occasion, he is joined onstage by a dear friend, the premier interpreter of his songs, Dionne Warwick.

Further podcasts by Academy of Achievement

Podcast on the topic Kunst