Burt Bacharach, legendary pop song writer, dead at 94

Legendary American pop composer, songwriter and pianist Burt Bacharach, whose prolific output provided a chart-topping playlist for the 1960s and 1970s with hits like “I Say a Little Prayer”, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 94.

Bacharach worked with a constellation of stars during his decades-long career, from Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin, to Dusty Springfield and Tom Jones, to Elvis Costello and the White Stripes.

Bacharach – who died on Wednesday of natural causes, his publicist Tina Brausman said – was known for romantic and melancholic ballads that blurred the line between jazz and pop, and regularly topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.

He earned a flurry of accolades including three Oscars including for the score of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, eight Grammy awards including a lifetime achievement prize, two Golden Globes and induction in the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

The list of hits is long: “Walk On By”, “Do You Know the Way to San Jose”, and “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” are only a few of the best known. He penned nearly 50 Top 100 hits and nine songs that went to number one on the charts.

Bacharach enjoyed a long and fruitful collaboration with Dionne Warwick, including on the 1985 power collaboration “That’s What Friends Are For”, a cover of a song first co-written in 1982 with Carole Bayer Sager, who was one of his four wives along with actress Angie Dickinson.