Hal David, 1921-2012
“Rap culture is interesting and different and has purpose, but it has a nonromantic view of life and of social feelings. There may be a void in that.”
— Hal David, who wrote “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” and about a million other songs you know whether you want to or not with his partner Burt Bacharach, had a pretty clear-eyed take on hip-hop. (Though I would argue that rap’s antiromance goes towards its interestingness and differentness. And that, as much as it may signal a void, it has done us a service in counterbalancing, even just a little bit, the vast preponderance of overly romantic, “breakup-and-makeup” love songs that have so dominated the history of pop music.) David died of a stroke on Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 91, and had a greater impact on rap culture himself than he might have known.
David and Bacharach found their muse in Dionne Warwick, a New Jerseyan singer they met at the Brill Building in 1961. The trio would go on to collaborate on almost 40 songs over the next decade, including the classic “Walk On By” in 1964. (That video, apparently made for a French television show, is the coolest thing in the universe. Check out the toy cat Warwick’s walking around with.)
Stax Records’ great Isaac Hayes included a cover version of “Walk On By” on his 1969 album, Hot Buttered Soul.
The Jackson 5 turned a snippet of Hayes’ version of the song into an exuberant vamp during their 1971 television special, Goin’ Back to Indiana.
The English punk band the Stranglers covered the song on the 1978 album Black and White.
As did New York City funk duo D-Train on their 1982 debut album.
Slick Rick sampled the Dionne Warwick’s “Walk On By” for his 1986 song “Mona Lisa.”
British “trip-hop” innovators Portishead sampled Isaac Hayes’ version for their harrowing and wonderful 1997 single “All Mine.” (As did Compton’s Most Wanted, above, for their “Hood Took Me Under,” five years earlier.) The Portishead video seems to give a nod to that Dionne Warwick clip — or at least to the aesthetics of that same era of French television.
Cyndi Lauper, who remains one of the more underrated artists of the past quarter century, included a version of “Walk On By” on her 2003 covers album, At Last.
Public Enemy sampled the Jackson 5’s “Walk On” for their 1991 song “By the Time I Get to Arizona.”
As did producer Just Blaze, for his 2004 remix of Jay-Z’s “Public Service Announcement.”
The Notorious B.I.G. sampled the Isaac Hayes version for “Warning” in 1994.
As did Tupac for the title track to his 1995 album, Me Against the World.
The Wu-Tang clan used it for “I Can’t Go To Sleep” in 2000, and even got Hayes to record some new vocals in accompaniment.
Hal David, rap legend, R.I.P.