Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach - Session At 54Th 1998 - My Thief

Painted from Memory is a collaboration between Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach. It was released September 29, 1998 on Mercury Records, a division of Universal Music Group.
The collaboration commenced with "God Give Me Strength", a commission for the 1996 film Grace of My Heart, directed by Allison Anders and starring Illeana Douglas. Apparently pleased with the result, the pair expanded the project to this full album, the first for Costello after an absence of two years, and for Bacharach after an absence of 21 years. Lyrics and music are co-credited to both Bacharach and Costello.
A companion album, The Sweetest Punch, was made concurrently by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, released in 1999 on another Universal label, Decca Records. It consists of jazz arrangements of the Painted From Memory songs done by Frisell and his studio group. It features vocals by Costello on two songs, and by jazz singer Cassandra Wilson on two songs, one of which is a duet employing both.
Costello had long been a Bacharach fan, and had recorded several Bacharach songs, beginning with "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself," released on a 1978 Stiff Records compilation Live Stiffs Live. Costello would also cover "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" for the soundtrack to Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

"I Still Have That Other Girl" won a Grammy Award in 1998 for "Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals" for Bacharach and Costello.
What began as a songwriting collaboration conducted entirely by phone and fax bloomed into one of 1998's most acclaimed pop albums and, now, a satisfying video companion. Recruited to jointly pen a big, romantic ballad for Grace of My Heart, director Allison Anders's 1996 musical drama about the heady days of '60s pop, once and future angry young man Elvis Costello and eternal '60s mainstream maestro Burt Bacharach proved a match made in pop heaven. Bacharach's canny, classic pop inspired Costello's most emotionally direct lyrics; those lyrics, in turn, were arguably the sharpest ever wedded to the composer's lush, intricate music. That ballad ("God, Give Me Strength") led to 1998's album-length collaboration, Painted from Memory, which provides the compositional spine for this terrific episode taped for PBS's Sessions from W. 54th, hosted by David Byrne.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Elvis
• Costello
• &
• Burt
• Bacharach
• Session
• At
• 54Th