Oct/9/12
5comments

Bacharach and David – Anyone Who Had A Heart (Chords)

Dionne Warwick – Anyone Who Had A Heart (Chords)

A tribute to Hal David with two Bacharach and David songs this week. Starting off with my favourite Anyone Who Had a Heart. The Americans got Dionne Warwick’s version and us Brits got the Cilla Black version. I’m not going to argue with anyone who thinks Cilla’s version is better (even though they’re clearly wrong) but I’ve written up the Dionne Warwick version.

It’s a pretty tricky song to keep up with. Lots of barre chords to contend with. And the chords move back and forth quickly in the chorus. Which doesn’t translate to ukulele too well. You could simplify the chorus to this:

If you are looking for suggested strumming on this one you’re shit out of luck, I’m afraid. I only go into the strumming on the beginner/improver level stuff. And this certainly isn’t. There’s an interesting section in the book Burt Bacharach: Song by Song discussing the various polyrhythms and time signature changes. None of which are the way I hear the song. As you can tell from the twiddly bit.

Twiddly Bit

This little twiddle approximates what’s going on with all the strings in the chorus. It sounds like this:


Twiddle

Old Dionne Warwick Version

Old Dionne Warwick – Anyone Who Had a Heart (Chords in Dm)

This is my favourite version of the song. Even if she can’t reach the notes as she used to, that’s more than made up for by how rich her voice is.

Because her voice doesn’t reach as high, the key has been changed to D minor. Which works a bit better on ukulele, I think.

And the twiddly version of the chorus works better in this key. You can just keep strumming the chords and mess with the notes on the A-string.


Twiddle

Buy the MP3

You are reading Bacharach and David – Anyone Who Had A Heart (Chords) - permalink
View Comments

5 Comments

  1. RubyRenee October 10th, 2012 8:27 pm

    Thank you! I love this song!

  2. Woodshed October 11th, 2012 10:05 am

    RubyRenee: You’re welcome. Me too!

  3. Paul February 19th, 2016 10:24 am

    I had a go at this the other, using your arrangement. Thanks for sharing.
    As you say, it’s certainly a tricky one to keep up with! Two little wrinkles I employed to make it easier to play that others may find useful.
    First, 111x and 333x give you all the notes you need for the Db and Eb chords in the chorus & outro, so I played them by using just 1 finger to barre the top (g, C & E) strings, muting the the A by lifting my finger slightly off that string.
    Then for the F->Ab->F in the outro, I used 2nd position F=3555, which segues nicely into the 2nd pos Fm that follows (I stayed with 1st position F=2010 in the verse).
    I also took advantage of the fact that Bb6=Gm7 to play Bb6 as 0211 rather than 3231, but that’s just personal taste.

  4. Paul February 19th, 2016 10:30 am

    Oh, and quite agree with you re ol’ leather lungs vs Dionne, but let’s have a shout-out for Sandie Shaw and Dusty Springfield, who both released very passable versions too. :-)

  5. Woodshed February 19th, 2016 4:05 pm

    Paul: Thanks! I’ll give those a try.

Sorry, Comments Are Broken Right Now

You must be logged in to post a comment.