Bacharach and David – 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

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

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