Has There Ever Been a Score Quite Like Promises, Promises?

I am just absolutely obsessed with this score. It manages to be of its time AND still hold up today. Hal David's lyrics range from hilarious to heartbreaking. Bacharach's music is so original. It manages to combine pop and theatrical sounds in such a harmonious, seemless manner. And Tunick's orchestrations are magnificent (both his original and revival work). I wonder how much this score influenced Sondheim in Company (besides having the same orchestrator, there are musical similarities too).

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Updated On: 6/20/10 at 05:34 PM

Have you heard John Barry's theatrical scores? With the exception of Little Prince and the Aviator they are all quite good and have a parallel sound to Bacharach's work. I also think Michele Legrand has composed some similar scores. It is not a coincidence that all three are all chiefly film composers.

I listened to Raisin the other day and it struck me how Bacharach it sounded at times.

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Buckley's "Whoever You Are, I Love You" is my favorite reading of that song.

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Bacharach's score for PROMISES, PROMISES was unique for theater and Sondheim's COMPANY owes a debt to PROMISES and it's contemporary sound, not only did COMPANY "borrow" Tunick but they also used the idea of having background singers and a recording studio sound board to augment the sound.

Also remember that Michael Bennett and Donna McKechnie, to key components in the overall success of PROMISES were also used to great effect in COMPANY.

Listening to the pop urgency of the girl trio singing You Could Drive A Person Crazy in COMPANY and you immediately notice the resemblance to the girl trio singing Turkey Lurkey Time in PROMISES.

PROMISES, however was a more conventional "book" musical wheras COMPANY was more a "concept" musical.

It is a shame the Bacharach never again wrote for the theater but as both a composer and producer he preferred the controlled atmosphere of a recording studio to produce what he considered would be a definitive finished product everything from the vocalists to the musicians playing. For theater he had to relinquish that control, everything from the way his songs were being sung to the way his music was being played varied on any given night and it literally drove him crazy.

I remember reading of one night during PROMISES' Broadway run he got the news that Richard Rodgers would be attending a performance and that he was told some of the house musicians had called out and replacements would be performing that night. He had a fit that Rodgers would be in the audience and not hear his music being performed the way he meant it to be played.

If Bacharach could clone himself and send his identical twin to conduct that show every night, every performance for the entire show's almost 2 year run he would have done it. But reality is he couldn't do that and again, he had to give up that control of how his music was presented to others and he wasn't entirely happy with that at all.

Agreed. I have been playing the new Promises, Promises cast recordings on loop. It's pretty addictive, probably due to the pop element in the music.

And TimesSquared, 'You'll think of Someone' is a personal favourite of mine too. It doesn't get as much mention as the other big numbers but it's such a fantastic fun duet and I love the 'tentativeness' conveyed.

I've listened to the new recording a few times, and, though there are some fun things there, I find Sean Hayes' performance to be... well, just lazy - there's a great lack of vocal energy there, making him sound merely pleasant and relaxed (to the point of nodding off). Almost as if Andy Williams were playing the part.

I had opted to not preorder the cast recording through amazon.com as I usually do because my sister is going away this weekend and I wasn't sure if it would arrive in time for me to slip into her bag as a surprise. So I called our local fye to make sure they had them in stock and the woman who answered literally had no idea what I was talking about. When she finally went to check she only found two copies. That's all they got. I didn't expect them to get 100 copies but was surprised to hear they only had two.

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Well, it would have had to be to a MUCH lesser degree with Young Girls, as that film didn't get to the US until April of 1968, and the Promises score was pretty much done by then - I don't hear the influence at all, frankly. And I talk a bit about the Company sound in the booklet of our upcoming issue of the original cast album, of which there are now less than 150 copies.

"Bacharach, at the time of Promises, was not "primarily a film composer." He'd only scored a handful of films by that point - what he was was a composer who'd composed an astonishing number of hit songs, one after another."

True. I wasn't necessarily referring to his pre-Promises career. (Everyone knows Bacharach wrote a film musical score for the bomb Lost Horizon, right?) John Barry and Michel LeGrand also had hit pop songs throughout their careers, though not on the level of Bacharach. I would observe all three have similar sensibilities merging contemporary, commercial, sounds with film score and theatrical sounds.

Who could they be compared to today? Is there anyone who plays in theater, film, and popular music like they did? I'm seriously drawing a blank. Elton, maybe?

Has anyone heard Yamasuki, this Japanese/French theater collaboration with traditional Japanese instrumentation and funkay fuzzed-out French guitars? Worth a listen for any Gainsbourg or Bacharach fans!
Oh jeez, Yamasuki is out of print on cd, but there are samples at Amazon.com

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Where can you buy the London recording? Also, I find it interesting what people are saying about Sean Hayes because in the video on amazon.com, he definitely does not seem in character. It looks like he is concentrating very very hard and not having any fun! Especially in comparison to the two actresses.

I have to share a memory from my community theatre days:

We were rehearsing PROMISES and the gal who was playing Fran got into a silly mood. When she got to her big number she stood stage center and sang "Knowing when to leave may be the smartest thing that anyone can learn..." and walked off the stage, down the aisle of the auditorium, into the parking lot and drove home.

The director and the cast laughed so hard that we called it a night.

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^ F.Y.I. : Using all caps when writing on the internet is considered SHOUTING.

Will you jump off that roof in the process?