what the world needs now

Only...

one year before the Queen of Soul's definitive version, Dionne Warwick recorded this song on her Scepter released LP, "The Windows of the World", essentially one more Warwick / Bacharach vehicle to add to the catalogue; seven of the eleven tracks recorded were Burt Bacharach arrangements.

There is no escaping the songwriting genius of Bacharach and David.

The world would be a considerably shabbier place without their contribution.

By way of an aside. While visiting my local pharmacy this morning to collect a prescription, Rosa encouraged me to purchase a pack of ten plastic cigarette filters. They look not unlike a syringe attachment, but by design extract so many ml's of tar before it reaches the lungs. One filter is supposedly sufficient to absorb the crap from five to ten cigarettes in much the same way a carbon filter works on an automobile engine.

Bullshit.

After just three cigarettes, chain smoked between 10 AM and 10:30 AM, my synthetic fragment of mass produced Chinese grotequery was choked on a seeming surfeit of crude oil refinery byproducts.

I smoke too much. I know this. Just don't rub my f@cking face in it. I am allergic to the taint of ill advised - or premature - congratulations.

Or. Maybe I am just a killjoy ?

My son was sitting at his fold-down table with an HB pencil clutched in his fist. "What can I draw ?" he said. "Your pension," I replied.

He didn't laugh.

Jerry Jemmott: bass; Roger Hawkins: drums;
Spooner Oldham: electric piano, organ; Tommy Cogbill: guitar;
Aretha Franklin: piano, vocals;
Floyd Newman, Willie Bridges: barritone saxophones;
Andrew Love, Charles Chalmers: tenor saxophones;
Wayne Jackson: trumpet.

Arranged by: Arif Mardin, Tom Dowd. Produced by Jerry Wexler.

▼ ARETHA FRANKLIN: I SAY A LITTLE PRAYER from "Aretha Now" LP (Atlantic) 1968 (US)

PURCHASE ARETHA NOW REMASTERED