August 14, 2026 —– Chart #363

Hello Music Friends,

Herb Alpert had a question he liked to ask great songwriters, and it’s a beauty: is there a song tucked away in your drawer somewhere — one that never got the right recording — that you still find yourself whistling in the shower? He put that question to Burt Bacharach over the phone one day in 1968. Burt reached into the drawer. What came out went to No. 1 for a month and changed three careers at once. Ask better questions, friends. You never know what’s in the drawer.

The song in the drawer wasn’t quite the song you know. Bacharach and Hal David had written it in 1967 under the title “That Guy’s in Love,” and the original lyric was about a fellow who suspects his girl is stepping out on him. A British singer named Danny Williams recorded that version on an album nobody bought, and the song went back in the drawer where it belonged. Herb had a different plan. He wanted a love song he could sing to his wife on his upcoming television special, and a lyric about cheating was not going to get it done. So Hal David rewrote it. (Herb remembers it a little differently — he says the song came to him as “This Girl’s in Love with You” and he asked Hal to flip the gender. Hal and Herb told competing versions of this story for fifty years, and I have decided not to referee. Songwriters remember things the way the song deserves.)

Now for the part where it gets good. April 22, 1968, CBS airs Herb’s special The Beat of the Brass. In the film, Herb strolls through Malibu — woods, beach, the whole postcard — singing this brand-new song to his wife Sharon. Understand: America knew Herb Alpert as the trumpet in the Tijuana Brass. The man had never sung a note in public. He had what polite people call a limited vocal range, which is exactly why Bacharach’s melody fit him — it doesn’t ask for anything the average guy in the shower can’t deliver. Herb sang it plain and honest, straight to his wife, and the CBS switchboard lit up like a pinball machine. Viewers called the network demanding to know where they could buy a record that did not exist. A month later it did.

By June it was No. 1 on the Hot 100, where it stayed for four weeks, plus ten weeks on top of the Easy Listening chart. And here’s the stat that gets me. It was the first No. 1 single for Herb Alpert. It was the first No. 1 single for A&M Records — and Herb is the A in A&M, so the label’s owner finally scored his own label’s first chart-topper by accident, singing. And after all those brilliant Dionne Warwick records, it was the first American No. 1 for Bacharach and David, period. The best songwriting team of the era got their first No. 1 out of a trumpet player’s drawer request.

The song was such a smash that the ladies immediately claimed it back. As “This Girl’s in Love with You,” Dionne Warwick took it to No. 7 the next year, and the cover list reads like a Hall of Fame roll call: Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Petula Clark, the Supremes. Decades later Noel Gallagher of Oasis sang it live in London with Bacharach himself at the piano. Everybody loves this song. Everybody always has.

And why not? Hal David’s rewritten lyric is as simple as a confession gets: you see this guy, this guy’s in love with you. No poetry contest, no clever twist. Just a man laying it all on the table, right up to the highest stakes in pop music: say you’re in love with this guy — if not, I’ll just die. That’s the whole hand, face up.

Playing it is where Bacharach earns his money. The record sits in D flat (trumpet players and guitar players have never once agreed on a key), so capo the first fret and play the friendly C shapes. The magic is in the major sevenths — Cmaj7 and Fmaj7 do most of the heavy lifting, with Dm7 and G moving things along. Those maj7 chords are the whole sound of the record; strum one and you’re standing on that Malibu beach. Take it slow and dreamy, and remember the melody was built for a man with a modest voice, which makes this one of the most singable charts in the whole collection. When you get to the trumpet solo, hum it. You know it by heart anyway. Everybody does.

Keep Rockin’,

Stan Bradshaw