Oh what will you write, Billy Boy, Billy Boy

June 30, 2025

Trust me, we really will get back to the events of the episode what brung us here, but I'm still winding down this tangent about Alfie, Bacharach and Dionne. As it happens, there are still a few more principal characters and at least two more fascinating stories about this song.

I don't know if I mentioned the role Alfie was destined to play, but it ended up as theme song for the play and then the film What's it All About, Alfie? From the usual source:

Alfie is a 1966 British comedy-drama film directed by Lewis Gilbert and starring Michael Caine. The Paramount Pictures release was asapted from the 1963 play of the same name by Bikl Naughton. Following its premiere at the Plaza Theatre in the West End of London on 24 March 1966, the film became a box office success, enjoying critical acclaim, and influencing British cinema.

Now that I see the release poster, I immediately recognize it from my youth.

The film was released in America in the summer of 1966, just as I was about to enter eleventh grade. I can't be certain, but in my memory I saw this poster in a window while waiting for the bus home near the corner o 45th and University Way, looking enviously at the bleeding Madras shirts in the storefront window of the Yankees Peddler while waiting for the bus to arrive. I've never been much deeper into clothing and appearance than Pendleton shirts, but for several years I really loved madras shirts and owned several that I purchased from that shop using what - saved up paper route money? I can't recall now where my cash was coming from at that age other than my modest personal allowance.

I would love to see this film again fifty years later, and to see Michael Caine as a young actor. He received his first academy award nomination for his leading role in it.

There's enough age gap between Rachael and myself that many treasured memories of mine from my coming-of-age are area are before her time. She's a big fan of Michael Caine, loves many of the same types of films that I do, but had never even heard of this one. It looks likely that between knee surgeries and travel constraints due to my new drug we'll spend the majority of the coming year in America. We're going to look into a Hulu subscription and see an occasional legacy film from the past.

Downhill and just a block away was another iconic landmark of the era was the Guild 45th, a theater opened about 1920 and was the primary 'art film' venue for much of my upbringing. I'm sure that's where I would have seen Alfie, one of my first foreign film exposures. Opened in 1919, it was one of the cornerstone buildings of the neighborhood when I was growing up. So it saddens me that it was finally bulldozed after a century of service.

I'm so sorry to see this fall. But I have a deeper, immediate reaction to see the youthful faces of Caine, Albert Finney and Rita Tushingham, the leads in A Taste of Honey nd Tom Jones, I'm sure I must have viewed all of them here, and not seen any of them since.

So there's the film connection. There's also what must be a romantic story or an infatuation of some kind, because Bacharach, a Brit, wrote the song with Dionne Warwick in mind; and the film was produced and opened in London, but the singing nod went to Cilia Black, a young lady I'd never heard of before because she was deemed to have a more British appearance (huh. I wonder what the key characteristic was here). To my ear it's a pretty unremarkable rendition, but at least it's. Cut or two to the singer for the American release: Cher. It wasn't until Dionne Warwick had her shot at it that the song came into his own; and I loved seeing that view of the two of them finally performing it as a duet.

And then there's this surprise: Sonny Rollins, the jazz artist I featured on one of our GoPro videos recently, wrote the theme music for thenAmerican release to the film. The song has of course gone on to become a jazz standard, plaupued or sung over the years by names like Stan Getz, Roland Kirk, Andy Williams and Barbra Streisand.

But we're not yet, because we still haven't gotten to the root of it. It took me some sleuthing but I finally found that it was written seven years earlier, by this guy some of you will be familiar with:

We've already heard two versions of this song, so three is probably overkill; but with a little sleuthing I succeeded in finding another tune or two that this guy and his trio produced - well, actually it wasn't all that tough. By the end of his too-short life Evans had amassed 31 Grammy nominations and eventually was added to the Downbeat Jazz Hall of Fame.

So, spoiled for choice; but this should work:

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