Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach – This House Is Empty Now, by David Handelman, Celebrity Guest Blogger

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Even when you’ve spent time as a professional rock critic, there are inevitably gaps in your musicology knowledge. And one of the aspects of music I’ve always loved is how musicians pay homage to mentors, inspirations, peers, and lesser-known talents by covering or, better still, collaborating with them, helping them reach a wider audience.

I could list dozens of examples (I never heard of Social Distortion till Bruce Springsteen brought Mike Ness on stage in LA a few years back to sing “Bad Luck” with him).

But today I’d like to give props to Elvis Costello, who has been doing this in some shape or form throughout his thirty-plus years of making records. His 1981 country album, “Almost Blue,” while lambasted at the time as a betrayal of his punk roots, keyed me in to Gram Parsons and George Jones, and today holds up well; he also did a fine, underrated album with the modern classicist Brodsky Quartet, “The Juliet Letters.”

Some of his experiments have flopped, but the one I keep coming back to is his album with Burt Bacharach. Early in Costello’s career, a live album of Stiff labelmates included the Attractions’ quietly blistering cover of Bacharach/David’s “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself.” Then Costello and Bacharach collaborated on a song for the obscure movie, “Grace of My Heart,” “God Give Me Strength,” which turned out so amazingly they wound up making a whole album.

“Painted from Memory” is suffused with lyricism, loss, and lush orchestrations. It’s not perfect — it’s a little studio-stodgy — but what was perfect was PBS’s Sessions on W. 54th street live concert promoting its release, that I own a bootleg CD of.

So I’m sharing (below) “This House is Empty Now.” It’s haunting, tuneful, emotional, and timeless. And I found myself turning to it after I sold my parents’ house of 33 years following their deaths.

I can’t find the Sessions from W. 54th version on You Tube; Amazon only seems to have VHS. instead there’s a version with strings here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xID7AxShew0

The one I posted (below) is just Elvis with Burt on piano.

[Trivia addenda: The album even inspired a worthy splinter project, “The Sweetest Punch,” covers of the songs spearheaded by guitar whiz Bill Frisell. And of course the Burt and Elvis duo ended up immortalized on film in Austin Powers 2.]

– David Handelman was at Rolling Stone in the late 80s, then Vogue. He has written for many national magazines and some TV shows including The West Wing. He is now a producer at CNN’s Parker Spitzer and maintains the excellent blog, Hands On… Life and art in all their moving parts.

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