Alfie (song) - Dionne Warwick Version

Dionne Warwick Version

"Alfie" would not become a Top 15 hit in the US until the summer of 1967 when Dionne Warwick, the most prolific interpreter of Bacharach/David compositions and the composers' original choice to cut the song, took it to No.15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 5 on the Billboard R & B Singles Chart. Introduced on the December 1966 album release Here Where There Is Love, Warwick's version of "Alfie" had been an impromptu addition to a recording session at A&R Studio in New York City whose scheduled tracks had been completed early; Scepter Records A&R man Steve Tyrell suggested to Burt Bacharach that the booked time remaining be put to use by having Warwick record a version of "Alfie". Warwick, though feeling it pointless to increase the song's massive cover version count (there were by then some forty-two recorded versions of the song), was persuaded to record the song cutting her vocal in a single take.

Although the "Alfie" track on Here Where There Is Love began receiving radio airplay as early as January 1967, the track was not issued as a single until March 1967 and then as the intended B-side of "The Beginning of Loneliness"; however disc jockeys preferred "Alfie" and the track began to ascend the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1967, with a major assist from Warwick's performing "Alfie" on the 39th Academy Awards ceremony television broadcast of April 10, 1967. Billboard's year end tally of the biggest Pop hits of 1967 ranked "Alfie" at No.44 in a Top 50 composed otherwise of Top Ten hits.