Categoria: obituary

Willis Reed Dies; Basketball Legend Was Heart Of 1970s-Era New York Knicks Teams

By Brian Mahoney | Associated Press

NEW YORK — Willis Reed, who dramatically emerged from the locker room minutes before Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals to spark the New York Knicks to their first championship and create one of sports’ most enduring examples of playing through pain, died Tuesday. He was 80.

Reed’s death was announced by the National Basketball Retired Players Association, which confirmed it through his family. The cause was not released, but Reed had been in poor health recently and was unable to travel to New York when the Knicks honored the 50th anniversary of their 1973 NBA championship team during their game against New Orleans on Feb. 25.

The Knicks tweeted a photograph picturing Reed from behind walking onto the floor as his teammates were warming up for the 1970 finale, one of the most memorable moments in NBA and Madison Square Garden history.

Our Captain. pic.twitter.com/2Bg1ro4y37

— NEW YORK KNICKS (@nyknicks) March 21, 2023

“As we mourn, we will always strive to uphold the standards he left behind — the unmatched leadership, sacrifice and work ethic that personified him as a champion among champions,” the team said. “His is a legacy that will live forever.”

Nicknamed “The Captain,” Reed was the undersized center and emotional leader on the Knicks’ two NBA championship teams, with a soft shooting touch from the outside and a toughness to tussle with the era’s superstar big men on the inside.

His accomplishments — seven All-Star selections, two NBA Finals MVP awards among them — would have warranted Hall of Fame induction by themselves. During the 1969-70 season, he became the first player to sweep the MVP awards for the regular season, All-Star Game and NBA Finals.

But his spot in history was secured simply by walking onto the floor on the final night of that season.

Reed had injured a thigh muscle in Game 5 of the series between the Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers, tumbling to the court in pain. He sat out Game 6 as counterpart Wilt Chamberlain had 45 points and 27 rebounds in a Lakers romp that forced a deciding game at Madison Square Garden.

Reed’s status was unknown even to his Knicks teammates as he continued getting treatment until shortly before Game 7. Both teams were warming up when Reed came out of the tunnel, fans rising and roaring when they saw him emerge from the tunnel leading to the locker room.

“And here comes Willis and the crowd is going wild,” radio announcer Marv Albert said.

Reed, center, drives against San Francisco Warrior Clyde Lee, left, during an NBA game at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1970. At right is San Francisco Warrior Jeff Mullins. The Lakers stopped to watch Reed, who then made two quick jump shots in the early minutes of the game, running back down the court after both with a noticeable limp. He wouldn’t score again but the Knicks didn’t need it, with their captain’s return and Walt Frazier’s 36 points and 19 assists energizing them to a 113-99 romp and their first NBA title.

Frazier’s performance was one of the finest ever in a deciding game, but it was forever a footnote to Reed’s return. In 2006, to coincide with the NBA’s 60th anniversary, it finished third in voting of the league’s 60 greatest playoff moments, behind Michael Jordan’s championship-winning jumper for his sixth title in 1998 and Magic Johnson ending his rookie season by filling in for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at center in Game 6 of the 1980 finals to lead the Lakers to a championship.

Long afterward, a player’s return from injury has sometimes compared to Reed, such as when Boston’s Paul Pierce was carried off the floor with a knee injury in Game 1 of the 2008 NBA Finals against Los Angeles before quickly returning. But Phil Jackson, a teammate of Reed’s and then Lakers coach, dismissed that because of how serious Reed’s injury was.

“If I’m not mistaken, I think Willis Reed missed a whole half and three-quarters almost of a game and literally had to have a shot — a horse shot, three or four of them — in his thigh to come back out and play,” Jackson said.

Reed wouldn’t be able to recover so quickly from injuries in the coming years. He was limited to just 11 games in 1971-72 but came back strong the next season to spark the Knicks to a second title in what was his last full season.

Though his return always made the ’70 title the more celebrated one, it was the ’72-73 squad, having been fortified by Hall of Famers Earl Monroe and Jerry Lucas, that stood out to Reed.

“That, to me, in my mind was the best team,” he said during its 40th anniversary celebration.

Reed would play only 19 games in 1973-74 before retiring because of a knee injury after just 10 seasons.

That was long enough to collect more than 12,000 points and 8,400 rebounds, both of which still rank in the top three on the Knicks’ career lists.

Willis Reed was born June 25, 1942, in Hico, Louisiana. He stayed in his home state for his college career, leading Grambling State to the 1961 NAIA championship and a third-place finish in 1963. The school retired his number and named its court after Reed in 2022.

Reed celebrates in the dressing room after the Knicks beat the Los Angeles Lakers 113-99 to win the NBA championship in New York on May 8, 1970. A second-round pick in 1964, he quickly proved that standing only 6-foot-9 wouldn’t keep him from becoming one of the league’s top centers. He was voted Rookie of the Year and earned the first of his seven straight All-Star selections.

Reed was the anchor as the Knicks became one of the best teams in the NBA, with Hall of Famers such as Frazier, Bill Bradley and Dave DeBusschere.

Reed provided them with 18.7 points and 12.9 rebounds for his career, along with plenty of toughness. An ESPN documentary in 2014 on those Knicks showed footage of a 1966 fight in a game against the Lakers in which Reed appeared to throw punches at multiple opponents, with Jackson noting that it appeared Reed “decimated this team.”

His No. 19 was the first number retired by the Knicks and he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame in 1982.

Reed went on to coach the Knicks to a playoff berth in 1977-78 but coached them only 14 more games the following season. He also was a head coach at Creighton and the New Jersey Nets, but his greatest success after his playing career came in the front office.

He was their senior vice president of basketball operations when they drafted Derrick Coleman and Kenny Anderson, who became All-Stars and led the Nets to the playoffs.

Lance Reddick Dies At 60; Beloved Character Actor Starred In ‘John Wick’ Films And ‘The Wire’

By Mark Kennedy | Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Lance Reddick, a character actor who specialized in intense, icy and possibly sinister authority figures on TV and film, including “The Wire,” “Fringe” and the “John Wick” franchise, has died. He was 60.

Reddick died “suddenly” Friday morning, his publicist Mia Hansen said in a statement, attributing his death to natural causes. His death was first reported by celebrity website TMZ.com.

Reddick was often put in a suit or a crisp uniform during his career, playing tall taciturn and elegant men of distinction. He was best known for his role as straight-laced Lt. Cedric Daniels on the hit HBO series “The Wire,” where his character was agonizingly trapped in the messy politics of the Baltimore police department.

“I’m an artist at heart. I feel that I’m very good at what I do. When I went to drama school, I knew I was at least as talented as other students, but because I was a Black man and I wasn’t pretty, I knew I would have to work my butt off to be the best that I would be, and to be noticed,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2009.

Reddick also starred on the Fox series “Fringe” as a special agent Phillip Broyles, the smartly dressed Matthew Abaddon on “Lost” and played the multi-skilled Continental Hotel concierge Charon in the “John Wick” movies, including the fourth in the series opening this month

He earned a SAG Award nomination in 2021 as part of the ensemble for Regina King’s film “One Night in Miami.” Reddick played recurring roles on “Intelligence” and “American Horror Story” and was on the show “Bosch” for its seven-year run.

His upcoming projects include 20th Century’s remake of “White Men Can’t Jump” and “Shirley,” Netflix’s biopic of former Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. He was also slated to appear in the “John Wick” spinoff “Ballerina,” as well as “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.”

The Baltimore-born-and-raised Reddick was a Yale University drama school graduate who enjoyed some success after school by landing guest or recurring roles “CSI: Miami” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” He also appeared in several movies, including “I Dreamed of Africa,” “The Siege” and “Great Expectations.”

It was on season four of “Oz,” playing a doomed undercover officer sent to prison who becomes an addict, that Reddick had a career breakthrough.

“I was never interested in television. I always saw it as a means to an end. Like so many actors, I was only interested in doing theater and film. But ‘Oz’ changed television. It was the beginning of HBO’s reign on quality, edgy, artistic stuff. Stuff that harkens back to great cinema of the ’60s and ’70s,” he told The Associated Press in 2011.

“When the opportunity for ‘Oz’ came up, I jumped. And when I read the pilot for ‘The Wire,’ as a guy that never wanted to be on television, I realized I had to be on this show.”

Reddick attended the prestigious Eastman School of Music, where he studied classical composition, and he played piano. His first album, the jazzy “Contemplations and Remembrances,” came out in 2011.

Reddick had a recurring role as Jeffrey Tetazoo, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, on CBS’ “Intelligence.” On “American Horror Story: Coven,” Reddick portrayed Papa Legba, the go-between between humanity and the spirit world.

Reddick is survived by his wife, Stephanie Reddick, and children, Yvonne Nicole Reddick and Christopher Reddick.

Author Ian Falconer Dies; Wrote Beloved ‘Olivia’ Series For Children

Associated Press

NORWALK, Conn. — Author and illustrator Ian Woodward Falconer, known for his “Olivia” book series for children, has died.

Falconer’s lawyer and agent Conrad M. Rippy said Falconer died March 7 of natural causes while with family in Norwalk, Connecticut. He was 63.

Falconer’s “Olivia” books featured a clever piglet with a great imagination named Olivia, a character he developed for his young niece in 1996. Falconer’s “Olivia” books featured a clever piglet with a great imagination named Olivia, a character he developed for his young niece in 1996. Family members and friends encouraged him to keep working on the character.

He turned down publishers who wanted the text be written by an outside author. “I am afraid my vanity wouldn’t allow me to relegate myself to ‘illustrated by,’” he said. “I also thought my instincts about the story were, if unpolished, right, and had happened organically with the pictures.”

The first book in the series, called “Olivia,” was published in 2000. It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year, was awarded the Caldecott Honor and has sold over 10 million copies.

He wrote and illustrated seven sequels, the last of which was “Olivia the Spy” in 2017.

In 2022, he published a new book for children called “Two Dogs.” He told National Public Radio last year the characters, a pair of dachshunds named Perry and Augie, were inspired by his nephews.

Falconer was also a designer of sets and costumes for ballet and opera companies around the world including numerous productions by the New York City Ballet. He also created 30 magazine covers for The New Yorker.

Falconer was born Aug. 25, 1959, in Ridgefield, Connecticut, studied art history at New York University for two years and then enrolled as a painter at the Parsons School of Design. He transferred to the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and began working with artist David Hockney, helping him in his stage opera designs.

Falconer is survived by his mother, Sandy, and sisters Tonia and Tory, as well as nieces and nephews Olivia, Ian, August, Perry and Will.

Pat Schroeder Dies At 82; Colorado Congresswoman Was Pioneer For Women’s Rights

WASHINGTON — Former U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder, a pioneer for women’s and family rights in Congress, died Monday night. She was 82.

Schroeder’s former press secretary, Andrea Camp, said Schroeder suffered a stroke recently and died at a hospital in Florida, the state where she had been residing.

Schroeder took on the powerful elite with her rapier wit and antics for 24 years, shaking up stodgy government institutions by forcing them to acknowledge that women had a role in government.

Her unorthodox methods cost her important committee posts, but Schroeder said she wasn’t willing to join what she called “the good old boys’ club″ just to score political points. Unafraid of embarrassing her congressional colleagues in public, she became an icon for the feminist movement.

Schroeder was elected to Congress in Colorado in 1972 and became one of its most influential Democrats as she won easy reelection 11 times from her safe district in Denver. Despite her seniority, she was never appointed to head a committee.

Schroeder helped forge several Democratic majorities before deciding in 1997 it was time to leave. Her parting shot in 1998 was a book titled “24 Years of Housework … and the Place is Still a Mess. My Life in Politics,″ which chronicled her frustration with male domination and the slow pace of change in federal institutions.

In 1987, Schroeder tested the waters for the presidency, mounting a fundraising drive after fellow Coloradan Gary Hart pulled out of the race. She announced three months later that she would not run and said her “tears signify compassion, not weakness.” Her heart was not in it, she said, and she thought fundraising was demeaning.

Pat Schroeder, seen here in 1999, was a pioneer for women’s and family rights in Congress. She won reelection to her seat 11 times; despite her seniority, she was never appointed to head a Congressional committee. (Nick Ut/Associated Press Archives) She was the first woman on the House Armed Services Committee but was forced to share a chair with U.S. Rep. Ron Dellums, D-Oakland, the first African American, when committee chairman F. Edward Hebert, D-La., organized the panel. Schroeder said Hebert thought the committee was no place for a woman or an African American and they were each worth only half a seat.

Republicans were livid after Schroeder and others filed an ethics complaint over House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s televised college lecture series, charging that free cable time he received amounted to an illegal gift under House rules. Gingrich became the first speaker reprimanded by Congress. Gingrich said later he regretted not taking Schroeder and her colleagues more seriously.

Earlier, she had blasted Gingrich for suggesting women shouldn’t serve in combat because they could get infections from being in a ditch for 30 days. According to her official House biography, she once told Pentagon officials that if they were women, they would always be pregnant because they never said “no.″

Asked by one congressman how she could be a mother of two small children and a member of Congress at the same time, she replied, “I have a brain and a uterus, and I use both.″

It was Schroeder who branded President Ronald Reagan the “Teflon” president for his ability to avoid blame for major policy decisions, and the name stuck.

One of Schroeder’s biggest victories was the signing of a family-leave bill in 1993, providing job protection for care of a newborn, a sick child or a parent.

“Pat Schroeder blazed the trail. Every woman in this house is walking in her footsteps,” said Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who took over from Schroeder as Democratic chair of the bipartisan congressional caucus on women’s issues.

Schroeder said legislators spent too much attention on contributors and special interests. When House Republicans gathered on the U.S. Capitol steps to celebrate their first 100 days in power in 1994, she and several aides clambered to the building’s dome and hung a 15-foot red banner reading, “Sold.”

Pat Schroeder fought back tears and eventually broke down as she announced that she would not seek the office of the president. (Damian Strohmeyer/The Denver Post via Getty Images) A pilot, Schroeder earned her way through Harvard Law School with her own flying service. Schroeder became a professor at Princeton University after leaving Congress, but said politics was in her blood and she would continue working for candidates she supported.

For a while, she taught a graduate-level course titled “The Politics of Poverty.” She also headed the Association of American Publishers.

She later moved to Florida, where she continued to dabble in politics.

Schroeder was born in Portland, Oregon, on July 30, 1940. She was a pilot who paid for college tuition with her own flying service. She graduated from the University of Minnesota before earning her law degree in 1964. From 1964 to 1966, she was a field attorney for the National Labor Relations Board.

She married James W. Schroeder in 1962. The couple had two children, Scott and Jamie.

Former Associated Press writer Steven K. Paulson contributed to this report.

Thousands Gather At LA Cathedral For San Gabriel Valley Bishop David O’Connell’s Funeral

Weeks of mourning and remembrances will culminate today in a funeral Mass for slain Roman Catholic Bishop David O’Connell at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels in Downtown Los Angeles.

O’Connell, 69, a beloved priest in the diocese, who administered its San Gabriel Valley region, was found fatally shot on Feb. 18 at his Hacienda Heights home.

The 11 a.m. Mass is expected to draw large crowds to the Cathedral, where the Rev. Jay Cunnane, pastor at St. Corneliun Church in Long Beach, will give the homily.

More than 5,000 people in total were anticipated to attend the service – and by 10 a.m., the church pews were completely full.

Folks began lining up along the aisles and behind the pews to ensure they had a view of the funeral Mass.

Friday’s Mass is the last in a unique trio of services for the charismatic bishop, which began Wednesday night at his home parish, St. John Vianney, in Hacienda Heights, followed by a viewing and vigil on Thursday.

On Friday, hundreds of people – from a convent of nuns to the everyday churchgoer – had gathered in the Cathedral’s pews by 9 a.m., awaiting the third and final Mass to honor the fallen auxiliary bishop.

Mourners solemnly broached the entrance of the sanctuary, nestled in the heart of Downtown L.A., under the city’s typically hazy and smog-ridden skies.

But on Friday morning, streaks of sun shone through the gloom, as though the city — where O’Connell had dedicated much of life and fellowship — wished to bid him a final farewell.

The church’s gilded and grand interior, adorned with artifacts of great importance to the Catholic faith, also held fragments of O’Connell’s life: Memorial funeral sprays, lit candles in his honor, and prayers to shepherd him to his resting place.

The pews were packed at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Downtown L.A. for the funeral Mass for Bishop David O’Connell, March 3, 2023. (Photo by Kristy Hutchings) O’Connell, who became a priest in his native Ireland, only to move to L.A. to begin his ministry 45 years ago, will be interred at the Cathedral’s underground Mausoleum in a private ceremony.

O’Connell — “Bishop Dave” as he was known — was born in County Cork, Ireland in 1953, and was named an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles by Pope Francis in 2015.

He studied for the priesthood at All Hallows College in Dublin and was ordained to serve in the Archdiocese of L.A. in 1979.

After ordination, he served as associate pastor in several parishes and as pastor at St. Frances X. Cabrini, Ascension, St. Eugene, and St. Michael’s parishes, all in L.A.

While there, he ministered to a community afflicted by gang violence and poverty.

In addition to aiding neighborhood recovery efforts after the 1992 Los Angeles riots (spurred by the acquittal of LAPD officers charged with beating Rodney King), O’Connell helped to restore trust between residents and law enforcement by organizing meetings with police officers in people’s homes and providing opportunities for dialogue and reconciliation.

He was killed in a shooting in his home; a suspect, the husband of the bishop’s housekeeper, has been charged and authorities say he has confessed to the crime.

Burt Bacharach, Legendary Composer Of Pop Songs, Dies At 94

By HILLEL ITALIE | AP National Writer

NEW YORK — Burt Bacharach, the singularly gifted and popular composer who delighted with the quirky arrangements and unforgettable melodies of “Walk on By,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” and dozens of other hits, has died at 94.

The Grammy, Oscar and Tony-winning Bacharach died Wednesday at home in Los Angeles of natural causes, publicist Tina Brausam said Thursday.

Over the past 70 years, only Lennon-McCartney, Carole King and a handful of others rivaled his genius for instantly catchy songs that remained performed, played and hummed long after they were written. He had a run of top 10 hits from the 1950s into the 21st century, and his music was heard everywhere from movie soundtracks and radios to home stereo systems and iPods, whether “Alfie” and “I Say a Little Prayer” or “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” and “This Guy’s in Love with You.”

Dionne Warwick was his favorite interpreter, but Bacharach, usually in tandem with lyricist Hal David, also created prime material for Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones and many others. Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Frank Sinatra were among the countless artists who covered his songs, with more recent performers who sung or sampled him including White Stripes, Twista and Ashanti. “Walk On By” alone was covered by everyone from Warwick and Isaac Hayes to the British punk band the Stranglers and Cyndi Lauper.

FILE – Composer Burt Bacharach appears during an interview in Los Angeles on July 9, 1979. Bacharach died of natural causes Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at home in Los Angeles, publicist Tina Brausam said Thursday. He was 94. (AP Photo/Huynh, File)

FILE – Songwriter Burt Bacharach arrives with his wife, Carol Bayer Sager, at the third annual American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers awards ceremony on May 28, 1986. Bacharach died of natural causes Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at home in Los Angeles, publicist Tina Brausam said Thursday. He was 94. (AP Photo/Lennox McLendon, File)

FILE – Burt Bacharach, from left, appears with Carole Bayer Sager, Christopher Cross and Peter Allen, winners of the Oscar for best original song “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)” at the 54th Annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles on March 29, 1982. Bacharach died of natural causes Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at home in Los Angeles, publicist Tina Brausam said Thursday. He was 94. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)

FILE – Composer Burt Bacharach accepts the Oscar for Best Original Score for “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles on April 7, 1970. Bacharach died of natural causes Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at home in Los Angeles, publicist Tina Brausam said Thursday. He was 94. (AP Photo, File)

FILE – Burt Bacharach poses with his Oscar for best original score for “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” at the 42nd annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles on April 7, 1970. Bacharach died of natural causes Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at home in Los Angeles, publicist Tina Brausam said Thursday. He was 94. (AP Photo, File)

FILE – Burt Bacharach, left, and Elvis Costello hold their awards for best pop collaboration with vocals with “I Still Have That Other Girl” during the 41st Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Feb. 24, 1999. Bacharach died of natural causes Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at home in Los Angeles, publicist Tina Brausam said Thursday. He was 94. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, File)

FILE – Burt Bacharach attends the 2016 Newport Beach Film Festival Honors in Newport Beach, Calif. on April 23, 2016. The Grammy, Oscar and Tony-winning Bacharach died Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at home in Los Angeles of natural causes, publicist Tina Brausam said Thursday. He was 94. (Photo by John Salangsang/Invision/AP, File)

Bacharach was both an innovator and throwback, and his career seemed to run parallel to the rock era. He grew up on jazz and classical music and had little taste for rock when he was breaking into the business in the 1950s. His sensibility often seemed more aligned with Tin Pan Alley than with Bob Dylan, John Lennon and other writers who later emerged, but rock composers appreciated the depth of his seemingly old-fashioned sensibility.

“The shorthand version of him is that he’s something to do with easy listening,” Elvis Costello, who wrote the 1998 album “Painted from Memory” with Bacharach, said in a 2018 interview with The Associated Press. “It may be agreeable to listen to these songs, but there’s nothing easy about them. Try playing them. Try singing them.”

A box set, “The Songs of Bacharach & Costello,” is due to come out March 3.

He triumphed in many artforms. He was an eight-time Grammy winner, a prize-winning Broadway composer for “Promises, Promises” and a three-time Oscar winner. He received two Academy Awards in 1970, for the score of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and for the song “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” (shared with David). In 1982, he and his then-wife, lyricist Carole Bayer Sager, won for “Best That You Can Do,” the theme from “Arthur. His other movie soundtracks included “What’s New, Pussycat?”, “Alfie” and the 1967 James Bond spoof “Casino Royale.”

Bacharach was well rewarded, and well connected. He was a frequent guest at the White House, whether the president was Republican or Democrat. And in 2012, he was presented the Gershwin Prize by Barack Obama, who had sung a few seconds of “Walk on By” during a campaign appearance.

In his life, and in his music, he stood apart. Fellow songwriter Sammy Cahn liked to joke that the smiling, wavy-haired Bacharach was the first composer he ever knew who didn’t look like a dentist. Bacharach was a “swinger,” as they called such men in his time, whose many romances included actor Angie Dickinson, to whom he was married from 1965-80, and Sager, his wife from 1982-1991.

Married four times, he formed his most lasting ties to work. He was a perfectionist who took three weeks to write “Alfie” and might spend hours tweaking a single chord. Sager once observed that Bacharach’s life routines essentially stayed the same — only the wives changed.

It began with the melodies — strong yet interspersed with changing rhythms and surprising harmonics. He credited much of his style to his love of bebop and to his classical education, especially under the tutelage of Darius Milhaud, the famed composer. He once played a piece for piano, violin and oboe for Milhaud that contained a melody he was ashamed to have written, as 12-point atonal music was in vogue at the time. Milhaud, who liked the piece, advised the young man, “Never be afraid of the melody.”

“That was a great affirmation for me,” Bacharach recalled in 2004.

Bacharach was essentially a pop composer, but his songs became hits for country artists (Marty Robbins), rhythm and blues performers (Chuck Jackson), soul (Franklin, Luther Vandross) and synth-pop (Naked Eyes). He reached a new generation of listeners in the 1990s with the help of Costello and others.

Mike Myers would recall hearing the sultry “The Look of Love” on the radio and finding fast inspiration for his “Austin Powers” retro spy comedies, in which Bacharach made cameos.

In the 21st century, he was still testing new ground, writing his own lyrics and recording with rapper Dr. Dre.

He was married to his first wife, Paula Stewart, from 1953-58, and married for a fourth time, to Jane Hansen, in 1993. He is survived by Hansen, as well as his children Oliver, Raleigh and Cristopher, Brausam said. He was preceded in death by his daughter with Dickinson, Nikki Bacharach.

Bacharach knew the very heights of acclaim, but he remembered himself as a loner growing up, a short and self-conscious boy so uncomfortable with being Jewish he even taunted other Jews. His favorite book as a kid was Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”; he related to the sexually impotent Jake Barnes, regarding himself as “socially impotent.”

He was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but soon moved to New York City. His father was a syndicated columnist, his mother a pianist who encouraged the boy to study music. Although he was more interested in sports, he practiced piano every day after school, not wanting to disappoint his mother. While still a minor, he would sneak into jazz clubs, bearing a fake ID, and hear such greats as Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie.

“They were just so incredibly exciting that all of a sudden, I got into music in a way I never had before,” he recalled in the memoir “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” published in 2013. “What I heard in those clubs turned my head around.”

He was a poor student, but managed to gain a spot at the music conservatory at McGill University in Montreal. He wrote his first song at McGill and listened for months to Mel Torme’s “The Christmas Song.” Music also may have saved Bacharach’s life. He was drafted into the Army in the late 1940s and was still on active duty during the Korean War. But officers stateside soon learned of his gifts and wanted him around. When he did go overseas, it was to Germany, where he wrote orchestrations for a recreation center on the local military base.

After his discharge, he returned to New York and tried to break into the music business. He had little success at first as a songwriter, but he became a popular arranger and accompanist, touring with Vic Damone, the Ames Brothers and Stewart, his eventual first wife. When a friend who had been touring with Marlene Dietrich was unable to make a show in Las Vegas, he asked Bacharach to step in.

The young musician and ageless singer quickly clicked and Bacharach traveled the world with her in the late 1950s and early ’60s. During each performance, she would introduce him in grand style: “I would like you to meet the man, he’s my arranger, he’s my accompanist, he’s my conductor, and I wish I could say he’s my composer. But that isn’t true. He’s everybody’s composer … Burt Bacharach!”

Meanwhile, he had met his ideal songwriter partner — David, as businesslike as Bacharach was mercurial, so domesticated that he would leave each night at 5 to catch the train back to his family on Long Island. Working in a tiny office in Broadway’s celebrated Brill Building, they produced their first million-seller, “Magic Moments,” sung in 1958 by Perry Como. In 1962, they spotted a backup singer for the Drifters, Warwick, who had a “very special kind of grace and elegance,” Bacharach recalled.

The trio produced hit after hit. The songs were as complicated to record as they were easy to hear. Bacharach liked to experiment with time signatures and arrangements, such as having two pianists play on “Walk on By,” their performances just slightly out of sync to give the song “a jagged kind of feeling,” he wrote in his memoir.

The Bacharach-David partnership ended with the dismal failure of a 1973 musical remake of “Lost Horizon.” Bacharach became so depressed he isolated himself in his Del Mar vacation home and refused to work.

“I didn’t want to write with Hal or anybody,” he told the AP in 2004. Nor did he want to fulfill a commitment to record Warwick. She and David both sued him.

Bacharach and David eventually reconciled. When David died in 2012, Bacharach praised him for writing lyrics “like a miniature movie.”

Meanwhile, Bacharach kept working, vowing never to retire, always believing that a good song could make a difference.

“Music softens the heart, makes you feel something if it’s good, brings in emotion that you might not have felt before,” he told the AP in 2018. “It’s a very powerful thing if you’re able to do to it, if you have it in your heart to do something like that.”

The late Associated Press writer Bob Thomas was a contributor to this report from Los Angeles.