Mary May – "Anyone Who Had a Heart" (1964)

Anyone who ever loved could look at me

And know that I love you

Anyone who ever dreamed could look at me

And know I dream of you

The last installment of 2 or 3 lines featured Cilla Black’s recording of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David song, “Anyone Who Had a Heart.”

Today I’m featuring a much less well-known cover of “Anyone Who Had a Heart.”  

Why post about two different recordings of the same song?  Because it’s such a damn good song. 

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“Anyone Who Had a Heart” was the first of the many Bacharach-David songs that were hits for Dionne Warwick. 

Burt Bacharach and Hal David

When Burt Bacharach pitched the song to Warwick in 1963, lyricist Hal David was still struggling with the words of the first verse, which is quoted above.  

David was happy with the second line, with its emphasis on “love” – “And know that I l-o-v-e you.”  But he wasn’t happy with the last line, where the emphasis fell on “of” instead of “dream.”  After trying everything he could think of to fix the line, he finally gave up and left it as it was.

To me, that last line sounds just fine with the stress on “of.”  David’s placement of that word creates an internal rhyme – technically speaking, a near rhyme – with “love” in the second line.  

I hesitate to question Hal David’s judgment.  But I think the elongation of “love” and “of” – which places emphasis on the internal rhyme created by the placement of those two words (each of which is followed by “you”) – greatly enhances the effect of that verse.

Or maybe I feel that way because I’m just used to it.

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In 2018, a writer and musician named Sean Nelson wrote an article for a Seattle alternative newspaper that discussed no fewer than twenty different recordings of “Anyone Who Had a Heart.”  (I have some surprising information about Sean Nelson that I’ll share with you in the next 2 or 3 lines.)

I vaguely remember hearing Dionne Warwick’s original recording of “Anyone Who Had a Heart” on the radio back in the day, but before I started to research this post I wasn’t familiar with any of the covers of that song that Nelson mentioned in his piece, although some of them were by very well-known recording artists (including Dusty Springfield, Linda Ronstadt, Olivia Newton-John, and Elvis Costello).

Dusty Springfield

Nelson’s article was titled Who Sang It Best? The “Anyone Who Had a Heart” Olympics.  His favorite was Dusty Springfield’s version:

To my ears, [Springfield’s cover is] the definitive reading of the song, a bar no one has ever cleared, though many have tried.  Everything about this performance, produced by Johnny Franz as an album track for Springfield's debut LP, A Girl Called Dusty . . . is redolent not only of heartbreak, but of the depravity a broken heart is capable of inspiring. It’s full of the kind of naked vulnerability that would be embarrassing if it weren’t communicated with such mastery.  Shattered and shattering.  And she was just 25 years old.

It’s curious that Springfield’s recording of the song was never released as a single.  Dionne Warwick’s original recording of the song was on the American charts when Dusty recorded her cover in January 1964, but hadn’t been released in the UK yet.

George Martin hustled Cilla Black into the Abbey Road Studios to record her cover of “Anyone Who Had a Heart” just before Warwick’s version was released internationally, and that record eventually went to #1 in the UK.  It appears that Springfield’s version was actually recorded a week or two before Black’s, but her record company was asleep at the switch and let Black get the jump on Dusty. 

Here’s an odd little fact: the Breakaways (a girl-group trio who never had a hit of their own but sang on Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe,” and many other hits) were the backup singers on both Springfield’s and Black’s recordings.

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Nelson likes Warwick’s original version better than Cilla Black’s – and he likes live recordings of the song that Warwick made in 1996 and 2002 even more.

He also gives high marks to Linda Ronstadt’s 1993 recording of “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” which he describes as being “like the world's saddest bell ringing with perfect clarity through the world's coldest night.”

I think “Anyone Who Had a Heart” is a woman’s song – it just doesn’t sound right when it’s sung by a man.  Maybe that’s why the covers by Frankie Valli, Luther Vandross, Ronald Isley, and Elvis Costello just don’t cut it.  (Nelson thinks Costello nailed the song, but I don’t get it.)

Perhaps the worst of the covers that Nelson panned was Tim Curry’s, who sounds exactly like he did when he sang on The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack.  (I love me some Dr. Frank N. Furter, but he has no business singing “Anyone Who Had a Heart.”)

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Mary May’s 1964 recording of “Anyone Who Had a Heart” isn’t one of the covers that Sean Nelson included in his 2018 article.

I’m not sure if that’s because he simply overlooked it, or because he didn’t think it was worthy of mention.  (It may not be the best of the “Anyone Who Had a Heart” covers, but I don’t think it’s worst one either.)

There are two different YouTube videos that feature the Mary May version of the song.  

The first one has attracted fewer than 1000 views since it was uploaded in 2012.  The first of the nine comments on that video was posted in 2015 by a woman named Helen Holt, who noted that Mary May was “[m]y stepdad’s aunty!!!”  A year later, Antony Towers wrote this: “Sadly my Aunt Lily (Mary May) passed away today. Not only a beautiful singer, but also a beautiful person.”

The second video has been viewed just over 3000 times since it was uploaded in 2013.  No one commented on it until 2019, when someone named Thomas Sanderson wrote that “Mary May was Lily Sanderson, my husband’s mother.”  It turned out that this comment was actually written by Thomas Sanderson’s mother, who later added this note: “Sorry.  I meant that Lily Sanderson was Thomas Sanderson's grandmother.  This comment was written by Thomas's mum!!”

According to a 2000 article in the Lancashire Telegraph, Mary May’s real name was Lily Sanderson (née Lily Towers), who sang with a popular British big band in the 1940s.  Her husband, Tommy Sanderson, was the band’s pianist.

Lily made the big time when she was recruited by legendary bandleader Henry Hall to move to London and perform with the BBC Dance Orchestra, whose daily BBC Radio broadcasts were hugely popular all over the UK.

But Lily had to leave London shortly after moving there, moving back to her hometown of Blackburn, Lancashire to help take care of her seriously ill mother.  

(Does “Blackburn, Lancashire” ring any bells?  It certainly should.)

The Lancashire Telegraph article doesn’t explain what Lily did between the time she left her gig with the BBC Dance Orchestra and 1964, when she recorded “Anyone Who had a Heart” with the Johnny Dankworth Orchestra.  (You can click here to read that article.)

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Cilla Black’s cover of “Anyone Who Had a Heart” first charted in the UK the week of February 12, 1964, and eventually made it all the way to #1 (where it stayed for three weeks).

Dionne Warwick’s original recording of the song – which had been a top ten hit in the U.S. – made its debut on the UK charts a week later.  It peaked at #42.

Mary May’s cover – or Lily Sanderson’s, if you prefer – became the third version of the song to chart two weeks after that, when it debuted in the #49 spot.

Both the Warwick and May recordings fell off the pop charts a week later, but Cilla Black’s version hung around until early June. 

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Click here to listen to Mary May’s cover of “Anyone Who Had a Heart.”