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.”

Cilla Black – "Anyone Who Had a Heart" (1964)

Anyone who had a heart

Would simply take me

In his arms and

Always love me

Why won’t you?

Today is the ELEVENTH anniversary of the birth of my wildly successful little blog.  (Joyeux anniversaire à 2 or 3 lines!)  

I’m observing this very special occasion by featuring Cilla Black’s cover of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David song, “Anyone Who Had a Heart” – which I had never heard until a few days ago.

Please click here and listen to her recording before you read any further.

Cilla Black in 1966

If you’re like me, listening to it once won’t be enough.  You’ll replay it once, twice, three times – maybe more.

If this record doesn’t move you, you should check your pulse because YOU MIGHT BE DEAD!

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One of the reasons that I continue to write 2 or 3 lines is that I am still discovering records that excite me or move me, and that I want to share with other music fans.

Those records come in all shapes and sizes.  When I try to articulate what it is about them that appeals to me, I find that it’s usually one of three things.

Sometimes, it’s the record’s attitude.  (Give me a loud, energetic, out-of-control record that gives a musical middle finger to conventional wisdom and the powers that be, and the odds are that I will love it.)

Sometimes, it’s the record’s craftsmanship.  (I had enough musical training when I was a student that I appreciate well-written songs, skillful vocal or instrumental performances, and complex and innovative  arrangements.)

And sometimes, it’s all about 2 or 3 lines – a record elicits a strong emotional response from me perhaps by triggering remembrances of things past. 

What sets today’s featured recording apart is primarily its craftsmanship, which is admirable.  But it elicited an emotional response from me that had nothing to do with my intellectual appreciation of the record’s craftsmanship.

Almost every aspect of this record is remarkable, but what is most remarkable about it is the song itself.  

Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote many, many great songs – they clearly belong on the Mount Rushmore of pop songwriting duos – but none of them are better than “Anyone Who Had a Heart.”  

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“The Look of Love” – which is a happy song –was probably my favorite Bacharach-David song before this week.    

“Anyone Who Had a Heart” is most definitely not a happy song.  The woman who sings it is desperate, and she doesn’t care that her lover knows it.  She begs him to hold her, but he apparently can’t be bothered.  In essence, she opens up a vein and bleeds all over the place, and all he does is watch.

Is the song melodramatic?  You bet your ass it is.

Is it a little “over the top”?  Yes, it is – that’s exactly what makes it so great!

I like Cilla Black’s cover of the song because it’s not a bit subtle.  She doesn’t hold back – when she gets to the chorus, she lets it all hang out.

Maybe that’s because Cilla Black was a 20-year-old working-class girl from Liverpool, not some spoiled rich kid from a a posh London neighborhood like Knightsbridge or St. John’s Wood.  She sings the song like she knows what it feels like to be rejected.

(Bonus question: which Rolling Stones song refers to both Knightsbridge and St. John’s Wood?)

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Priscilla Maria Veronica White was a working-class girl who was born in Liverpool the same year as George Harrison.

Her first job was as a coat-check girl at the legendary Cavern Club, and she became friendly with the Beatles when they returned to Liverpool from Hamburg in 1961.  The Fab Four talked their manager, Brian Epstein, into giving her an audition, and even volunteered to accompany her when she sang for him. 

Ringo, John, Cilla Black, and Paul

The audition was a disaster because the Beatles played the song she sang in their vocal key rather than hers, but Epstein agreed to manage her after hearing her perform at a local jazz club.  He introduced her to George Martin, who signed her to a record deal and produced her first single – a Lennon-McCartney song titled “Love of the Loved.”

“Anyone Who Had a Heart” was her second single, and it quickly went to the #1 spot on the British pop charts.  Burt Bacharach and Hal David had written the song from Dionne Warwick, who recorded it weeks before Black covered it.  Warwick’s recording was a top ten hit in the U.S., but Black stole her thunder in the UK – her cover was the best-selling UK pop single by a female artist in the entire decade.

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Until I came across her recording of “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” I was unfamiliar with Cilla Black’s recorded oeuvre.  That’s not surprising given that she had only one top 40 hit in the U.S. 

If I had grown up in the UK instead of the U.S., I would no doubt be very familiar with Cilla Black.  She was the most successful female recording artist in the UK in the sixties, with eleven top ten singles and three best-selling albums.  

She recorded songs by some of the very best songwriters of the era.  Her recording of the Bacharach-David song, “Alfie,” was almost as big a hit as “Anyone Who Had a Heart.”  Lennon and McCartney wrote several songs for her, and she also released records with songs by Phil Spector, Tim Hardin, and Randy Newman (who said that her version of his song “I’ve Been Wrong Before” was probably the best cover of one his songs that was ever recorded).

Black later became a very popular television host.  She was given her own BBC variety show in 1968 – Cilla ran for eight seasons – and later hosted several other highly-rated entertainment programs.  She was the highest-paid female performer on British television in the eighties and nineties.

Cilla Black in 1990

Cilla Black died in 2015 after falling at home and suffering a brain hemorrhage.  She was 72.  

“The Long and Winding Road” – Paul McCartney called her 1973 cover the definitive recording of that song – was played as her coffin was carried from the church.

Her The Very Best of Cilla Black – which was originally released in 1983 – reached number one on the British album charts shortly after her death.

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

Click here to watch a video of a very young Cilla Black performing the song live.  (Cilla was no beauty, which I think makes her performance even more powerful.)

And click on the link below to order the song from Amazon: