Скачать или смотреть I Took My Strength from You - Stephanie Mills with Burt Bacharach

From the 1975 Motown album "For the First Time." This album was written and produced by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The Lp had four different arrangers (Burt Bacharach, Bill Eaton, Dave Matthews and Kenny Asher), and I'm not sure who provided the arrangement for this particular song. [EDIT: Phil Watson confirms it was Burt]. Author Robin Platts has written that Bacharach recorded a studio version prior to this with Dionne Warwick, but as of 2014 it has not been released.

Jazz musician Eyvind Kang recorded an instrumental version of this song in the mid-1990s that made use of the distinctive bass line found in the verses of this Stephanie Mills version.

You might compare this version to the version recorded by Sylvester three years later, or to the version on Bacharach's "Futures" album.

EDIT: A commenter left a set of lyrics in the comments which had slight differences with what is on this record. They may be the words Sylvester sings. Here's what Stephanie actually sings (I assume these are the words Hal gave her to sing):

* *

Knowing the way the wind was gonna blow
That was the way that I'd be going
Too afraid to stand alone
Too unsure to ever make my mind up
Following the crowd was where I'd wind up

Just like the tide keeps changing with the moon
Day after day I changed direction
Trying hard to find myself
Wondering where my hopes and dreams had gone to
There I was with nothing to hold on to

Oh but then I took my strength from you
I had none, I had none
And then I took my faith from you
I had none, I had none
Until I met you

Just when I needed your love, I met you

* *

I wonder if Burt and Hal set out to write something that could be interpreted as both a love song and a gospel song, or how the spiritual angle of this lyric came about. The verses are actually kind of slyly funky, and don't remind me that much of gospel, but the chorus seems straight out of the contemporary gospel scene in terms of harmonic structure and the almost anthem-like rhythms.