When you think of the legendary Burt Bacharach, your brain probably defaults to those silky Dionne Warwick hits or the unmistakable opening guitar strum of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head." It's easy listening, right? Safe. Sophisticated. But there’s this one track—a five-minute fever dream tucked away on the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid soundtrack—that proves Bacharach was way weirder and more ambitious than the "lounge music" label suggests. I’m talking about Burt Bacharach South American Getaway.
It’s a bizarre, frantic, and beautiful piece of music.
If you’ve seen the 1969 film, you know the scene. Butch, Sundance, and Etta Place are fleeing the law, heading for Bolivia. Instead of a dusty, Morricone-style Western score, George Roy Hill (the director) wanted something that felt modern. He wanted Burt. What he got was a vocal jazz workout that sounds like the Swingle Singers had too much espresso in a Rio de Janeiro basement.
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The Mystery of the Voices
One of the biggest misconceptions about the Burt Bacharach South American Getaway track is who actually sang it. For decades, fans swore it was the Swingle Singers—that famous French a cappella group known for scatting through Bach. Honestly, it sounds exactly like them. But it wasn't.
The real magic came from the Ron Hicklin Singers.
These were the ultimate Los Angeles studio pros. If you grew up in the 70s, you heard them every single day without knowing it. They were the real voices behind The Partridge Family. They sang on the theme to MASH* and the vocal version of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. For the South American Getaway sessions, they had to navigate Bacharach’s notoriously difficult time signatures and "ba-da-da" syllables with surgical precision.
Bacharach was a perfectionist. A total taskmaster. He didn't just want "vocalizing"; he wanted the voices to act as a rhythmic engine. The track shifts from a bouncy jazz waltz to a slow, almost melancholic samba, and then ramps back up into a frantic chase.
Why This Track Matters (Seriously)
Most film scores of the late 60s were trying to be "epic." You had the sweeping strings of Maurice Jarre or the gritty brass of Lalo Schifrin. Then you have Bacharach, who decides to score a train robbery and a flight to South America with what is essentially high-concept elevator music on steroids.
It was a massive risk.
Think about the structure:
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- It’s over five minutes long.
- There are zero actual lyrics.
- The time signatures flip-flop like a fish on a pier.
- It combines Brazilian bossa nova with West Coast jazz.
This wasn't just background noise. It was a character in the movie. When the trio hits Bolivia and realizes it’s a muddy, desolate dump—not the tropical paradise they imagined—the music reflects that weird tension between their romanticized view of being outlaws and the grim reality of their situation.
The Wrecking Crew Connection
You can’t talk about the sound of this track without mentioning the players. While the Ron Hicklin Singers provided the "ba-das," the instrumental foundation was laid by the Wrecking Crew—that legendary group of session musicians who played on everything from the Beach Boys to Sinatra.
We’re talking about people like Carol Kaye on bass and Tommy Tedesco on guitar/ukulele. Their ability to switch gears on a dime is what gives the South American Getaway its "swing." It’s light, but it’s technically heavy. If you try to tap your foot to it, you'll probably lose the beat halfway through. That’s the Bacharach touch: making the incredibly complex sound effortless.
What Really Happened During Recording
Bacharach famously didn't get along with everyone. Robert Redford, for instance, reportedly hated "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" when he first heard it. He thought it didn't fit a Western. He wasn't alone. Critics at the time were confused by the whole soundtrack.
But Bacharach knew something they didn't. He realized that Butch Cassidy wasn't a movie about the Old West; it was a movie about the end of an era, about guys who didn't fit in anymore. The music needed to feel "out of time."
The South American Getaway sequence is a montage. In film school, they teach you that montages are a lazy way to show time passing. But with this track, the montage becomes a music video before music videos existed. The syncopated wordless pop sustains the flow as the trio robs bank after bank. It makes the violence feel like a dance.
How to Listen Today
If you’re revisiting the Burt Bacharach South American Getaway today, don't just listen to it on your phone speakers. You’ll miss the panning. Bacharach used the stereo field to bounce the voices back and forth, creating a sense of movement that mirrors the characters running for their lives.
Here is what you should actually do to appreciate this piece of 1960s avant-pop:
- Find the A&M Records Vinyl: The 1969 pressing (SP-4227) is the gold standard. The mix is wide, and you can hear the "wet" reverb on the singers' voices that the digital remasters sometimes squash.
- Watch the "Bolivia" Montage: Don't just listen to the audio. Watch the film sequence. Notice how the cuts in the film are timed to the rhythmic shifts in the vocals. It’s a masterclass in editing.
- Compare it to "The Sundance Kid": That’s the opening track of the album. It’s a languid bossa nova. Contrast that with the "Getaway" track, and you'll see how Bacharach uses the same musical DNA but speeds it up to create anxiety.
It’s easy to dismiss this era of music as "kinda cheesy." And sure, there’s a lot of "ba-ba-bas." But if you look under the hood, Burt Bacharach South American Getaway is a complex, daring piece of arrangement that shouldn't have worked in a Western, yet somehow defines it. It’s a reminder that Bacharach wasn't just a songwriter—he was an architect of sound.
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Check out the original soundtrack on high-quality streaming or, better yet, find a used copy of the A&M LP. Pay attention to the way the bass interacts with the vocal percussion at the three-minute mark. It's some of the tightest session work ever captured on tape. Once you hear the technicality behind the "easy" sound, you'll never hear Bacharach the same way again.