Alfie (Burt Bacharach song) featured on the October 1966 album release entitled "Chér". Despite the relative failure of the version of "Alfie" cut for the US film release, Cilla Black's UK success with the song had attracted sufficient attention in the US for several American singers besides Cher to cover the song by the time the film "Alfie" opened in the US in August 1966. Two of these covers actually predate the Cher recording although neither was released prior to Cher's, the first evident recording of "Alfie" by an American singer being that cut by Jerry Butler in May 1966 which first appeared as
Michael Caine (1963) and "Ping Pong" on the BBC Third Programme (1964). A big break came for Caine when he was cast as Meff in James Saunders' Cockney comedy "Next Time I'll Sing To You", when this play was presented at the New Arts Theatre in London on 23 January 1963. Scenes from the play's performance were featured in the April 1963 issue of "Theatre World" magazine. When this play moved to the Criterion in Piccadilly with Michael Codron directing, he was visited backstage by Stanley Baker, one of the four stars in Caine's first film, "A Hill in Korea", who told