For more than 30 years, it was hard to turn on the radio and not hear a Burt Bacharach song.

Working first with lyricist Hal David and later Carole Bayer Sager, who became Bacharach’s third wife, the Forest Hills-raised Bacharach composed the music for hits like “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?”, “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” and “Close to You.”

Longtime pianist and entertainer Piano Steve Lynch will pay tribute to the man and his music in a concert at the Islip Public Library on Oct. 1.

Lynch will be joined by singers Richard Fisichello, Lisa Greene and Janet D’Amico. Together, they’ll perform more than two-dozen Bacharach standards in their 90-minute show.

How did the idea for the show come about?

Fisichello told Lynch about being in a local theater production of “Promises, Promises,” for which Bacharach and David wrote the music and lyrics. That conversation gave Lynch the idea of putting together a show featuring Bacharach songs. He started working on it about two weeks before Bacharach died, in February, at age 94.

Even Lynch, 72, a veteran entertainer with more than 50 years in show business, was surprised at Bacharach’s fascinating career and the list of hummable hits he penned for singers from Dusty Springfield, to Tom Jones, to Dionne Warwick, whom Lynch called “the definitive singer of Burt Bacharach tunes.”

Lynch, who lives in East Islip, has had a fascinating career himself.

Raised in Queens, Lynch started off thinking he might become a journalist, but veered into music instead.

As a young man, he joined a rock band that toured Canada, worked in a traveling circus, and then reinvented himself as a solo act. He played piano and sang in Las Vegas lounges, then spent four years playing piano on cruise ships, a job that took him all over the world.

Lynch wrote a memoir of his musical journey, called “Good Gigs, Bad Gigs: Ups and Downs in the Small Time.”
Now “semi-retired,” Lynch plays the occasional private party and has a steady Saturday-night gig playing piano at Irish Coffee Pub in East Islip.

He’s played shows at the Islip and East Islip libraries and is looking to book more gigs on the library circuit.

“It’s been an interesting life,” he said.