 Warwick, though feeling it pointless to increase the song's massive cover version count (there were by then some forty-two recorded versions of the song), was persuaded to record the song, cutting her vocal in a single take.Although the "Alfie" track on Warwick's "Here Where There Is Love" album began receiving radio airplay as early as January 1967, the track was not issued as a single until March 1967 and then as the intended B-side of the Bacharach/David composed "The Beginning of Loneliness"; however disc jockeys preferred "Alfie", flipped the single to its B-side, and the track began to ascend the "Billboard" Hot 100 in April 1967, with a major assist from Warwick's performance of "Alfie" on the 39th Academy Awards ceremony television broadcast live worldwide on April 10, 1967.