Dionne Warwick
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Dionne Warwick Biography
It is easier to define Dionne Warwick by what she isn't rather
than what she is. Although she grew up singing in church, she is not a
gospel singer. Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan are clear influences,
but she is not a jazz singer. R&B is also part of her background,
but she is not really a soul singer, either, at least not in the sense
that Aretha Franklin is. Sophisticated is a word often used to describe
her musical approach and the music she sings, but she is not a singer
of standards such as Lena Horne or Nancy Wilson. What is she, then? She
is a pop singer of a sort that perhaps could only have emerged out of
the Brill Building environment of post-Elvis Presley, pre-Beatles urban
pop in the early '60s. That's when she hooked up with Burt Bacharach
and Hal David, songwriters and producers who wrote their unusually
complicated songs for her aching, yet detached alto voice. Warwick is
inescapably associated with those songs, even though she managed to
build a career after leaving Bacharach and David that drew upon their
style for other memorable recordings, such that she remains a unique
figure in popular music.
Marie Dionne Warrick was born into a gospel-music family. Her father
was a gospel record promoter for Chess Records and her mother managed
the Drinkard Singers, a gospel group consisting of her relatives. She
first raised her voice in song at age six at the New Hope Baptist
Church in Newark, NJ, and soon after was a member of the choir. As a
teenager, she formed a singing group called the Gospelaires with her
sister Dee Dee and her aunt Cissy Houston (later the mother of Whitney
Houston). After graduating from high school in 1959, she earned a music
scholarship to the Hartt College of Music in Hartford, CT, but she also
spent time with her group recording background vocals on sessions in
New York. The Gospelaires are said to be present on such well-known
recordings as Ben E. King's Spanish Harlem and Stand By Me. They
were at a Drifters session working on a song called Mexican Divorce
composed by Burt Bacharach when Bacharach, attending the session,
suggested Warwick might do some demos for him. She did, singing songs
he had written with lyricist Hal David. Bacharach and David pitched one
of the songs to Florence Greenberg, head of the small independent
Scepter Records label, and Greenberg liked the demo singer enough to
sign her as a recording artist. Bacharach and David wrote and produced
her first single, Don't Make Me Over, in 1962. When the record was
released, the performer credit contained a typo; it read Dionne
Warwick instead of Dionne Warrick, and she kept the new name. (Her
sister Dee Dee eventually became Dee Dee Warwick as well.)
Don't Make Me Over peaked in the Top 20 of the pop charts in early
1963, also reaching the Top Five of the R&B charts. Warwick's
subsequent singles were not as successful, but in early 1964, she
reached the pop and R&B Top Ten and the Top Five of the easy
listening charts with Anyone Who Had a Heart, which was also her
first record to reach the charts in the U.K. (There, such singers as
Cilla Black and Dusty Springfield sometimes would cover her records
before her own versions had a chance to become hits.) Walk on By
followed it into the Top Ten of the pop, easy listening, and U.K.
charts in the spring of 1964, and it hit number one on the R&B
charts. By then, the Beatles had arrived on the American scene,
followed by the British Invasion, and for a while, pop artists like
Warwick took a beating on the charts. Nevertheless, the singer
continued to place singles and LPs in the rankings over the next couple
of years and in the spring of 1966, she returned to the Top Ten of the
pop charts and the Top Five of the R&B charts with Message to
Michael. Other, more modest hits followed, including the most
successful U.S. recording of the title song from the movie Alfie, which
reached the R&B Top Five and the pop Top 20 in the spring of 1967.
That summer, Warwick topped the R&B LP charts with her gold-selling
Here Where There Is Love album and by the fall, Scepter had amassed
enough chart singles to issue Dionne Warwick's Golden Hits, Pt. 1, her
first album to reach the pop Top Ten.
Curiously, Warwick's career reached a new level with a single not
written by Bacharach and David, although they produced it. It was
(Theme From) Valley of the Dolls, written by André and Dory Previn
and issued at the end of 1967. The record reached the Top Five of the
pop, R&B, and easy listening charts. Its B-side, Bacharach and
David's I Say a Little Prayer, reached the Top Five of the pop and
R&B charts, helping the single become a gold record and the Valley
of the Dolls LP also made the Top Five of the pop and R&B charts
and went gold. With that, Warwick was on a roll. Her next single, Do
You Know the Way to San José, reached the pop Top Ten and the R&B
and easy listening Top Five in the spring of 1968 and won the Grammy
Award for Best Contemporary Pop Vocal Performance, Female. In the
winter of 1969, her version of This Guy's in Love With You, re-titled
This Girl's in Love With You, made the pop and R&B Top Ten and
the easy listening Top Five and in early 1970, I'll Never Fall in Love
Again from Bacharach and David's score for the Broadway musical
Promises, Promises made the pop Top Ten and topped the easy listening
charts, bringing her another Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Vocal
Performance, Female.
In 1971, Warwick added an e to the end of her name on the advice of a
numerologist, retaining the new spelling until 1975. She also left
Scepter Records and signed a deal with the major label Warner Bros.
that included Bacharach and David as her writer and producer. The team
produced the 1972 album Dionne, which was a modest seller, but then
Bacharach and David split up in the wake of the critical and commercial
failure of their work on a musical remake of the film Lost Horizon in
1973. Due to her contractual commitment, Warwick was forced to sue her
old partners. A settlement was reached, but they would not work
together again for many years and Warwick's career suffered.
Warwick bounced back with Then Came You, a song she recorded with the
Spinners, which topped the pop and R&B charts and reached the Top
Five of the easy listening charts in October 1974, going gold in the
process. It proved to be a one-off success, but Warwick (now without
the e ) signed to Arista Records in 1979 and returned to the Top Five
of the pop adult contemporary (formerly easy listening) charts with
I'll Never Love This Way Again, produced by labelmate Barry Manilow
and featured on her first platinum-selling album, another LP simply
titled Dionne. Deja Vu, also from the album, was a Top 20 pop and
number one adult contemporary hit. I'll Never Love This Way Again won
Warwick her third Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female; Deja
Vu won her her fourth for Best Rhythm & Blues Vocal Performance,
Female.
Warwick topped the adult contemporary charts in 1980 with No Night So
Long, but her next across-the-board hit did not come until she hooked
up with the Bee Gees for her 1982 album Heartbreaker. Barry Gibb
produced the gold-selling LP and the three Gibb brothers wrote the
title song, which made the pop Top Ten and topped the adult
contemporary charts. In 1985, Warwick was reconciled with Bacharach and
she organized a charity recording of his and Carole Bayer Sager's song
That's What Friends Are For to benefit AIDS, featuring Elton John,
Gladys Knight, and Stevie Wonder, in addition to herself. The record
topped the pop, R&B, and adult contemporary charts in the winter of
1985-1986, the album Friends on which it was included went gold, and
the song earned Warwick her fifth Grammy for Best Pop Performance by a
Duo or Group with Vocal. In 1987, Warwick topped the adult contemporary
charts and reached the Top Five of the R&B charts with Love
Power, a duet with Jeffrey Osborne that was another Bacharach/Sager
composition.
Warwick enjoyed less commercial success after the late '80s. She parted
ways with Arista Records after her 1995 album Aquarela Do Brazil. In
1998, she issued Dionne Sings Dionne, an album consisting largely of
re-recordings of her hits, on River North Records. ~ William Ruhlmann,
All Music Guide
Written by William Ruhlmann