Dionne Warwick et Christopher Jackson

Marie Dionne Warrick was quite literally born to a family of singers. Her mother, along with some of her aunts and uncles, performed in the Drinkard Singers, a gospel group who were already signed to RCA Records when Warwick was born. So with a child surrounded by that kind of music from an early age, it’s only logical that they’d follow in their family’s footsteps and by the time she was six, the young Dionne had sung her first gospel solo at her local church. After she proved herself as a genuine talent, she became a sort of reserve member of the Drinkard Singers, backing them up when she could and singing lead on a couple of songs on a few occasions.

By the late 1950’s, she had performed with the Drinkard Singers on local TV stations all over New York City and New Jersey. However, by 1958 she wanted to perform in her own group, which wasn’t at its heart a family side-show. So along with her sister Delia, Mryna Utley and Carol Slade, she formed the group The Gospelaires, who got off to a flying start as they won a talent contest at the Harlem Apollo with their very first performance together. The group made a number of records as a troupe of backing singers, cutting tracks with the likes of Ben E. King, Solomon Burke and The Drifters. It was while recording the track “Mexican Divorce” with the latter act, that Warwick caught the eye of the songs composer, a young Brill Building Songwriter called Burt Bacharach.

Initially Warwick sang on Bacharach’s demo tapes, but eventually, Florence Greenberg, the president of Sceptre Records, heard her sing on a song called “It’s Love That Really Counts”. According to legend, her reaction was to tell Bacharach “Forget the song, get the girl!”, and Warwick was signed to the label in no time at all. By November 1962, Warwick’s first single “Don’t Make Me Over” was released, and though her second name is actually spelt Warrick, it was mis-spelt as Warwick on the single’s label, and undeterred, she took the misspelt version as both her professional and personal name.

“Don’t Make Me Over” was a sizeable, hit, hitting number 21 on the pop charts (Bacharach and David’s first excursion into the top forty), and hitting the top five of the R&B charts with aplomb. Unlike most of her contemporaries, she weathered the British Invasion of America by English musicians, chiefly by becoming a star in Europe as well as America. In France she was personally introduced on stage by Marlene Dietrich herself, and in the U.K songs that she made famous were covered by the likes of Cilla Black and Dusty Springfield. At the time when Beatlemania was at its peak and there was little real interest in artists that didn’t sound like them, Warwick was still able to become one of the biggest names in pop music.

The rest of the 60’s were extremely kind to Warwick, filled as they were with gold and platinum selling albums and singles as deathless as “Do You Know The Way To San José?”, “I Say A Little Prayer”, “Anyone Who Had A Heart” and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”. They were kind in a way that the seventies couldn’t possibly replicate, and after splitting from Bacharach and David, she seemed to flounder until 1979, when she moved to Arista Records and released “I’ll Never Love This Way Again”. That single was enough to completely revitalise her career for a couple of years, with her subsequent albums “Dionne” and “No Night So Long” going platinum and gold, respectively, and netting her a fistful of Grammy awards.

Ever since then, she’s been one of the most beloved figures in soul music. So beloved, that in the cut throat world of show-business, we’ve even allowed for a few missteps here and there. Like a strange period in the nineties, where she became more famous for being the face of a psychic phone line service than she was as a singer. However what’s passed has passed, and what other artist, past or present, can you see being nominated for a Grammy award over half a century after they debuted in pop music? The list is very, very few, but Warwick did just that with her album “Now”. She’s still got it after all these years, and for that reason, she comes highly recommended.