Dionne Warwick

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. 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.
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.
"Don't Make Me Over" peaked in the Top 20 of the pop charts in early 1963. In early 1964, she reached the pop and R&B Top Ten with "Anyone Who Had a Heart," which was also her first record to reach the charts in the U.K. "Walk on By" followed it into the Top Ten of the pop charts in the spring of 1964, and it hit number one on the R&B charts. 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 with "Message to Michael." In the spring of 1967, 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," issued at the end of 1967. The record reached the Top Five of the charts. It's B-side, Bacharach and David's "I Say a Little Prayer," reached the Top Five of too, helping the single become a gold record and the Valley of the Dolls LP also 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 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 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, bringing her another Grammy Award.
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 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 signed to Arista Records in 1979 and returned to the charts with "I'll Never Love This Way Again" featured on her first platinum-selling album, another LP simply titled Dionne. "Deja Vu," also from the album, was a Top 20 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 title song 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 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. 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.

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