First purchase: The Essential Collection, 1998)
First concert: London Palladium, 3 February 2008
Born in Orange, New Jersey, the singularity of Dionne Marie Warwick is defined by what the singer isn’t as much as what she is. Although Warwick grew up singing in church inspired by Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, she’s not a gospel or jazz singer. If one had to label her, a light pop singer infused with smooth sophisticated soul and R&B would probably describe most of the music she has recorded.
Niece to the recently departed Cissy Houston, who was just seven years her senior (and therefore, making her first cousin to Whitney), Dionne Warwick emerged out of the Brill Building environment of post-Elvis Presley, pre-Beatles pop in the early 1960s. That’s when she hooked up with Burt Bacharach and Hal David, songwriters and producers who tailored their unusually complicated songs for her hugely impressive instrument. Hi LaToya!
Aside from the numerous hits she’s had a hand in — Walk On By, Don’t Make Me Over, This Girl’s In Love With You, Do You Know The Way To San Jose, and, later, a return to chart glory with the Bee Gees helmed Heartbreaker — what’s remarkable is that in her prime, Warwick was able to combine two areas of brilliance: an aching yet detached vocal style by way of her coruscating contralto, and those effortlessly sounding natural interpretive skills.
Among the greatest popular singers there are very few who have both talents in abundance, and in my considered view, Dionne Warwick may be known more to millennials as the brilliantly unfiltered Twitter momma but the result is as a vocalist she’s almost as under-rated as her ole buddy Gladys Knight.
More on her elsewhere.
Steve Pafford
Adapted from Perfect 10: Funk-Soul Sisters here
