Dionne Warwick
Marie Dionne Warwick is an American singer, actress, and television host. During her career, Warwick has won many awards, including six Grammy Awards. She has been inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Grammy Hall of Fame, the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Apollo Theater Walk of Fame. In 2019, Warwick won the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Three of her songs have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Warwick ranks among the 40 biggest U.S. hit makers between 1955 and 1999, based on her chart history on Billboards Hot 100 pop singles chart. She is the second-most charted female vocalist during the rock era. She is also one of the most-charted vocalists of all time, with 56 of her singles making the Hot 100 between 1962 and 1998, and 80 singles in total – either solo or collaboratively – making the Hot 100, R&B, or adult contemporary charts. Warwick ranks number 74 on the Billboard Hot 100's "Greatest Artists of all time". She is a former Goodwill Ambassador for the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.
Early life and education
Marie Dionne Warrick, later Warwick, was born to Arthur Lee Drinkard and Mancel Warrick. Her mother was manager of the Drinkard Singers, and her father was a Pullman porter, chef, record promoter, and CPA. Dionne was named after her aunt on her mother's side. She had a sister, Delia, who died in 2008, and a brother, Mancel Jr., who was killed in an accident in 1968 at the age of 21. Her parents were both African-American, and she also has a smaller amount of Irish and English ancestry.Warwick was raised in East Orange, New Jersey, and was a Girl Scout for a time. She began singing gospel as a child at her grandfather’s AME church in Newark, New Jersey, where he was pastor and later at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey. After finishing East Orange High School in 1959, Warwick pursued her passion at the Hartt College of Music in West Hartford, Connecticut. She landed some work with her group singing backing vocals for recording sessions in New York City. During one session, Warwick met Burt Bacharach, who hired her to record demos featuring songs written by him and lyricist Hal David. She later landed her own record deal.
Career
Drinkard Singers
Many members of Warwick's family were members of the Drinkard Singers, a family gospel group and RCA recording artists who frequently performed throughout the New York metropolitan area. The original group, known as the Drinkard Jubilairs, consisted of Cissy, Anne, Larry, and Nicky, and later included Warwick's grandparents, Nicholas and Delia Drinkard, and their children: William, Lee and Hansom. When the Drinkard Singers performed on TV Gospel Time, Dionne Warwick had her television performance debut.Marie instructed the group, and they were managed by Lee. As they became more successful, Lee and Marie began performing with the group, and they were augmented by pop/R&B singer Judy Clay, whom Lee had unofficially adopted. Elvis Presley eventually expressed an interest in having them join his touring entourage.
The Gospelaires
Other talented singers joined the Gospelaires from time-to-time, including Judy Clay, Cissy Houston, and Doris "Rikii" Troy, whose chart selection "Just One Look" featured backing vocals from the Gospelaires. After personnel changes, the Gospelaires became the recording group the Sweet Inspirations, and had some chart success, but were much sought after as studio background singers. The Gospelaires, and later the Sweet Inspirations, performed on many records cut in New York City for artists such as Garnet Mimms, the Drifters, Jerry Butler, Solomon Burke and, later, Warwick's solo recordings, Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley. Warwick recalled, in 2002's Biography, that "a man came running frantically backstage at the Apollo and said he needed background singers for a session for Sam "the Man" Taylor and old big-mouth here spoke up and said 'We'll do it!' and we left and did the session. I wish I remembered the gentleman's name because he was responsible for the beginning of my professional career."The chance encounter led to the group being asked to provide background vocals at recording sessions around New York. Soon, the group was in-demand for their harmonies among New York musicians and producers, after hearing their work with the Drifters, Ben E. King, Chuck Jackson, Dinah Washington, Ronnie Hawkins, and Solomon Burke, among many others. In the same aforementioned Biography interview, Warwick recalled that, on weekdays after school, the girls would catch a bus from East Orange to the Port Authority Terminal, then take the subway to the recording studios in Manhattan, perform their background vocal work, and still be back at home in East Orange with time to do their school homework. Warwick's music work would continue while she pursued her studies at Hartt.
Discovery
While she was performing background on the Drifters' recording of their 1962 release "Mexican Divorce", Warwick's voice and star presence were noticed by the song's composer, Burt Bacharach, a Brill Building songwriter who was writing songs with many other songwriters, including lyricist Hal David. According to a July 14, 1967, article on Warwick in Time, Bacharach stated, "She has a tremendous strong side and a delicacy when singing softly – like miniature ships in bottles." Musically, she was no "play-safe girl. What emotion I could get away with!" During the session, Bacharach asked Warwick if she would be interested in recording demonstration recordings of his compositions to pitch the tunes to record labels, paying her $12.50 per demo recording session. One such demo, "It's Love That Really Counts"destined to be recorded by Scepter-signed act the Shirellescaught the attention of the President of Scepter Records, Florence Greenberg, who, according to Current Biography, told Bacharach, "Forget the song, get the girl!"Warwick was signed to Bacharach's and David's production company, according to Warwick, which in turn was signed to Scepter Records in 1962 by Greenberg. The partnership would provide Bacharach with the freedom to produce Warwick without the control of recording company executives and company A&R men. Warwick's musical ability and education would also allow Bacharach to compose more challenging tunes. The demo version of "It's Love That Really Counts", along with her original demo of "Make It Easy on Yourself", would surface on Warwick's debut Scepter album, Presenting Dionne Warwick, which was released in early 1963.
Early stardom (1962–1965)
In November 1962, Scepter Records released her first solo single, "Don't Make Me Over", the title of which Warwick supplied herself when she snapped the phrase at producers Burt Bacharach and Hal David in anger. Warwick had found out that "Make It Easy on Yourself" – a song on which she had recorded the original demo and had wanted to be her first single release – had been given to another artist, Jerry Butler. From the phrase "don't make me over", Bacharach and David created their first top-40 pop hit and a top-5 U.S. R&B hit. Warrick's name was misspelled on the single's label, and she began using the new spelling, "Warwick", both professionally and personally.After "Don't Make Me Over" hit in 1962, she answered the call of her manager, left school and went on a tour of France, where critics crowned her "Paris' Black Pearl", having been introduced on stage at Paris Olympia that year by Marlene Dietrich.
The two immediate follow-ups to "Don't Make Me Over" – "This Empty Place" and "Make The Music Play" – charted briefly in the top 100. Her fourth single, "Anyone Who Had a Heart", released in November 1963, was Warwick's first top 10 pop hit in the U.S. and an international million seller. This was followed by "Walk On By" in April 1964, another major international hit and million seller that solidified her career. For the rest of the 1960s, Warwick was a fixture on the U.S. and Canadian charts, and much of her output from 1962 to 1971 was written and produced by the Bacharach/David team.
Warwick weathered the British Invasion better than most American artists. Her biggest UK hits were "Walk On By" and "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" In the UK, a number of Bacharach-David-Warwick songs were recorded by British singers Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw and Dusty Springfield, most notably Black's "Anyone Who Had a Heart", which went to No. 1 in the UK. This upset Warwick, who described feeling insulted when told that in the UK, record company executives wanted her songs recorded by someone else. Warwick met Cilla Black while on tour in Britain. She recalled what she said to Black: "I told her that 'You're My World' would be my next single in the States. I honestly believe that if I'd sneezed on my next record, then Cilla would have sneezed on hers too. There was no imagination in her recording." Warwick later covered two of Cilla's songs – "You're My World" appeared on Dionne Warwick in Valley of the Dolls, released in 1968 and on the soundtrack to Alfie.
Warwick was named the Bestselling Female Vocalist in the Cash Box Magazine poll in 1964, with six chart hits in that year. Cash Box named her the Top Female Vocalist in 1969, 1970 and 1971. In the 1967 Cash Box poll, she was second to Petula Clark, and in 1968's poll second to Aretha Franklin. Playboys influential Music Poll of 1970 named her the Top Female Vocalist. In 1969, Harvard's Hasty Pudding Society named her Woman of the Year.
In Times cover article of May 21, 1965, entitled "Rock 'n' Roll: The Sound of the Sixties", Warwick's sound was described as:
Swinging World. Scholarly articles probe the relationship between the Beatles and the nouvelle vague films of Jean-Luc Godard, discuss "the brio and elegance" of Dionne Warwick's singing style as a 'pleasurable but complex' event to be 'experienced without condescension.' In chic circles, anyone damning rock 'n' roll is labeled not only square but uncultured. For inspirational purposes, such hip artists as Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers and Andy Warhol occasionally paint while listening to rock 'n' roll music. Explains Warhol: "It makes me mindless, and I paint better." After gallery openings in Manhattan, the black-tie gatherings often adjourn to a discothèque.
In 1965, Eon Productions intended to use Warwick's song titled "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" as the theme song of the James Bond film Thunderball, until Albert R. Broccoli insisted that the theme song include the film's title. A new song titled "Thunderball" was composed and recorded at the eleventh hour, performed by Tom Jones. The melody of "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" remains a major component of the film score. The Ultimate Edition DVD of Thunderball has the Warwick song playing over the titles on one of the commentary track extras, and the song was released on the 30th-anniversary CD of Bond songs.