A staggering talent with a cool delivery and smooth voice,
Dionne Warwick has been wowing audiences with her grace and elegance ever since the mid-1960s. Warwick was born Marie Dionne Warrick on December 12, 1940 in East Orange, New Jersey. She began singing gospel music as a child and as she grew older frequently contributed to a group known as the Drinkard Sisters, all relatives of Warwick’s. Her first televised performances were in the mid-and late 1950s with The Drinkard Singers and were carried on local television stations in New Jersey and New York City. War
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wick’sr big break came, however, when her sweet, rich vocals came to the attention of the then relatively unknown songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, who recognized in her the perfect performer for their beautifully crafted pop music. Bacharach and David gave Dionne Warwick songs that would make her a legend, including, “Walk On By," "Message to Michael," "I Say a Little Prayer,” "
Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" and "
Promises, Promises.” After David and Bacharach split, Warwick floundered for awhile but came back with a #1 hit in a duet with
The Spinners called “Then Came You.”
In the 1980s, Warwick found success on television as a co-host on the program 'Solid Gold'. She also released a single to raise money for AIDS charities. Entitled 'That’s What Friends Are For', she recorded it with her friends, including
Stevie Wonder,
Elton John and
Gladys Knight. In the nineties she was reunited in the recording studio with her old friend Burt Bacharach. Friends Can Be Lovers (1993), produced in part by Ian Devaney and
Lisa Stansfield, featured a tune called "Sunny Weather Lover", which was the first song that Bacharach and Hal David had written together in exactly twenty years from the song's release. In 2006, Warwick signed with Concord Records after a fifteen-year tenure at Arista and released My Friends and Me, a duets album on which she sang with various female singing stars including
Gloria Estefan and
Olivia Newton-John, on thirteen of her old hits. According to Billboard Magazine, Dionne Warwick is second only to
Aretha Franklin as the female vocalist with the most Billboard Hot 100 chart hits during the rock era (1955-1999)—a well-deserved honor.
