Background and career
Marie Dionne Warwick ( dee-ON WOR-wik; née Warrick; born December 12, 1940) is an American singer, actress, and television host. Born in East Orange, New Jersey, Warwick started her career as a teenager in the vocal group the Gospelaires before starting her solo career in 1962, with composers Burt Bacharach and Hal David on a series of hit singles under the Scepter Records label, including "Don't Make Me Over", "Anyone Who Had a Heart", "Walk on By", "Alfie", "I Say a Little Prayer" and the Grammy-winning "Do You Know the Way to San Jose". After a fallout with Bacharach and David and a period slump with Warner Bros Records, Warwick revived her career under the mentorship of Clive Davis at Arista Records with a series of hit singles such as "I'll Never Love This Way Again", "Heartbreaker" and "That's What Friends Are For". In the 1990s, Warwick gained notoriety for hosting the infomercial Psychic Friends Network. Warwick ranks among the 40 biggest U.S. hit makers between 1955 and 1999, based on her chart history on Billboard's Hot 100 pop singles chart. She is the second-most charted female vocalist during the rock era (1955–1999), as well as one of the most-charted vocalists of all time, with 56 of her singles making the Hot 100 between 1962 and 1998, including 12 top ten singles and two number one singles. Warwick ranks number 74 on the Billboard Hot 100 "Greatest Artists of All Time". During her decades-long career, Warwick has won many accolades, including six competitive Grammy Awards. Warwick has been inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Grammy Hall of Fame, the National Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame and the Apollo Theater Walk of Fame. In 2019, Warwick won the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2024, Warwick was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Musical Excellence category.
Marie Dionne Warrick was born in East Orange, New Jersey on December 12, 1940, the eldest of three children to Arthur Lee "Nana" (née Drinkard) and Mancel Leland Warrick. Her mother was manager of the Drinkard Singers, a family gospel group. Her father was a gospel record promoter and also worked as a Pullman porter, chef, record promoter, and CPA. Warwick was named after her maternal aunt Marie "Reebie" Drinkard Epps; Warwick preferred to be called by her middle name. Warwick had two younger siblings, sister Delia Juanita "Dee Dee" (1942-2008) and brother Mancel "Pookie" Jr. (1947-1968). Her parents were both Foundational Black American, and Warwick also has a smaller amount of Irish and English ancestry on the maternal side of her family. Warwick began singing gospel as a child at her grandfather Rev. Elzae Warrick's AME church in Newark, New Jersey, where he was pastor where at six, she sang her first church solo, "Jesus Loves Me". As a teenager, she began singing at Newark's New Hope Baptist Church after her grandfather began pastoring there. Raised in what was a mixed-race suburban neighborhood of East Orange, Warwick was a girl scout during her adolescent years. After attending Lincoln School, she graduated from East Orange High School in 1959 and attended Hartt College of Music in West Hartford, Connecticut on a music scholarship. During her adolescence and teenage years, Warwick and her sister were being vocally mentored by their aunt Cissy Drinkard, who at one point lived at the Warricks' East Orange home in the early 1950s. At fourteen, Warwick and her sister Dee Dee began singing together as part of the gospel vocal group the Gospelaires, a splinter group of the Drinkard Singers, her mother and aunt's group. The original members of the Gloryaires were the Warrick sisters and their friends Doris Troy and Sylvia Shemwell. In 1959, Warwick's aunt Cissy's then-boyfriend John Houston offered to manage the group after Lee Warrick refused Houston's offer to manage the Drinkard Singers. While opening for the Drinkards at the Apollo Theater, a record scout for Atlantic Records came backstage asking for several female singers to back an R&B saxophonist named Sam "the Man" Taylor for a recording session. According to Warwick, she volunteered for her group. As she could recall, "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." After the session, the Gloryaires soon became an in-demand vocal group singing for R&B and soul artists such as the Drifters, Dinah Washington, Solomon Burke and Chuck Jackson. In 2002, 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. During a recording session with the Drifters for the song "Mexican Divorce", Warwick met Burt Bacharach, who hired her to record demos featuring songs written by him and lyricist Hal David. When Warwick was unable to make another session in September 1961 for Canadian rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins, Warwick's aunt Cissy took her place. It would be while recording background for the Drifters' "Mexican Divorce" that 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 (equivalent to $130 in 2025). One such demo, "It's Love That Really Counts" – destined to be recorded by Scepter-signed act the Shirelles – caught the attention of the president of Scepter Records, Florence Greenberg, who, according to Current Biography (1969 Yearbook), 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. Her albums in 1971-74 spelled her named "Warwicke" but she dropped the trailing "e" in 1975.
In November 1962, Scepter Records released Warwick's 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 the song, to which Warwick recorded the following day. The song became Warwick's first top 40 pop and R&B hit, peaking at number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 5 on the Hot R&B Singles chart. 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, the 22-year-old singer 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. After her two immediate follow-ups, "This Empty Place" and "Make The Music Play", barely cracked the Hot 100, her fourth release, "Anyone Who Had a Heart", released in November 1963, was Warwick's first top 10 pop hit, peaking at number eight on the Hot 100 and was her first international million-seller. In April 1964, Warwick released "Walk On By", which peaked at number six on the Hot 100 and also hit the top ten in the UK and other countries. During this period, Warwick found herself competing with many acts from the British Invasion and managed to hold her own better than most American artists. Warwick's success in the United Kingdom was modest as most of her songs were covered by British singers Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw and Dusty Springfield. The most notable cover of Warwick's that became a hit cover was 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. Throughout 1964 alone, Warwick charted six hits on the Cash Box Top 100 Singles chart, resulting in Warwick being named the Bestselling Female Vocalist of 1964 in its year-end poll. In Time's cover article of May 21, 1965, titled "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.
The mid-1960s to early 1970s were a more successful time period for Warwick, who saw a string of gold-selling albums and hit singles. "Message to Michael", a Bacharach-David composition that the duo was certain was a "man's song", became a top 10 hit for Warwick in May 1966. In January 1967, Warwick released the album Here Where There Is Love, which became her first RIAA certified gold album and produced three hit singles, "Trains and Boats and Planes", "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" and "Alfie". Initially a b-side to another single, "Alfie" became a radio hit when disc jockeys across the nation began to play the album cut early in 1967. Initially released as a b-side, Warwick's recording of "I Say a Little Prayer" became another huge hit, peaking at number four respectively in the US and Canada. The tune was also the first RIAA certified USA million selling single for Bacharach and David. Her follow-up to "I Say a Little Prayer", "(Theme from) Valley of the Dolls", was unusual in several respects. It was not written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, it was the b-side of "I Say a Little Prayer", and it was a song that she almost did not record. While the film version of Valley of the Dolls was being made, actress Barbara Parkins suggested that Warwick be considered to sing the film's theme song, written by songwriting team André and Dory Previn. The song was to be recorded by Judy Garland, who was subsequently fired from the film. Warwick performed the song, and when the film became a success in the early weeks of 1968, disc jockeys flipped the single and made the single one of the biggest double-sided hits of the rock era and another million seller. At the time, RIAA rules allowed only one side of a double-sided hit single to be certified as gold, but Scepter awarded Warwick an "in-house award" to recognize "(Theme from) Valley of the Dolls" as a million selling tune. Warwick had re-recorded a Pat Williams-arranged version of the theme at A&R Studios in New York because contractual restrictions with her label would not allow the Warwick version from the film to be included on the 20th Century Fox soundtrack LP, and reverse legal restrictions would not allow the film version to be used anyplace else in a commercial LP. The LP Dionne Warwick in Valley of the Dolls, released in early 1968 and containing the re-recorded version of the movie theme (No. 2 for three weeks), "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" and several new Bacharach-David compositions, hit the No. 6 position on the Billboard album chart and would remain on the chart for over a year. The film soundtrack LP, without Warwick vocals, failed to impress the public, while Dionne Warwick in Valley of the Dolls earned an RIAA gold certification. The single "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" became another international hit, reaching the top ten in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Japan and Mexico among other countries. The song resulted in Warwick winning her first Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1969, becoming just the second black female artist to win in the category after Ella Fitzgerald while Warwick became the first female contemporary pop artist to win in the category after it switched its focus from vocal music to contemporary pop music. Other notable hits included "Promises, Promises", "This Girl's in Love with You" and "I'll Never Fall in Love Again". Other Scepter LPs certified RIAA gold included Dionne Warwick's Golden Hits Part 1 released in 1967 and The Dionne Warwicke Story: A Decade of Gold released in 1971. Cash Box named Warwick the Top Female Vocalist in 1969, 1970 and 1971. In the 1967 Cash Box poll, she was second to Petula Clark, and in the 1968 poll, second to Aretha Franklin. Playboy's influential Music Poll of 1970 named her the Top Female Vocalist. In 1969, Harvard's Hasty Pudding Society named her Woman of the Year. By the end of 1971, Warwick had sold an estimated 35 million singles and albums internationally in less than nine years and more than 16 million singles in the U.S. alone. Exact figures of her sales are unknown and probably underestimated, due to Scepter Records' apparently lax accounting policies and the company policy of not submitting recordings for RIAA audit. Warwick became the first Scepter artist to request RIAA audits of her recordings in 1967 with the release of "I Say a Little Prayer". On September 17, 1969, CBS Television aired Warwick's first television special, titled The Dionne Warwick Chevy Special. Warwick's guests were Burt Bacharach, George Kirby, Glen Campbell, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. In 1970, Warwick formed her own label, Sonday Records, of which she was president. Sonday was distributed by Scepter. In 1970, she was a performer on the prestigious Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium, singing The Look of Love, What the World Needs Now and Come Together.
In 1971, Warwick left the family atmosphere of Scepter Records for Warner Bros. Records, for a $5 million contract, the most lucrative recording contract given to a female vocalist up to that time, according to Variety. Warwick's last LP for Scepter was the soundtrack for the motion picture The Love Machine, in which she appeared in an uncredited cameo, released in July 1971. In 1975, Bacharach and David sued Scepter Records for an accurate accounting of royalties due to the team from their recordings with Warwick and labelmate B.J. Thomas. They were awarded almost $600,000 and the rights to all Bacharach/David recordings on the Scepter label. The label, with the defection of Warwick to Warner Bros. Records, filed for bankruptcy in 1975 and was sold to Springboard International Records in 1976. Following her signing with Warner, with Bacharach and David as writers and producers, Warwick returned to New York City's A&R Studios in late 1971 to begin recording her first album for the new label, the self-titled Dionne (not to be confused with her later Arista debut album) in January 1972. The album peaked at No. 57 on the Billboard 200. In 1972, Burt Bacharach and Hal David scored and wrote the tunes for the motion picture Lost Horizon. However, the film was panned by the critics, and in the fallout, the songwriting duo decided to terminate their working relationship. The break-up left Warwick devoid of their services as her producers and songwriters. She was contractually obligated to fulfill her contract with Warner without Bacharach and David, and she would team with a variety of producers during her tenure with the label. Faced with the prospect of being sued by Warner Bros. Records due to the breakup of Bacharach/David and their failure to honor their contract with Warwick, she filed a $5.5 million lawsuit against her former partners for breach of contract. The suit was settled out of court in 1979 for $5 million, including the rights to all Warwick recordings produced by Bacharach and David. Also in 1971, Warwick had her name changed to "Warwicke" per the advice of Linda Goodman, an astrologer friend, who believed it would bring greater success. A few years later, she reverted to the old spelling after a string of disappointments and an absence from the Billboard top 40.
