Happy birthday, Dionne Warwick!

[Balladeer]

Timeless voice, beautiful recordings - best wishes from Germany!

[Dave James]

Saw her many moons ago here in Portland, Oregon.  Say what you will about Burt Bacharach, but Dionne's voice was a perfect fit for his music.  "Make It Easy On Yourself", "Walk On By", "You'll Never Get To Heaven" and a dozen others were/are great MOR pop tunes performed by a great pop singer.

[mjazzg]

Nice appreciation here

https://thebluemoment.com/2020/12/12/happy-birthday-dionne-warwick/

[soulpope]

 

[JSngry]

It is only in real life that a girl has to cry.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

she just joined twitter and is pretty active right now

[JSngry]

 

[felser]

For all the British Invasion/Beatlemania excitement, no one had a better run of 1964 chart records than Dionne Warwick: "Anyone Who Had a Heart", "Walk on By", "You'll Never Get To Heaven (If You Break My Heart)", "Reach Out for Me".  1966 included "Message To Michael", "Trains and Boats and Planes", and "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself", 1967 had "I Say A Little Prayer" and the most musically elegant Vietnam Protest Song of all, "The Windows of the World".  Her one big misstep was passing on having the original single of "What The World Needs Now" (though Jackie DeShannon's version is perfect, and was career saving for her).  Amazing artist.

 

Edited December 12, 2020 by felser
typos

[JSngry]

Those Bacharach/David songs were not easy, in any way. That she was able to simply sing them is accomplishment enough, but to imbue them with feeling, meaning, soul...not "miraculous", just supreme artistry in response to supreme artistry.

 

[duaneiac]

6 hours ago, JSngry said:

Those Bacharach/David songs were not easy, in any way. That she was able to simply sing them is accomplishment enough, but to imbue them with feeling, meaning, soul...not "miraculous", just supreme artistry in response to supreme artistry.

 

Absolutely agree!  A good case in point is one of their non-hit album tracks, "Check Out Time".  Definitely not an easy song to sing.  It's such a beautiful arrangement for a song every one must have known wasn't going to be Top 40 hit material.  This has some great lyric writing by Hal David -- entire feature length films have been made which included less storyline and dramatic development than this.  In fact, that is kind of how I view this song, that Mr. Bacharach wrote a lush film score to accompany Mr. David's short film script, a feature for a talented young actress, Ms. Warwick, who definitely gives the lyrics "feeling, meaning, soul".

Whether you consider that to be art or craftsmanship doesn't matter -- that's just a beautiful piece of work!

Just this year I bought The Arista Recordings (1979 - 1994) CD boxed set.  The material from those years is variable.  I had the Cole Porter album at one time and recall it being dreadful, but I will give it another shot.  She got to had some real hits again in those years and got to work with some great talents like the Gibb Brothers, Luther Vandross and Mr. B. once again.    One of my favorite lesser known tracks from those years is this Bacharach & Carole Bayer Sager song.

Ms. Warwick has been a favorite of mine ever since I was a kid in the 1960's and even though the one time I saw her perform in concert was pretty disappointing, she remains a favorite today.  Before Silicon Valley came along, she was the only reason any one had ever heard of my adopted hometown!

Happy Birthday, Dionne Warwick!

Edited December 13, 2020 by duaneiac

[Kevin Bresnahan]

She's 80! Wow... time sure is flying by.