8 Fascinating Facts About Dionne Warwick That We Hope You Won’t Walk on By
One of the bestselling female recording artists of all time, Dionne Warwick has had a career that took her from 1960s Motown to the soft pop of the ’80s, resulting in 100 million albums sold, six Grammys (including a Lifetime Achievement Grammy), and one of the sassier celebrity social media accounts. And on Oct. 19, 2024 — 62 years after her first Top 40 hit — she’ll finally be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
But Warwick has more to offer than her smooth, beautiful voice — she’s also a fascinating person, from a fascinating family. So check out these eight intriguing facts about the fabulous Ms. Warwick — after all, that’s what facts are forrrrrrr!
1. Whitney Houston Was Her First Cousin
(c)Arista Records/courtesy Everett Collection
Born in 1940, Warwick is part of a famous musical clan called the Drinkards — a family that includes Cissy Houston (who recently passed away), the Grammy-winning soul singer and mother of Whitney Houston. Cissy was Warwick’s aunt, as well as a member of the family band, the Drinkard Singers, who were one of the first gospel groups to release an album on a major label. “I called her Aunt Cissy growing up,” Warwick recalled in a 2022 interview. “Because we were so close in age, I always looked at her as an older sister. It was heaven when we all sang together.”
A young Dionne made her vocal debut in church and sometimes sang with the group, making her first TV appearance with them on a show called TV Gospel Time. She and her sister Dee Dee also formed a similar singing group, the Gospelaires, when they were teens.
2. Her Last Name Came From a Typo
Dionne Warwick’s actual last name is Warrick. Her last name was misspelled as “Warwick” on the cover of her first record. Dionne was (understandably) upset by the error — but her grandfather suggested that she make “Warwick” her stage name instead.
That isn’t the only name change she went through — from 1971 to 1975, she spelled her last name “Warwicke,” as can be seen on the 1971 album The Dionne Warwicke Story. This was supposedly upon the advice of an astrologer, who claimed it would make Warwick more successful.
3. She Sued Burt Bacharach in the ’70s …
Photo by Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images
It’s impossible to think of Warwick without thinking of her long musical partnership with songwriter Burt Bacharach. Bacharach discovered Warwick in 1961, when she was working as a backup singer during a recording session for the Drifters; he then asked her to record demos for his songs. “He started paying me $12.50 a time to sing on demo discs he would then pitch to record labels,” she recalled in early 2024. This process eventually yielded a recording contract and her first hit, 1962’s “Don’t Make Me Over.”
With Bacharach and his cowriter Hal David writing and Warwick singing, the group produced hits throughout the ’60s, including “Walk on By” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” But the Warwick-Bacharach partnership fell apart in the ’70s.
Warwick actually sued Bacharach in 1972, along with David, when the cowriters abruptly stopped working together; she claimed it was a breach of contract, saying that if the David-Bacharach team stopped writing her songs, it put her recording contract in jeopardy. “I was left high and dry when they fell out,” she said. “In the end, I sued them for breach of contract and won $5 million. It took 10 years for everyone to start talking to everyone else and then we collaborated all over again.”
4. … But Re-Teamed With Him in the ’80s
However, Bacharach and Warwick reconnected in the ’80s. He wrote the title track for her 1985 album Finder of Lost Loves; then, later in that same year, Warwick had her final No. 1 hit with the Bacharach-penned track “That’s What Friends Are For.” The tune had originally been sung by Rod Stewart in 1982, but Warwick’s version — sung with Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight and Elton John — was an inescapable hit, reaching the top of the Billboard charts. (You likely already have the song’s harmonica intro stuck in your head, just from reading this.) It also won a Grammy for Song of the Year, the first time Bacharach actually took home a Grammy.
Upon Bacharach’s 2023 death, Warwick wrote, “We laughed a lot and had our run-ins, but always found a way to let each other know our family, like roots, were the most important part of our relationship.”
5. She Was an HIV/AIDS Activist
Everett Collection
“That’s What Friends Are For” wasn’t just a comeback vehicle for Warwick — it was a fundraiser, with $3 million of its profits going to American Foundation for AIDS Research. Warwick was an outspoken HIV/AIDS activist in the ’80s and ’90s — and, in fact, she was the first person to push then-President Ronald Reagan to say the disease’s name out loud.
In 1987, Reagan appointed Warwick an honorary health ambassador due to her activism. In her memoir, Warwick wrote “[Reagan] would not say the word AIDS. He evaded it in every fashion that he could. I didn’t understand why.” So Warwick decided to force him to. “[At the press conference], I said our president was benevolent enough to make me an Ambassador of Health,” Warwick wrote. “And I asked him ‘President Reagan, what is that disease you’re talking about?’ He had no choice but to say AIDS.”
She later said of the experience, ”[Reagan] wanted to kill me … I saw it in his eyes.”
6. She Was Mentored by Marlene Dietrich
Photo by Monty Fresco/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
By the time the 20-something Warwick began her musical assent in the ’60s, Marlene Dietrich was 60-something years old. But the two women still hit it off after Bacharach arranged for Dietrich to oversee Warwick’s performance at Paris’ Olympia Theater in 1963. Bacharach had served as Dietrich’s musical director in the ’50s and convinced the screen great to make Warwick part of her show. It was a success and resulted in Warwick launching her career in Europe. It also led to Warwick learning to dress with a little bit more classic Hollywood flare.
“When I went to Paris, Marlene Dietrich took me under her wing,” Warwick recalled in 2024, “and introduced me to designers like Yves St Laurent, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, all of them only too happy to have me wear their clothes.”
7. She Endorsed a Psychic Hotline
Anyone who spent time watching late-night TV in the ’90s likely remembers Warwick’s constant ads for the Psychic Friends Network, a hotline that viewers could call to get a reading from a “psychic.”
In a 2020 interview, Warwick said that her tenure as a Psychic Friends pitchwoman had less to do with her passion for the unknown and more to do with the fact that she simply needed to make some cash: “It was during a period of time when I was not recording. You know, it kept the lights on in my house and food on my table. It was an earning power. I earned money that I normally would have earned if I was on the road. It’s very simple.” Warwick said she was no more a believer “than anybody else is,” but thinks she might have just been ahead of her time when it came to embracing psychics, astrology and the mystical: “They said, ‘What are you doing, ratting on about [psychics]?’ But now that’s all you see on TV or hear people talk about. I’m known to be the first to do things.”
8. Her Favorite Place in the World Is a Long Way From Home
Warwick was born and raised in New Jersey, and over the course of her career she has lived in locations on the East and West Coasts, and in Las Vegas. But Warwick’s favorite spot on Earth — and the place she’d like to retire to — is Brazil. In 2020, she described the country as “my paradise. I say when I’m through with show business, that’s where I want to live.”
Remind 
1968 Retrospective
January 2018
This special expanded issue celebrates all things pop culture in 1968.
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