Dionne Warwick.

At age six, Dionne Warwick began singing at a Baptist church in East Orange, New Jersey. Her family on Sterling Street included mother Lee Drinkard, father Mancel Warwick, and sister Dee Dee Warwick, who later became a singer. As a teenager, she formed The Gospelaires with her sister and aunt Cissy Houston, Whitney Houston’s mother. She attended East Orange High School, graduating in 1959, and studied at the Hartt College of Music in Hartford, Connecticut, where she met Burt Bacharach at age 18.

In 1962, after recording Make It Easy On Yourself for Scepter Records, Dionne Warwick met songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David, who wrote her debut hit Don’t Make Me Over. That launched a string of classics: Walk On By in 1964, I Say a Little Prayer in 1967, and Do You Know the Way to San Jose in 1968. By the end of the 1960s, she had amassed 12 top-20 hits written by Bacharach and David. She won her first Grammy in 1968 for Do You Know the Way to San Jose and five total. In the 1970s and 1980s, she continued charting with songs like I’ll Never Love This Way Again in 1979 and Heartbreaker in 1982. She also acted in films such as Alive in 1993, The Happytime Murders in 2018, and Bird Box in 2018, and made numerous television appearances.

Dionne Warwick was married to actor William Elliott from August 31, 1967 to December 3, 1975, and briefly in 1966. She had two sons: David Elliott and Damon Elliott, a music producer. For 12 years she was in a relationship with actor Gianni Russo, known for playing Carlo Rizzi in the 1972 film The Godfather. Her younger sister, Dee Dee Warwick, died in 2008 at age 63. She was arrested in 2002 at Miami International Airport for carrying marijuana, which she said she used for glaucoma; the charges were dropped after she completed a drug treatment program and donated to charity. She is a lifelong Democrat and was a celebrity spokesperson for the Psychic Friends Network in the 1990s.

Dionne Warwick’s five Grammy Awards and 18 top-20 US hits made her one of the most successful female vocalists of the 20th century. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1985, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2000, and was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2013 alongside her cousin Whitney Houston. VH1 ranked her number 42 on its list of the Greatest Women of Rock N Roll. In 1987, she was named U.S. Ambassador of Health. Her voice, a mezzo-soprano that later deepened to contralto, and her collaborations with Burt Bacharach and Hal David are still studied and celebrated. She is remembered as the Princess of Pop who turned a frustrated remark into a catalog of hits.