Dionne Warwick on Laughing With Frank Sinatra and the Joys of Being Spoiled

When Dionne Warwick gets on the phone to do an interview, two things immediately stand out. Her voice, obviously — that lush, elegant, deep contralto is slightly raspy after 82 years but still instantly recognizable. And then there’s the laughter. She’s no doubt interacted with the media thousands of times during her career and told the same anecdotes ad nauseam, but Warwick fills a conversation with so many chuckles, guffaws, and borderline belly laughs that she makes an interviewer feel like he’s visiting with an old friend.

Like Cher, Paul McCartney, and other musical legends who’ve endured, Warwick’s career has had multiple incarnations since she first broke out 60 years ago this year with “Don’t Make Me Over.� In the 1960s, working with the dynamic duo of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, she bridged the gap between soul and pop, going on to win a Grammy with “Do You Know the Way to San Jose.� In the 1970s and ’80s, she transformed into a power-ballad queen, cranking out chartbusters such as “I’ll Never Love This Way Again,� “Deja Vu,� and “Heartbreaker.� Around the same time, Warwick also became a fixture in Gen-X living rooms as the original host of Solid Gold, the syndicated musical variety show known for its spandex-clad dancers and Warwick’s frequent duets with the top acts of the era. And in 1986, she helped change the course of the HIV/AIDS crisis with her smash charity single “That’s What Friends Are For,� which raised millions of dollars for the cause and played a part in prompting the Reagan administration to finally take (some) action to address the epidemic.

But while Warwick has found new ways to connect with audiences over the decades, it would be a mistake to say she ever actually “reinvented� herself. True to the spirit of her first hit single, she pointedly never remade anything, even when she stepped away from her longtime collaboration with Bacharach and David to work with the likes of Barry Manilow, Barry Gibb, and Luther Vandross. That same independent spirit applies to Warwick’s latest method of reaching audiences — her Twitter feed. During the first year of the pandemic, a niece introduced her to the power of social media, resulting in a string of viral tweets from “Aunt Dionne,� including at least one scolding those who didn’t believe she was actually running her own feed. (And yes, she’s stayed on Twitter during the Elon Musk era, though she says wants to “take a meeting with him� in order to figure out his true intentions for the platform.)

The story of Warwick’s six decades as a singer and activist is now set to be chronicled in the CNN Films documentary Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over, which debuts New Year’s Day at 9 p.m. ET on the network. A day after her 82nd birthday earlier this month, and in between concert appearances (yes, she’s still touring), Warwick spoke to Vulture about her long career in music, discussing everything from the time Marlene Dietrich schooled her in fashion and why she balked at recording some of her biggest hits to her obsession with a classic TV network.

Let’s start by talking about your relationship with Burt Bacharach and Hal David. They were to you what Bernie Taupin would become to Elton John. How did you first get together, and why do you think the collaboration worked so well? 
I had come in to do a background session of “Mexican Divorce,� a song for the Drifters that Burt had written with another songwriter, Bob Hilliard. And after the session was over, Burt approached me and asked if I would be interested in doing demonstration records and more background work on songs he’d be writing with a new songwriting partner named Hal David. And I said, “As long as it doesn’t interfere with my education because my mother would kill you and me, so let’s get that understood right away.� And that’s how we kind of got together.

Burt, Hal, and I grew into what came to be known throughout the industry as the triangle marriage that worked. We each felt that we had something to offer and made it all work together. But musically, of course, Burt’s musicianship is — I don’t think anybody can surpass it. Hal David? I don’t consider him a lyricist. I consider him a poet. And I was the interpreter of both. So we brought what we had to the table and it worked.

The documentary talks about how Marlene Dietrich was a mentor when you were in Europe for the first time, and how you also were friendly with Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, and Sarah Vaughan. That sort of blew my mind because even as early as the 1960s, they felt like they already belonged to the ages. What were they able to teach you about being a singer and a performer?
Well, I have to start with Sarah Vaughan. She and my mom were in school together, so I knew her personally since I was a child. And we referred to her as Aunt Sarah. As I grew older, her nickname became “Sassy.� So she was Aunt Sarah for a minute, and then all of a sudden she was Aunt Sass. She, Lena Horne, who I affectionately referred to as Mama, Ella Fitzgerald, Marlene Dietrich even — they all kind of reiterated what my parents always told me: Be yourself. You can’t be anyone other than who you are. And that has been something I practiced all my life.

Did they give you any specific advice on how to navigate the industry?
Nope. No one ever wanted to force their opinions on how I presented myself. I presented myself the way that I am. And that’s exactly what I was told to do. Be who you are. I come from a singing family. So singing has never been an issue. I think it was preordained. I think God just pointed his finger at my family and said, “Okay, all of you are going to sing.� And that’s what we did.

Dietrich did give you an education in one specific area of show business, though, right?
She did, much to the chagrin of my accountants. [Laughs.] Once she saw the clothing that I was going to be performing in, she was not too pleased — and I was not too pleased with the way she treated my clothing. I mean, she literally tossed them into the hall of my dressing room. I thought she had lost her mind! But she said, “No, you must … wear … couture.� Well, what is couture? [Laughs.] And she proceeded to show me, and I have not worn anything aside from couture ever since.

Do you think that if you had been born 10 or 20 years earlier you might have leaned toward being more of a jazz or standards singer? Or were you always destined for a pop career, no matter when you started out? 
No, I have a wonderful love for jazz music and those that are put in that category. But I don’t categorize music. I don’t want to be put into a box, and I don’t think anyone should be. Because generally, if you stop and think about it, we are all singing the same eight notes. There’s only eight notes in a scale. So it’s just according to how the presentation is put together, the musical arrangement, and how that particular singer or instrumentalist approaches it. But they’re all the same notes that we’re all singing. It’s all just music.

One thing the film talks about is that when your first songs were being sold in Europe, you were marketed as a white performer. There was a picture of a white woman on your first single. Were they afraid a pop song by a Black woman wouldn’t sell? 
It wasn’t necessarily that at all. They just didn’t know what I looked like or anything about me. Vogue Records, who were the distributors of Scepter Records in France — they had not a clue as to what a Dionne Warwick was, aside from the recording of “Don’t Make Me Over.� And they just figured, Well, it’s a pop song, so she’s got to be white — because the pop arena was dominated by white people and no person of color had ever been recognized in that arena. And so I came along, and all of a sudden there was a little Black girl singing songs and being awarded for pop music for some reason. So that’s the story: They just decided I was a blonde, blue-eyed girl.

Your songs have been covered so many times by so many different artists. That has to be flattering. 
I’m thrilled that people have found my music to be appealing and something that they wanted to do. Two people immediately come to mind: Aretha Franklin and Luther Vandross. I adored Luther, and he was a very, very dear friend. He was more family than friend. When he decided to record “A House Is Not a Home,� for instance, he did not sing it like Dionne Warwick. He made it Luther Vandross’s version of that song, and so far as I’m concerned, I really feel that his is the definitive version. And he went on to do “Anyone Who Had a Heart� and “What the World Needs Now Is Love.� He just decided that the songs that I sung were suitable for him. But each one of them were made to sound like Luther Vandross and not Dionne Warwick. Same thing with Aretha. When she sang “Say a Little Prayer,� she made it her own. She didn’t sing it like me.

I didn’t realize this until doing some research for our conversation, but one of your biggest hits, “That’s What Friends Are For,� was actually a cover. 
Yeah, I was watching the movie Night Shift on TV, which is where the song comes from, with Rod Stewart singing it. I was getting ready to go into the studio with Burt and Carole Bayer Sager and I had been listening to songs they had in mind for me to record. I said to them, “You’ve been playing all kinds of songs for me. Why didn’t you play this one for me?� And Carole — she’s really funny, she’s a hoot — said, “Well, now four people know that song: you, Burt, me, and Rod.� [Laughs.]

Basically she was admitting the song had gone nowhere on the charts.
I said, “Well, let’s let the world hear it. It’s too good not to be heard.� As they say, the rest is history.

The song became the anthem for AIDS activism. Was there anyone personal in your life that you lost to the disease that inspired you to get so personally involved?
Unfortunately, throughout the industry I’m in, we were losing a lot of people. We were losing dancers, we were losing hairdressers, we were losing lighting men and decorators. I mean, it was just running rampant. I lost two people in my life. I lost my hairdresser and my valet to AIDS. So I wanted to find out, okay, let’s see what we can do about this. We would sit around my kitchen table and just run our mouths about it, and I felt, Well, it’s time to stop talking about it. Let’s start doing something about it. And as a result of that, I took it upon myself to be a little inquisitive. I talked to Dr. Fauci at the CDC to find out what they knew and what was going on.

I grew up in Las Vegas, so I have to ask you about working there in the 1960s and ’70s. It was the coolest place for performers back then, right?
It was absolutely wonderful. Jack Entratter, who ran the Sands Hotel, used to work at the Copacabana in New York City. So I knew Jack from there. That was my first Las Vegas job, the Sands. It was the most exciting. I mean, I was in a room where absolute icons had worked and played, and that was the aim of what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go to perform. And the Rat Pack embraced me. Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin — they just threw their arms around me and made me their baby. Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll, Ella Fitzgerald? Those were the ones that really said, “Hey, new kid in town? Let’s take care of her.� They spoiled me rotten, and I loved every second of it. I still do. I’m still very spoiled. [Laughs.]

In the documentary, they show you on a Dean Martin roast talking about how you had dated Sammy, and I couldn’t tell if you were being serious or if–
[Laughs loudly.] No, that was a roast. It was lines I was given to say.

Okay, just trying to make sure this wasn’t new history being revealed. Sammy was such a fascinating part of the Rat Pack. What was he like to work with?
A wonderful, wonderful, wonderful man. He was a gentleman. He was funny as all get out. And he was a friend, and I don’t say that word very often. I count my friends literally on one hand. When you say a friend, they’re true friends, and he was that to me. I miss him very, very much. We were born the same month, in December. And he would call me for my birthday, as I would call him for his. The same thing with Mr. Sinatra. We share the same birthday, December 12. So I heard from him every year. There was not a year that went by that I didn’t get flowers from him or a phone call. I referred to him as “Poppy.� He would say to people, “This is my daughter.� I said, “Okay, Poppy!�

Did you get to perform a lot with Mr. Sinatra? Or do any recordings with him? 
The only recording I have is with Frank Sinatra and it’s not really a recording, but it’s the first live duet that he ever did with anyone. And that was on Solid Gold, of all things.

I actually was going to ask you about Solid Gold, but I need to know more about this duet. It’s not really the kind of show he would do back then. I imagine that booking had to be about your relationship.  
It was. When I called him, I said, “Listen, Poppy, I want you to do Solid Gold,� he said, “What is Solid Gold?� [Laughs.] And I told him it was the show I was hosting, and if you would consider coming on the show, I would really appreciate it. And he said, “Yeah, okay kid.� And as a result of that, it happened. When I was hosting, I would say, “I would like to have this one on the show and I would like to have that one on the show,� and they usually were people that the producers could not get. Not only Frank Sinatra but Barry White and Earth, Wind & Fire. These are people that just didn’t do television at that time, or at least those kinds of shows.

How did you find yourself hosting Solid Gold in the first place? You were its first host when it debuted in 1980.
I was called by Bob Banner and Brad Lachman to co-host a year-end special with Glen Campbell. And after they got these wonderful ratings, they asked if I’d be interested in continuing to host. I had no idea that they were not going to include Glenn at the time, but they wanted me to host it. And I said, “Sure, of course, I’ll do it.�

You left after that first season but then returned a few years later. What happened? If you believe Wikipedia, you were fired.
For whatever reason, the producers decided they wanted to change the format. My contract was up and they changed the format, and they decided that they wanted to use two other people. And then they found out what was wrong with the show, and they picked up the phone and called me and said, “Would you like to come back please?�

And you said, “How much?�
Exactly, exactly. [Laughs.] So there was a renegotiation. And they just knew that what I was bringing to television and to that particular show was completely different from anything else that they had experienced. So that story about me being fired is completely insane and not the truth at all. My contract was up and they had a right to do what they wanted to do.

Last year, I was on YouTube and found a video of you performing the theme to Solid Gold on Johnny Carson. I’d heard your version from the show a million times before, but this was different. You start off by making it a ballad and then it turns into the disco song we know from the show. Do you remember that?  
I certainly remember that. I had actually done that in performances onstage in my concerts all over the world. People loved Solid Gold. I made it a ballad in the beginning so the words that Dean Pitchford wrote, and the music that Mike Miller composed, could be heard. It always felt like that song was not only written for the show but it was written for me.

Just before Solid Gold, you started making music with other producers, including “I’ll Never Love This Way Again� with Barry Manilow and “Heartbreaker� with Barry Gibb. In the documentary, you talk about how you didn’t fully trust them at first. Why was that?
With Barry Manilow, Clive Davis had said, “Dionne, I want Barry to produce you.� I said, “Ohhhhhhkay.� And I let Barry know as well. I said, “Barry, I don’t know if it’s really going to work out with us.� He said, “Well, why not?� I said, “Because you’re known to write your own songs. To not only write them, but to record them. And how are you going to turn that hat around from recording artists of your own music and then producing another singer?� He said, “Trust me, I know I can do it.� Well, what happened? He gave me my very first platinum CD and he gave me two Grammy Awards in the same evening.

It was the same way with Barry Gibb, and the Brothers Gibb, with “Heartbreaker.� I did not want to record that song. I kept telling them, “That’s not me. It doesn’t sound like me. I don’t think I can do any justice to it.� And Barry and Clive and Maurice, they all jumped on me: “Yes, you’re going to record the song. It’s going to be the biggest hit you’ve ever had. Don’t worry about it. We got you.� Well, needless to say, again, Dionne was wrong and they were right. So it got to the point where if I did not like a song that usually would be the hit song. [Laughs.]

I get why you were hesitant, though. Manilow and Gibb are obviously icons in their own right, but it had to have been an adjustment after working with Hal and Burt for more than a decade. 
No, no, you’re not wrong. I think anyone who has a 15-year relationship with two producer-songwriters, you kind of have to think twice about working with anyone else or trusting their ability to continue the legacy of what was already there.

You just turned 82, and you haven’t really slowed down. You’ve been touring all across the country. I’m wondering what you do now when you do have downtime. What do you watch or listen to? 
I watch MeTV. MeTV has taken me back to my childhood television. You don’t have to think. It’s familiarity and things that you grew up knowing. Family TV, that’s exactly what MeTV is. And I happen to enjoy it. I start very early in the morning and take it right through to six o’clock in the evening. You know, those are shows that we all grew up with and enjoyed and kind of basically formed us.

With so many songs in your catalogue, can you even identify one or two to which you have the most emotional connection? Or is that just not possible?   
No, it’s impossible. Every single song that was written for me is something that has shaped me musically. It was specifically for me. So each one of them happens to represent my children. I don’t have a favorite child, so–

And conversely, since they’re all your babies, I assume there aren’t any you’d prefer to never sing again? 
No! No way in the world. I mean, that’s the reason I’m performing. Come on. [Laughs.]

Last question: I assume by now you found the way to San Jose?
Several times, yes. [Laughs.]

Seriously, though, I’m curious if you remember the first time you performed that song in San Jose?
Yeah, I sure do. It was during a period of time where it appeared San Jose was being inundated with people moving there because of the song. And the mayor of San Jose said to me, “Would you try not singing that song for about a year? We are running out of space.� It was wonderful.

Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over airs on CNN on Sunday, January 1, at 9 p.m. and midnight ET and will be available for streaming via CNN on-demand starting January 2.