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All Music Guide:
Like Darlene Love and Cissy Houston, Dee Dee Warwick's considerable gifts as a soul singer were mostly confined to session work. And like Aretha Franklin's sisters, Dee Dee had to struggle with the shadow of a superstar sibling, Dionne Warwick. Certainly she had the talent to compete as an artist in her own right, but she only had a sporadic run of small hits in the 1960s and early '70s, and benefited from neither frequent recording opportunities nor substantial promotion from her labels.
Dee Dee began singing with her older sister Dionne as a teenager in the 1950s. They formed the Gospelaires, who sometimes sang with the Drinkard Singers, a long-running gospel outfit that their mother Lee had helped found, and that also featured their aunt, Cissy Houston. Like many gospel singers, Dee Dee moved into secular soul in the early '60s. Along with Dionne, Cissy, Doris Troy, and the Sweet Inspirations, she was one of New York's most in-demand session vocalists during the era, contributing to numerous pop/soul records by the likes of the Drifters, Chuck Jackson, Garnet Mimms, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, and Wilson Pickett.
During her early career, Dee Dee was content to make a comfortable living as a backup singer. She began making her own records in 1963, however, cutting the original version of "You're No Good," which Betty Everett covered for a hit (and which Linda Ronstadt took to number one in 1975). It was produced by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who tried one more time with her in 1964 on "Standing By"; a single for the small Hurd label also flopped. She began treating her solo career more seriously in the second half of the 1960s, during which she released almost a dozen singles for Mercury, as well as a couple of albums.
Dee Dee's '60s recordings, while much less successful than Dionne's, were good New York pop/soul with a more pronounced R&B influence than her sister's. Some of these were actually substantial R&B hits; "I Want to Be With You," "Foolish Fool," and "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" all made the R&B Top 20. The Supremes and the Temptations, however, would steal some of Dee Dee's thunder when their duet cover of "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" made number two on the pop charts.
Warwick signed to Atco at the beginning of the 1970s, getting a Top Ten R&B single right off the bat with "She Didn't Know (She Kept on Talking)." Over the next couple of years she'd make several other singles and an album, all of which comprised her earthiest work to date, sometimes with help from the Dixie Flyers rhythm section and backup vocals by the Sweet Inspirations. Only "Cold Night in Georgia" made a little commercial noise, however, and she returned to Mercury in 1973 (she has since claimed that Atlantic was throwing most of its promotional weight for female soul singers behind Aretha Franklin and Roberta Flack). She continued to record for various labels in the 1970s, but only "Get Out of My Life" (1975) dented the R&B charts. Since the mid-'70s, she has done backup vocals for Dionne Warwick, and recorded sporadically on her own. Long overdue, Soul Classics compiled her best Atco recordings for compact-disc reissue in 1996, and a Mercury reissue appeared in 2001.
Wikipedia:
Delia Mae "Dee Dee" Warwick (September 25, 1942 – October 18, 2008) was an American soul singer. Born in Newark, New Jersey, she was the sister of Dionne Warwick, niece of Cissy Houston and cousin of Whitney Houston.
Early life
Warwick was born in East Orange, New Jersey, to Mancel Warwick (1911–1977), who began his career as a Pullman porter and subsequently became a chef, a gospel record promoter for Chess Records and later a Certified Public Accountant; and Lee Drinkard Warwick (1920–2005), manager of The Drinkard Singers. Warwick had one sister, Dionne Warwick, and a brother, Mancel Jr., who was killed in an accident in 1968 at the age of 21.. She was of African American, Native American, Brazilian and Dutch descent.
Early career / Mercury recordings
Dee Dee Warwick sang with her sister Dionne Warwick and their aunt Cissy Houston in the New Hope Baptist Church Choir in Newark, New Jersey: eventually the three women formed the gospel trio the Gospelaires, who often performed with the Drinkard Singers, Houston being a member of both groups.
At a performance by the Gospelaires with the Drinkard Singers at the Apollo Theater in 1959, the Warwick sisters were recruited by a record producer for session work and Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick, along with Doris Troy, subsequently became a prolific New York City area session singing team.
Dee Dee Warwick began to dabble in a solo career in 1963 cutting what is reportedly the earliest version of "You're No Good" for Jubilee Records, produced by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who later recorded Warwick on their own Tiger label with the 1964 single "Don't Think My Baby's Coming Back". In 1964 Warwick recorded a version of "I (Who Have Nothing)" for a tiny Buffalo, NY label (Hurd) - although the song's lyric was written by Leiber and Stoller, the duo did not participate in Warwick's recording - and Warwick also recorded as a member of Allison Gary and the Burners (as did Cissy Houston) with a release on Royo entitled "Darling".
Warwick performed on Shivaree, which aired July 17, 1965, she sang "We're Doing Fine" and "I Want to Be with You".
In 1965, Warwick signed with Mercury Records, where she recorded with producer Ed Townsend for their subsidiary Blue Rock label, reaching the R&B Top 30 with "We're Doing Fine". It was on the Mercury label in 1966, that she had her biggest hit with "I Want to Be with You" from the Broadway show Golden Boy, a #9 R&B hit, which just missed the pop Top 40 at #41 (Nancy Wilson had reached #54 with her version entitled "I Wanna Be with You" in 1964). The follow-up single was the original version of "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" which, peaking at #13 R&B and #88 Pop, was not Warwick's biggest hit, but became her best known number by virtue of its later success as a duet between Diana Ross and The Supremes and The Temptations.
Atco
Warwick continued to record for Mercury through the late 60s. Although her occasional success in the R&B field - notably the 1969 Ed Townsend production of Foolish Fool - was enough for the label wishing to re-sign her in 1970, she signed with Atco at the invitation of Atlantic Records president Jerry Wexler himself, Wexler having admired Warwick's early session work.
Warwick made her first recordings for Atco in February 1970, cutting four tunes with Townsend. In an early indication of the disarray, that Warwick's career would experience at Atlantic, these tracks were shelved and she was sent to Criteria Studios in Miami in April to work with producer Dave Crawford and fast-emerging studio band, The Dixie Flyers. The resultant Turning Around album yielded a Top Ten R&B hit with "She Didn't Know", but Warwick would never have another album release or single in the R&B Top 20.
In October, she cut 10 tracks at Muscle Shoals, again with Crawford producing (along with Brad Shapiro). Only three singles were released with one, a remake of "Suspicious Minds", becoming Warwick's final R&B hit in 1971. That summer, Crawford and Shapiro produced an eight-track session for Warwick at the Pac-Three studios in Detroit. One track, "Everybody's Got to Believe in Something" was issued as a single - Warwick's last release on Atco despite two final sessions for the label in early 1972. Reflecting on her unrewarding Atco tenure, Warwick opined: "The problem was simply, that the company had a lot of other big female acts - like Aretha [Franklin] and Roberta [Flack] - and you get into a situation, where you don't get the right kind of material or production or promotion..."
Later career
In 1973, Warwick returned to Mercury but in 1974, she moved to Private Stock, where the 1975 single "Get Out of My Life" became her final charting (#73 R&B) song. That same year, Warwick recorded for RCA Victor as DeDe Schwartz. After several years away from the recording studio, Dee Dee Warwick made her final recordings in the mid-80s: in 1984 her album Dee Dee Warwick, Call Me was released on Sutra Records and she subsequently recorded for Heritage. After living in Los Angeles for a number of years, Warwick became a resident of Georgia in 1994.
Dee Dee Warwick received a Pioneer Award from the hythm and Blues Foundation in 1999. Recordings of both her Mercury years and Atco years are available on CD. In late 2006, Dee Dee returned to success singing background for Dionne in concert, and also was part of the "Family First" song in the Tyler Perry movie and soundtrack for Daddy's Little Girls.
In January 2008, Dee Dee was featured in the title song from Dionne's gospel album, Why We Sing. In February 2008, she continued her background vocals for Dionne's one woman show 'My Music and Me' in Europe.
Death
Dee Dee Warwick struggled with narcotics addiction for many years and was in failing health for some time. Her sister was with her, when she died on October 18, 2008 in a nursing home in Essex County, New Jersey, aged 66.
