LINER
NOTES FOR
DIONNE WARWICK'S DIONNE WARWICK IN
PARIS
By
Richie Unterberger
Even
before her 1964 hits
"Anyone Who Had a Heart" and "Walk On By" marked her as an emerging
international superstar, Dionne Warwick was becoming a popular live
attraction, and was one of the first soul singers to extensively tour
Europe. She'd first performed at the Olympia Theater in Paris in late
1963, and by September 1964, as she told Melody Maker, she'd already been to
Europe six times. So it was little surprise that when she did her first
live album in 1966, it was recorded at the same Olympia Theater in
Paris where she'd made her first European splash.
The
opportunity
to play the Olympia in 1963 had arisen from the longtime association of
Burt Bacharach with Marlene Dietrich. Bacharach, who with Hal David
wrote and produced most of Warwick's records in the 1960s, also served
as Dietrich's musical director in the late 1950s and early '60s. It was
Burt who got Dionne a spot on Dietrich's show at the Olympia, at a time
when Warwick had landed just one big American hit, "Don't Make Me Over."
According to David Nathan's chapter on Warwick in The Soulful Divas, "By persuading
Dietrich to introduce her to Parisian audiences, he had in essence
launched her internationally, making her the first black female solo
contemporary music artist to achieve stardom in Europe. Following in
the footsteps of women like Josephine Baker who had captivated the
French with her talent, Dionne was a resounding success with her
Olympia gig. The French press dubbed her 'The Black Pearl,' and
Dionne's soulful, gospel-honed voice won the hearts of the audiences at
the Olympia." It was also at the Olympia where Beatles manager Brian
Epstein saw Warwick perform Bacharach-David's "Anyone Had a Heart,"
inspiring him to have another of his clients, Cilla Black, record it in
London for #1 British smash.
The appeal of Warwick's live appearances is
supported by several reviews of her concerts of the era. Wrote Jean
Monteaux in Arts, "The play of this voice makes you think sometimes of
an eel, of a storm, of a cradle, a knot of seaweed, a dagger. It is not
a voice so much as an organ. You could write fugues for Warwick's
voice." Reviewing a sold-out concert at the Philharmonic Hall in New
York in October 1966, Newsweek
enthused, "Bacharach songs, old standards, rhythm and blues—all came
out Warwick, in her restrained gospel style, deliciously phrased,
uncontrived and in a polished, flexible voice that was deep purple
below and sky-blue above. Not only does she reach up to E natural
comfortably, but she stays there in a dazzling acrobatic display of
vocal weightlessness, changing colors and dynamics with chilling
impact. Cushioning all her songs is an uncanny rhythmic sense. To the
stop-and-go-rhythms of such Bacharach songs as 'Walk On By,' her body
pulsates and twitches, and her voice seems somehow to swing to its own
built-in rhythm section. Her songs become dramatic monologues, building
tensions until the wild finish of 'Don't Make Me Over' or the haunting
fade-out of 'Anyone Who Had a Heart.' They also leave Dionne limp. At
the end of her concert even a standing ovation failed to bring an
encore. She had nothing left to give."
As for reviews of her actual stint at the Olympia
that provided the recording used on Dionne
Warwick in Paris, Scepter put Variety's
glowing assessment of her January 18 show right on the back cover:
"Dionne Warwick, encased in a tight fitting gold dress, gives out with
a keenly musician-like songalog comprising torchy ballads, strong
belting songs and an occasional rock. She has a fine voice, excellent
stance and scores well. Miss Warwick is one Yank singer who can put
over her wares completely in English and hit big."
A little surprisingly, the album itself contains
just one song that had been a big hit prior to the performance Variety
reviewed. Too, of the ten tracks, three were sung in French; two were
sung in both English and French, one of them being a duet with male
French star Sacha Distel; and just four were Bacharach-David
compositions. Perhaps Warwick wanted to take the opportunity to record
some songs that hadn't found their way onto her Scepter studio
releases, as well as singing some of them in a different language than
the familiar versions. Whatever the cause, it made a welcome scoop of
something different from Dionne, rather than being a re-creation of her
most popular records, as many live albums are.
The one big hit performed on the set was "Walk On
By," though the studio version of another song, "Message to Michael,"
would become a Top Ten hit for Warwick in the spring of 1966. The
Bacharach-David composition had actually been originally recorded for a
1964 single, under the title of "Kentucky Bluebird (Send a Message to
Martha)," by Lou Johnson, a singer with whom Bacharach-David frequently
worked for a while in both songwriting and production capacities. It
did creep up to #104 in Billboard,
and under the "A Message to Martha" title, Adam Faith had a #12 hit
with the song in Britain in late 1964. But it took a reworking of the
lyric by Dionne, recorded on top of a vocal track cut in Paris for
Distel, to produce its most successful incarnation.
"It was obvious that we had subconsciously written
the song for her, even though we thought we were writing it for a man
to sing," Hal David wrote in What
the World Needs Now and Other Love Lyrics. It wasn't the first
time that a song Johnson had recorded became a bigger hit in the hands
of others—Warwick had earlier made a much more successful single out of
"Reach Out for Me" than Johnson did—but it should be noted that Warwick
was sympathetic to Johnson's plight. Asked by Melody Maker in February 1966
whether there were African-American artists who deserved more
recognition, Dionne replied, "Well, I can think of a guy like Lou
Johnson. He has so much talent—yet he just can't make it record-wise.
His 'Always Something There to Remind Me' was fifty million times
better than Sandie Shaw's [#1 UK] version—and I'd tell Sandie that.
Then there was 'Message to Martha.' Burt wrote that specially for Lou.
But the disc had only been out two days when Adam Faith covered it. His
record was awful—and I'd tell him that, too."
The other two Bacharach-David songs on Dionne Warwick in Paris were
French-language versions of two of the better efforts from the
songwriting team not destined to become huge smashes, though she'd
taken both "You'll Never Get to Heaven" (#34) and "A House Is Not a
Home" (#71) into the American charts in 1964. Perhaps mindful of her
audience, much of the rest of the set was devoted to songs with a
specifically French/Parisian appeal. Cole Porter's "I Love Paris" was a
natural set-opener; "C'est Si Bon" had been a big hit for Eartha Kitt
in 1953; and "La Vie En Rose" had been one of the most popular songs
identified with the most revered Parisian singer of all, Edith Piaf. "O
Yeah Yeah Yeah" and "The Good Life" were sung in both English and
French, and co-written by Sacha Distel, who dueted with Dionne on the
former number. At least the Parisians got a taste of her gospel/R&B
roots in the closing track, "What'd I Say," a rock and soul standard
ever since Ray Charles had a massive hit with it in 1959.
Though Warwick is sometimes thought of as a pop
singer who might not have appealed much to the African-American
audience that was soul's constituency, if the Billboard R&B charts are any
accurate reflection of how well Dionne
Warwick in Paris sold in the black community, that notion is
mistaken. The album reached #3 in the R&B listings, as well as
rising to #76 in the pop chart. Later in the 1960s, Warwick would
depart even more radically from the Bacharach-David formula to deliver
entire albums of movie/show tunes (On
Stage and in the Movies) and gospel material (The Magic of Believing), both of
which have also been reissued on CD by Collectors' Choice Music. --
Richie Unterberger
unless otherwise specified.
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