Dionne Warwick

For her 16th birthday, Warwick's parents took her to see Lena Horne's farewell run at the Waldorf Astoria — a gift, she later said, that outweighed every other she's received. She began sitting in the back of Manhattan rooms with a legal pad, tracking how the stars she watched moved, phrased, and talked to a crowd. Horne topped the list: 'I'd have to say that she was one of my major professors,' Warwick said, describing a 'majestic command' of the stage that shaped how she'd eventually run her own.

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1943

Stormy WeatherLena Horne

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1964

Walk On ByDionne Warwick

listen forHorne's 'Stormy Weather' — the song that stayed with Warwick from the 1943 film — never over-sings the heartbreak in the lyric; the drama sits in the stillness, the way Horne holds a note without leaning on it. Warwick's 'Walk On By' does the same trick over Bacharach's descending strings: a torch-song ache delivered dead level, almost conversational, refusing to let the vocal collapse into the melodrama the lyric invites. Both make composure itself sound like grief.

Sarah Vaughan wasn't just a name on Warwick's list of idols — in Warwick's words, she was 'Aunt Sassy,' a family friend since her mother and Vaughan shared a hairdresser. Warwick studied Vaughan professionally too, taking a legal pad to shows at the Waldorf to track her phrasing alongside Ella Fitzgerald and Carmen McRae. It's the same connection critics reached for decades later, when AllMusic singled out Vaughan's voice as one of the clear precedents behind Warwick's own.

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1957

Body and SoulSarah Vaughan

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1963

Anyone Who Had a HeartDionne Warwick

listen forVaughan's 'Body and Soul' stretches the melody's wide leaps without ever straining for them — the control sounds effortless, like she has more voice in reserve than she's using. Warwick's 'Anyone Who Had a Heart' asks for the same thing on a stranger tune: Bacharach's melody keeps jumping keys and meters underneath her, and she rides it with the same unshowy precision, never oversinging a lyric built to sound conversational even at its most wounded.

Ella Fitzgerald was part of the soundtrack of Warwick's childhood — 'We listen to Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday,' Warwick recalled of the wide range of music always playing in her gospel-rooted home — and later became one of the performers she studied live, notebook in hand, at rooms like the Waldorf and the Copacabana. The connection is explicit enough that critic William Ruhlmann named her directly: 'Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan are clear influences,' he wrote, framing Warwick's voice as adjacent to jazz without belonging fully inside it.

listen: upstream & heresource: PBS American Masters Digital Archive — "Dionne Warwick, Lena Horne ↗share

1959

Someone to Watch Over MeElla Fitzgerald

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1967

I Say a Little PrayerDionne Warwick

listen forFitzgerald's 'Someone to Watch Over Me' treats a deceptively tricky melody like plain speech — every syllable lands clean, with almost no vibrato blurring the words. Warwick's 'I Say a Little Prayer' needs that same clarity even more badly: Bacharach wrote the verse in an odd, halting meter that could easily turn mannered, and Warwick sings straight through it the way Fitzgerald sings through a standard, letting the lyric's shape do the work instead of the voice.