The Great American Songbook Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with a mission
to inspire and educate by celebrating the Great American Songbook.
Dionne Warwick
2016 new standard award
Born Marie Dionne Warrick in East Orange, New Jersey, Dionne Warwick’s celebrated career as a singer, songwriter and television host has spanned five decades. Warwick comes from a family of celebrated musicians; her mother sang with, and was manager of, the renowned gospel group The Drinkard Singers. She is also related to gospel singer Cissy Houston, pop singers Dee Dee Warwick and Whitney Houston, and operatic soprano Leontyne Price.
A longtime collaborator with songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Warwick ranks among the forty biggest hit makers of the rock era. She is second only to Aretha Franklin as the most-charted female vocalist of all time, with sixty-nine of Warwick's singles making the Billboard Hot 100 between 1962 and 1998. Her most recognizable hits include “I Say A Little Prayer,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?,” “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” “Then Came You,” and “That’s What Friends Are For”.
Warwick has received numerous accolades over the course of her career, including thirteen nominations and five wins at the GRAMMY Awards. Three of her hits from the 1960s, “Alfie,” “Don’t Make Me Over,” and “Walk On By,” have been inducted into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame. Warwick has received Lifetime Achievement Awards from ASCAP and the Rhythm & Blues Foundation. She won the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Female Singer in 1975, and the Entertainer of the Year Award at the 1982 NAACP Image Awards. Warwick was appointed a U.S. Ambassador of Health in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan, and in 2002 she was named a United Nations Global Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization.
