Music review: Dionne Warwick, Glasgow Armadillo

There are not many singers out there who could kick off their concert with songs of the calibre of Don't Make Me Over and Walk On By and still have somewhere to go but that remains a measure of what composers Burt Bacharach and Hal David heard in Dionne Warwick's voice back in the early 1960s when they picked her as their favoured interpreter of what was to become one of the classic canons in pop music.

Dionne Warwick PIC: Thos Robinson/Getty Images

Music review: Dionne Warwick, Glasgow Armadillo ****

Over the course of two hours (which felt more like two minutes), Warwick worked her way through her phenomenal catalogue in close to chronological order, using economical yet unhurried medleys delivered with practised fluency by her easy listening band.

Never a powerhouse singer, she was, and still is, graceful, classy and understated, and eminently able to make intuitive choices about what her mature vocal cords could make of Bacharach’s sophisticated, challenging melodies.

If anything, her more conversational delivery invested David’s storytelling lyrics with greater ache and intimacy, as on the husky fragility on Anyone Who Had A Heart or her ravishing rendition of 99 Miles From LA, and when she picked her moment to go for it, on the likes of Promises Promises, she was still able to draw on reserves of strength and control.

Her drummer son David and granddaughter Cheyenne, with whom she duetted on a couple of numbers, were more traditionally athletic vocalists but neither could touch Warwick for innate soul and emotional intelligence. - FIONA SHEPHERD