Dionne Warwick in Paris

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Dionne Warwick In Paris" was Dionne Warwick's sixth album for the Scepter label. It was recorded during Warwick's five-week engagement at the Olympia Theatre in Paris in January 1966 and was released shortly thereafter the tour was completed. The LP was issued as number 534 in the Scepter Catalog. The liner of this LP is pink with three pictures of Warwick side-by-side, not unlike the Make Way for Dionne Warwick album two years earlier.

This album (which was not directly produced by Burt Bacharach and Hal David) was Warwick's only LP in 1966, and from it, a major hit single that almost didn't happen: "Message To Michael".

Robin Platts says in her book, Burt Bacharach & Hal David^[1], that Warwick was at the Olympia at co-star of "The Sacha Show" alongside Sacha Distel, a French heartthrob that Florence Greenberg was considering signing to Scepter. Distel wanted to record a version of Bacharach/David's "Message To Martha" and had asked Warwick to record a guide vocal. Warwick re-gendered the piece to suit her, and when executives at Scepter heard the recording, a single was issued. Bacharach and David were convinced that the song was better recorded by a man, but nonetheless agreed that Warwick's version was a stunning one indeed. "Message To Michael" was arranged and recorded by Jacques Denjean. The single peaked at number six on the Billboard charts.

Though the album included French versions of "A House Is Not A Home" and "You'll Never Get To Heaven (If You Break My Heart)", these were essentially phonetically-read versions over the same studio tracks of the original singles, and therefore not included in the actual performance. The album's liner states a [[Variety]] reviewer as stating that Warwick was "one Yank singer who could put over her wares completely in English and hit big."

Another song of note on the album is a wonderful reading of Cole Porter's "I Love Paris" which Warwick performed after being introduced on stage by Distel.