In 1962, 21-year-old Dionne Warwick sang the Burt Bacharach and Hal David-penned Don’t Make Me Over to launch a career spanning six Grammys and 100m sales. More than six decades later, the soul legend opens with it here – although at 83 her voice understandably sounds more frail and vulnerable, giving new and moving meaning to the line “accept me for what I am”.
Two years after her “farewell tour”, this musical and spoken-word outing – also called Don’t Make Me Over – partly serves as a companion to 2021’s documentary of the same name. Seated next to her on a sofa, director Dave Wooley’s questions mostly tee up clips from the documentary. It’s useful biography – Warwick singing gospel, getting an MA in music – but does a lot of heavy lifting when tickets for the tour are £40 and upwards and the documentary is free on BBC iPlayer. The first half brings just one more song: a jazzier arrangement of I Say a Little Prayer delivered as a duet with her son, drummer David Elliott.
Thankfully the second half digs deeper into her struggles, humanitarianism and strength and brings some jaw-dropping moments. She explains how she bridged the gap between pop and what was called “race music” (R&B) in the US, and reveals that her first record in France was released with a white woman on the cover, so in Paris “when I walked on stage there was an audible gasp”. She remembers confronting Ronald Reagan over his lack of action over Aids in the 1980s: “If his eyes could have killed, I wouldn’t be here talking to you now.” There’s also a hilarious section when Snoop Dogg (on film) reveals being “out gangsta-d” when she’d hauled his posse to her mansion in the 90s to ask: “What gives you the right to call women bitches?”
It feels a long time coming when she gets up again to sing: just four more numbers, but Walk on By, the Bee Gees-penned Heartbreaker and the rest bring glimpses of the old magic of a singer who can justifiably admit, “I’m so proud I was that good.”
• At Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Tuesday. Then touring
