Early Career / Mercury Recordings
Dee Dee Warwick sang with her sister Dionne Warwick and their aunt Cissy Houston in the New Hope Baptist Church Choir in Newark, New Jersey: eventually the three women formed the gospel trio the Gospelaires, who often performed with the Drinkard Singers, Houston being a member of both groups.
At a performance by the Gospelaires with the Drinkard Singers at the Apollo Theater in 1959, the Warwick sisters were recruited by a record producer for session work and Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick, along with Doris Troy, subsequently became a prolific New York City area session singing team.
Dee Dee Warwick began to dabble in a solo career in 1963 cutting what is reportedly the earliest version of "You're No Good" for Jubilee Records, produced by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who later recorded Warwick on their own Tiger label with the 1964 single "Don't Think My Baby's Coming Back". In 1964 Warwick recorded a version of "I (Who Have Nothing)" for a tiny Buffalo, NY label (Hurd) - although the song's lyric was written by Leiber and Stoller, the duo did not participate in Warwick's recording - and Warwick also recorded as a member of Allison Gary and the Burners (as did Cissy Houston) with a release on Royo entitled "Darling".
Warwick performed on Shivaree, which aired July 17, 1965, she sang "We're Doing Fine" and "I Want to Be with You".
In 1965, Warwick signed with Mercury Records, where she recorded with producer Ed Townsend for their subsidiary Blue Rock label, reaching the R&B Top 30 with "We're Doing Fine". It was on the Mercury label in 1966, that she had her biggest hit with "I Want to Be with You" from the Broadway show Golden Boy, a #9 R&B hit, which just missed the pop Top 40 at #41 (Nancy Wilson had reached #54 with her version entitled "I Wanna Be with You" in 1964). The follow-up single was the original version of "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" which, peaking at #13 R&B and #88 Pop, was not Warwick's biggest hit, but became her best known number by virtue of its later success as a duet between Diana Ross and The Supremes and The Temptations.
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