Alex Henderson

Dionne Warwick
No Night So Long

1979 was an important year for Dionne Warwick. It was in 1979 that music industry heavyweight Clive Davis signed the R&B/pop superstar to Arista Records—which officially ended her association with Warner Bros. Records, a label she had been recording for since 1972—and united her with another vocal giant: Barry Manilow, who produced her first Arista album, Dionne. Bringing Warwick and Manilow together was a wise decision on Davis’ part, and Dionne was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of 1.5 million units in the United States alone. Dionne boasted two major singles: the Isaac Hayes/Adrienne Anderson song “Déjà Vu” (a #1 hit on Billboard’s adult contemporary singles chart in the U.S.) and the Richard Kerr/Will Jennings ballad “I’ll Never Love This Way Again” (which reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S.).

In 1980, Warwick followed up Dionne with No Night So Long, which was produced by Steve Buckingham (known for his work with Cat Stevens, Linda Ronstadt, Melissa Manchester and many other pop vocalists) and favored a similar mixture of R&B/pop and adult contemporary. The title track (another Kerr/Jennings ballad) became a major hit, reaching #1 on Billboard’s adult contemporary singles chart in the United States. And a romantic, laid-back mood prevails on much of this album, from the ballads “We Never Said Goodbye” (which, like “Déjà Vu,” was written by Hayes and Anderson), “How You Once Loved Me,” “We Had This Time” (which Melissa Manchester wrote with Larry Weiss) and “When the World Runs Out of Love” to mid-tempo grooves such as “It’s the Falling in Love,” “Reaching for the Sky” (a Peabo Bryson song) and the single “Easy Love” (a #12 adult contemporary hit in the U.S.). Meanwhile, the David Lasley/Peter Allen ballad “Somebody’s Angel” recalls Warwick’s 1960s and early 1970s work with producer/songwriters Burt Bacharach & Hal David but does so with subtle hints of Philadelphia soul.

When Arista first released No Night So Long 34 years ago, it was a 10-song LP. But on this reissue, No Night So Long becomes a 14-song CD thanks to the addition of four previously unreleased bonus tracks: “Starting Tomorrow,” “Now That the Feeling’s Gone” and two mixes of “This Is What I’ve Wanted All My Life.” All of those songs fit in perfectly with this reissue’s adult contemporary/quiet storm direction.

Uptempo songs are not a high priority on No Night So Long. But this album does take a more energetic turn with a perky cover of “Sweetie Pie,” which Canadian singer Eric Mercury had recorded in 1975 and wrote with the late William “Smitty” Smith. During an interview on September 26, 2014, the Toronto-based Mercury remembered how pleasantly surprised he was when, in 1980, he found out that Warwick had covered “Sweetie Pie.”

“I was thrilled to find out that Dionne Warwick was singing my song,” Mercury recalls. “Dionne was a heroine of mine because of what she achieved with Burt Bacharach & Hal David in the 1960s, and I thought her cover of ‘Sweetie Pie’ was wonderful. Dionne Warwick was the diva of divas to me—Dionne, and Barbra Streisand.”

Mercury enjoyed a productive alliance with Smith, who died of a heart attack in 1997: the two of them played together in the Toronto-based band Eric Mercury & the Soul Searchers during the 1960s and continued to work together in the 1970s. And although Mercury’s version of “Sweetie Pie” was released as a single by Mercury/PolyGram Records in 1975, Smith was still promoting the song five years later—which is how it came to Warwick’s attention. “Smitty was a real hustler,” Mercury stresses. “Smitty and I wrote a lot of songs, and he really hustled them—including ‘Sweetie Pie.’ Another one of our songs, ‘Down the Backstairs of My Life,’ was recorded by Kenny Rankin.”

Throughout her long career, Warwick has been as much of a pop star as she is an R&B star—and that held true in 1980. Although some soul giants appear on No Night So Long (including Hayes, who plays organ, and the gritty Tower of Power’s horn section), there is no denying that this album has considerable Top 40 and adult contemporary appeal. Warwick was never a hardcore soul singer in the way that Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Carla Thomas and Betty Wright were hardcore soul singers: she was marketed as a crossover act from the beginning, and many of the gems that Bacharach & David wrote and produced for her in the 1960s were huge pop hits (including “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” “I Say a Little Prayer” and “Message to Michael”). In fact, there were times when Warwick’s singles performed better on the pop charts than on the R&B charts: for example, “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” (another Bacharach/David classic) reached #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. and #8 pop in the UK in 1968 but stalled at #23 on Billboard’s R&B singles chart for the U.S.—and Warwick’s crossover appeal was not lost on Clive Davis, who helped her reach #1 on the adult contemporary charts several times during the 1980s.

Looking back, Mercury—who remembers first hearing Warwick when her breakthrough single “Don’t Make Me Over” came out in 1962—asserts that Warwick has had her greatest impact in the pop world rather than the R&B world. “Dionne Warwick has had an amazing run,” Mercury explains. “She has had more Top 10 hits than the Beatles. The songs she did with Burt Bacharach & Hal David in the 1960s changed my ear—they changed everybody’s ear. Most of her early hits were Burt Bacharach/Hal David songs, and I never considered them R&B records. I considered them pop records.”

Born in East Orange, New Jersey on December 12, 1940, Warwick (who is now 73) was 39 when No Night So Long came out during the Summer of 1980. Singers come and go in the ultra-competitive music industry, but 18 years after breaking through with “Don’t Make Me Over,” No Night So Long demonstrated that Warwick was still very much on top of her game. 

—Alex Henderson, October 2014

Alex Henderson’s work has appeared in Billboard, Spin, Salon.com, Creem, The L.A. Weekly, AlterNet, JazzTimes, Jazziz, Cash Box, HITS, CD Review, Skin Two, Black Beat, The Pasadena Weekly, Black Radio Exclusive (BRE), Music Connection, The New York City Jazz Record, Jazz Inside Magazine and many other well-known publications. Henderson (alexvhenderson.com) also contributed several thousand CD reviews to the popular Allmusic.com website and The All Music Guide’s series of music reference books.