Dionne Warwick: Many happy returns to the matchless American singer

Singing is the family trade for the performer who is 75 today. Warwick's mother was a gospel singer, Whitney Houston her cousin.

Dionne Warwick sounds the second "w" of her surname. This was added by mistake in 1962 on the label of "Don't Make Me Over", the first of a string of songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David that were to make her world-famous. That tiny affectation is of a piece with a singing style nimble enough to negotiate the complexities of the lyrics of "Do You Know The Way To San Jose", "Trains And Boats And Planes" and "There's Always Something There To Remind Me", and capable of smuggling the rhyme of "pneumonia" and "phone ya" past your ear as though it were a well-known phrase or saying.

Singing is the family trade – Warwick's mother was a gospel singer, Whitney Houston her cousin. In the UK, many of the songs she defined during the 1960s were handed to Cilla Black, who couldn't quite match the velvety desolation of Warwick's performances.

In 1971 a psychic persuaded her that adding a further "e" at the end of the surname would have career benefits. It wasn't good advice. This was around the time her hot streak came to an end, although she did have success with songs such as "Heartbreaker" in the early 1980s, via collaborations with Barry Manilow and the Bee Gees.

Ten years later she was a pitchwoman for the Psychic Friends Network, which persuaded daytime TV watchers to confess their troubles to premium phone lines. When Warwick sought bankruptcy protection in 2013, some people wondered how a singer who had been as inescapable in her era as Adele is today could possibly be down to her last thousand dollars.

Nowadays big singers make sure their name is among the writing credits, knowing that this is where the money continues to come from long after the records have stopped selling. Bankruptcy is unlikely to happen to Adele. Then again she'll surely go through her entire career without ever getting to have first crack at a song as good as "Walk On By".