By any standard, Dionne Warwick has had a staggering career. There are the number-one hits, the awards, the legion of fans: it's a checklist on which Warwick can tick off every entry.

After 60 charted hits since 1962, it is appropriate that Warwick, on the road again at 67, is touring with a show called My Music and Me.

Warwick is bringing her show to two Yorkshire venues next week, when audiences will have a chance to hear the voice that so enchanted two of the last century's greatest song writers.

"I was doing a background session with the Drifters, performing Mexican Divorce by Burt Bacharach and Bob Hilliard. Burt approached me to do more background work, and demonstration records of songs that he was writing with Hal David. I agreed, and that's how it all began," says Warwick.

The thing that began when these three elements came together was musical alchemy.

David and Bacharach's writing was, audiences came to realise, extraordinary. The addition of Warwick as their muse made it something incredible.

Don't Make Me Over, legend has it, was a phrase snapped by Warwick at David and Bacharach over an argument about a song. The pair
took the phrase and turned it into their first hit with the singer.

Many, many more followed.

Just a year after recording her first Bacharach-David collaboration, Warwick's performance at the Olympia Theatre in Paris, during a 1963 concert starring the legendary Marlene Dietrich, rocketed her to international stardom.

As she was establishing herself as a major force in American contemporary music, she steadily gained in popularity among European audiences.

In all, Warwick, Bacharach and David racked up thirty hit singles, and close to twenty best-selling albums, during their first decade together.

Songs like Message To Michael, I'll Never Fall In Love Again, and Reach Out For Me, established Warwick as a consummate artist and performer.

She says: "I love every single one of my songs – they were written for me."

In 1967, Bacharach asked her to record a version of his song Alfie. The story goes that she argued with Bacharach and David, saying their song had been done to death and asked how many more versions the world needed. Apparently Bacharach answered simply by saying: "One. Yours."

She says of the two: "Our special relationship was down to something very simple – we're friends. I've known them for 47 years of my career.

"Today's songwriters don't even come close."

Asked to pick a favourite song that came from their relationship, Warwick is unable to.

"I love all of them – they are like my children and I cannot have a favourite child as I have more than one," she says.

"Forty years on these finely crafted classics have been updated and brought into the 21st century, but primarily you'll be getting them as they were first recorded. I still enjoy singing them. They're a big part of me."

The year following her first hit with David and Bacharach, in 1963, Warwick's honeyed tones won the singer her first Grammy award for the
yet another song written by the pair for their muse, Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

In winning the award she became the first African-American solo female artist of her generation to win the prestigious award for Best Contemporary Female Vocal Performance.

Warwick preceded the mainstream success of some of her musical peers by becoming the first such artist to rack up a dozen consecutive Top 100 hit singles from 1963 to 1966.

"I've always been a singer – it was predestined. I come from a singing family," she says.

"Success rarely comes easily. Sustaining a career in the music business requires hard work and drive as well as talent. I've been very lucky too!"

Her latest tour, which will stop off in 16 cities, comes to Hull and Bradford next week.

She says: "You'll be getting my life story through my music. From the beginning to now"

"It's basically giving you my life thus far, through my music. Some misnomers are going to be corrected. There's music and there's talk, giving you the real deal about Dionne Warwick. I think people should come out and hear it!"

An Evening with Dionne Warwick, My Music and Me, is at Hull City Hall on Monday, Nov 10, tickets on 01482 226 655 and Bradford St George's Hall on Friday, November 14. Tickets on 01274 432000.