How Stevie Wonder Pranked Dionne Warwick When He Was 11 Years Old
Dionne Warwick and Stevie Wonder are two music icons with decades’ worth of beloved songs and accolades between them. The two Grammy-winning artists go way back, all the way to when Warwick was an up-and-coming young singer and Wonder was a child prodigy.
Stevie Wonder and Dionne Warwick performed together when Wonder was a child
Stevie Wonder grew up playing several instruments and singing in his church. He quickly gained notoriety as a performer, and after auditioning for Motown Records, he earned the nickname Little Stevie Wonder and signed his first recording contract in 1961 at 11 years old.
Like Stevie Wonder, Dionne Warwick also grew up singing in her church. She formed a group called The Gospelaires with her sister Dee Dee and started to gain recognition as a backup singer for various artists.
The Shirrelles helped Stevie Wonder play a prank on Dionne Warwick
In 1961, Wonder and Warwick were among the artists who went abroad to participate in an international show in Paris. They were joined by girl group The Shirelles to represent the United States. And while they were there to perform, Wonder and The Shirelles couldn’t help but have a little fun.
Warwick recounted the story on her Twitter.
“A young man named Stevie Wonder — as you know him — and I worked together many, many years ago in Paris, France at the Olympia Theatre,” she said. “The show was called ‘Les Idoles de Jeunes,’ the ‘Idols of the Young.’ And it was a country kind of thing where many people and many groups and single artists were represented from their countries.”
“The three people representing the United States were The Shirelles, Stevie Wonder, and myself,” she continued. “And I had this wonderful red dress that I loved and The Shirelles hated. I haven’t a clue as to why they hated it, but they did. And they got Stevie to say to me, ‘Dionne, can I say something to you?’ and I said ‘Of course you can, my darling.'”
“Well, he was 11 years old at this time,” she explained. “He said, ‘Dionne, I don’t want you to wear that red dress anymore.’ Well, first of all, how did he know it was a red dress? And why wouldn’t he want me to wear it anymore?”
“He says, ‘I just don’t like the way it looks on you,'” she recalled him saying, questioning how the blind child prodigy could see her dress. “I thought the kid could see. I thought he was really able to see.”
“Well, it scared me to the point that I didn’t wear that dress anymore,” she concluded.
In the end, she found out that she had been pranked by her fellow singers.
“I finally found out that The Shirelles had put him up to saying that to me,” she said. “But you know, Stevie is one that is a prankster. He loves to pull pranks on people. And he’s pulled quite a few on me. But it’s all O.K., because he is one of my babies. I love him to death. I really, really do.”
Stevie Wonder is known for playing pranks
Though Stevie Wonder is over 70 years old today, in many ways, he’s always been the same child that Warwick knows and loves from back in the day. In the music industry, he has a reputation of being a prankster, with people like Lionel Richie and Steve Harvey learning firsthand just how much he loves joking around.
