When superstar Dionne Warwick takes to the stage at Preston Guild Hall on Monday, one person will not be far from her thoughts.

The songress's younger sister Dee Dee Warwick, who sang alongside her older sibling throughout her amazing career, first in their family gospel group and later as her backing singer, passed away just last month in a nursing home with Dionne at her side.

Asked which of her many songs reminds her most of her sister, Dionne says sadly: "All of them, she was part of the background group on every recording I've ever made, every single thing. She's my sister, what can I tell you?"

Dee Dee's passing is one more chapter in a life of triumph and tragedy –a life that Dionne is sharing with her fans in this show, My Music and Me.

She explains: "Basically, it's a sort of biographical look at me through my music. It takes you from the very beginning and brings you as far up to date as I've written, in chronological order."

From the comfort of her room in a London hotel which has become one of her little homes-from-home around the world, she recalls how her career began when she was barely old enough to walk, the day her grandfather asked her to sing in his church.

She says: "My grandfather called me to the pulpit and asked me to sing for him. I said: 'You want me to do what?' 'I want you to sing.' 'Well, what do you want me to sing?' And I would lead our Sunday School class in Jesus Loves Me and that's the first song I sang. Yeah, they loved it, I was so pleased.

"It's my life - I was born into a singing family. This is the way God planned it."

As they grew up, she and Dee Dee began singing in theatres as The Gospelaires.

But it was Dionne who spoke up the day an unknown man came backstage at New York's famous Apollo as they prepared to go on.

He needed some session singers in a hurry – and Dionne volunteered The Gospelaires.

That one moment changed her whole life – she might never have been a professional singer otherwise. "Yes, that's right,'' she says. ''I was going to teach – it would have been music education."

During subsequent recording sessions, she was approached by a young songwriter – the then unknown Burt Bacharach. She recalls: "It was prior to him teaming up with Hal (David, his songwriting partner on numerous classics).

"He approached and asked if I would be interested in doing demonstration records of songs that he would be writing with Hal David. And one thing led to another and we became the trio that we were.

"Nobody knew then how important anybody was going to be in anybody's life. No, it was basically a session singer meeting a composer and making some wonderful things happen."

Asked which of those early hits changed her life the most, she says: "The very first one. Don't Make Me Over was the first song they wrote for me."

It also changed her name. Born Dionne Warrick, she was forced to alter the spelling after a mistake on the cover of Don't Make Me Over. She admits she was furious at first, laughing: "I didn't like it at all!

But because the record was climbing the charts, it was kinda late to pull it back to change the spelling so we just left it – and I'm glad we did. It's been a very, very good thing, it has carried me quite a few ways."

The songs she sang became instantly recognisable classics – Walk on By, Anyone Who Had a Heart, Do You Know The Way To San Jose, I'll Never Fall In Love Again.

She also earned an incredible five Grammy Awards. She smiles: "My Grammys were at my mom's while she was alive. Now they're in my house, on a shelf with lots of other things."

But in the early 1970s, Bacharach and David very publicly, and bitterly, split. She admits: "I heard about it the same way everybody else did – I read it.

"It affected me in a very personal way because we were friends. But, you know, things happen and, as it turned out, it didn't hurt."

It's hard to believe this as bitter court battles resulted and Dionne then spent the bleakest years of her career signed to Warners. Without her team, for a while, the hits dried up.

Then, when she was almost ready to quit, Arista Records boss Clive Davis convinced her to carry on. She tersely admits it wasn't a good time, then appears to tire of the subject.

She says slightly sharply: "What you're asking me happens to be what my show is about so I think you and your readers need to come and see the show."

She is more happy to talk about her time as Ambassador for Health to the US, a position she held through under presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton and which came about after she became a committed campaigner for AIDs research in her homeland.

She recalls: "Our industry, the entertainment industry, was the first one that was becoming ravaged with this disease and nobody knew what it was and I wanted to find out.

"I lost a valet to AIDS. When you lose that many really incredibly talented people... It was time for somebody to do something – and I'm usually the one that steps up."

She travelled the world as Ambassador and says: "It was absolutely amazing. It got to the point where I was becoming too emotionally involved and I had to kinda step away from it. I'm still very much involved on another level but it was becoming harder to do because I wasn't seeing the progress that I thought we should be making. I watched too many lives slip away."

She agrees she has led a charmed life. "I'm truly blessed. I have had some amazing people who are also my friends. It was easy to record with them, it was easy to sing the songs that they brought me because they brought me incredible music to sing. I don't have any favourites, they're all my favourites.

"It's been... a joyous time. I've had a bunch of fun doing what I love doing and being with people who I happen to love as well."

Dionne Warwick plays Preston Guild Hall on Monday. Box office 01772 258858

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