Dale Warren

American record producer, soul music arranger, conductor, songwriter and violinist, born in Detroit on September 27, 1943. Died in February 1994 in Gwinnett County, Georgia. He was the nephew of Berry Gordy's second wife, Raynoma, often known as Miss Ray.
Dale Warren (sometimes credited as Dale O. Warren) was a classically trained musician who made his mark as an arranger and conductor in soul music, first in his native Detroit working for various labels (including Motown) and later, much more visibly, at Memphis-based Stax Records. His first notable work for the latter was on Isaac Hayes' version of Walk On By, and its success and the impact of the resulting album soon made Warren into a mainstay of the company's production department. He subsequently served as an arranger for Billy Eckstine, the Staple Singers and Albert King, among many others, but his greatest triumph was probably his string arrangement for Hayes' soaring rendition of Jerry Butler's I Stand Accused, from 1970. Warren's most visible contribution to music came two years after that, at the Wattstax Festival. He was heavily featured as a composer and conductor at the legendary Wattstax concert and on one of the albums and in the movie that followed - he conducted what was billed as the Wattstax '72 Orchestra and also wrote the extended instrumental piece Salvation Symphony, which opened the event (a portion of which, eight minutes long, was included on one of the eventual album releases from the event).
Warren also took under his wing a Detroit-based group called the Ditalians and renamed them III. Warren lived only just long enough to see Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth turn into a cult favorite, embraced by hip-hop artists of the next generation, and to witness the first phase of the full-scale revival of interest in Stax and its history.