Dionne Bromfield: Amy Winehouse's Last Gift To Us

Just two hours after the death of her godmother, her mentor and idol, 15 year old Dionne Bromfield performed a professional, flawless gig at a festival in Wales. Dionne was the closest Amy Winehouse came to having a child of her own and what a star she has turned out to be.

Just two hours after the death of her godmother, her mentor and idol, 15 year old Dionne Bromfield performed a professional, flawless gig at a festival in Wales.

She showed no sign of the emotion that must have been ripping through her - she did what she knew her godmother would have wanted, she sang.

But who is this star who until recently lived in the shadow of her famous godmother? Who until Saturday wasn't splashed all over the world's news...

Without her, our last sighting of Amy Winehouse on stage would have been the Amy booed by crowds in Serbia's capital Belgrade, after appearing to be too drunk to perform.

Thanks to Dionne, that shambolic performance has been eclipsed by a video of Amy-the-loving- supportive-godmother dancing on stage next to her prodigy, at the iTunes Festival in Camden, London, last Wednesday.

I hope this is how we remember Amy, as someone who lived for her family. Numerous people have come forward to say that she didn't want fame and that all she really wanted was kids and a husband to cook for.

Dionne was the closest Amy came to having a child of her own and what a star she has turned out to be.

A few months ago I was invited to an 'intimate gig' to celebrate the album launch of a young talented soul-singer. In capital letters the email stated Dionne Bromfield was 'Amy Winehouse's goddaughter'.

New acts launch into the industry every day, but it's not very often that they've been groomed by the most talented singer-songwriter of our generation. It was a testament to the unrivalled talent of the late Amy Winehouse that hardened music journalists went along to the gig of this relatively unknown artist.

The single fact that Bromfield had been coached by her godmother Amy made her instantly appealing. In our longing for new material from Amy, who hadn't released an album since her record-breaking Back To Black in 2006, we hoped perhaps Dionne could quench our desire for more of Amy's distinctive sound.

As music journalists packed into the small Dean Street Studios, in the heart of London's Soho, a place steeped in musical history, where David Bowie, U2 and The Smiths have all made records, we anxiously awaited the arrival of Amy's prodigy.

Small in frame, yet bigger in presence, there was something Winehouse-like about her as soon as she stepped into the studio.

As she politely introduced her band members and then herself, my friend and I turned to each other, "she's adorable!"

Her age was obvious, she oozed innocence but, once the band started up and she began to sing, her confidence shone through. And so it should, her voice was fantastic. With a warm retro soul, unlike anything in the charts today, her voice could rightly have belonged to someone twice her age.

It's such a relief when you realise you don't have to pretend to like an artist, we genuinely did, as she belted out shimmeringly melodic acoustic tracks from her catchy second album, Good For The Soul.

Dionne had an unmistakably impressive voice, full of soulful purity and not too distant from that of her godmother's.

She wasn't flashy, she didn't dance around, she stood by the mic and sang - a simple, captivating trick that Amy had already mastered.

The young singer is signed to Amy's Lioness Record label and has often spoken of how her godmother influenced her career.

She previously told BANG Showbiz: "I kind of have a diary. My godmother Amy told me, 'Always keep a diary of everything you do' and I was thinking, 'how can you make a song out of stuff you've written in your diary?'

"But then it all just clicked in my head, and once you're in the zone, it's kind of just there, it was amazing."

She said that Amy was very hands on in the recording studio: "She was always in the studio, always helping, if something didn't sound right, in one of the verses or whatever, she'd just tweak it here and there."

Dionne is yet to have the international fame that celebrated Amy's work - but also plagued her personal life - although I think she has the talent to reach such heights. She learned from the best.

As Dionne heard of her godmother's death, she tweeted a simple: "Forever in my heart....love you always #amy ♥"

When Amy died this weekend she didn't just leave us with her award-winning records, she left us with Dionne. May her voice live on.

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