It's apparently Dusty's least favourite track on Something Special, and it's wonderful. So, indeed, is almost everything else on this two-CD set, which ranges across more than two tempestuous, triumphant decades in the career of Britain's finest popular vocalist.

Dusty's catalogue has been revisted before, notably on a four-CD box in 1994 that was a collector's item within weeks, rapidly exhausting its tiny print run. Phonogram also transferred her original '60s albums onto compact disc earlier in the decade, and there have been regular hits collections since the mid-'60s.

Something Special could be criticised on formal grounds - e.g. why make the fans buy a CD of album tracks to qualify for the disc of foreign-language excursions, B-sides and out-takes - but any such qualms are crushed when you play the music. Only "The Look of Love", "My Colouring Book" and maybe "If You Go Away" will be familiar to the casual listener, and much of the second CD is reinvented by being placed in a different context. Check, for instance, Dusty's exquisite readings of two Randy Newman songs, "I've Been Wrong Before" and "Just One Smile", which easily outstrip higher-profile renditions by Cilla Black and Gene Pitney.

Better still, this set supports my theory that Dusty's finest 45 minutes was the It Begins Again album from the late '70s. A stirring mix of proto-disco, gospel-tinged R&B and poignant ballads, it lends three tracks to this collection - none more effective than Barry Manilow's "Sandra", a dignified, heart-breaking tale of alcoholism and attempted suicide that makes for stark constrast with the pure romanticism of the preceding song, "If You Go Away".

Though the Italian ballads on the first CD soon lose their curiosity value, there are some magnificent performances to be found. Fans of Dusty's take on Goffin & King's "Goin' Back" will love her similar approach to another of the duo's best songs, "wasn't Born To Follow".

"I've Got A Good Thing" from 1967 is so obscure that no one can locate a songwriter, or confirm Jerry Ragovay's role as producer. But even in unfinished form, it's a remarkable slice of soul. So too is "I'm Gonna Leave You", co-written by Dusty, Madeline Bell and Lesley Duncun (where was Kiki Dee that afternoon?). recorded in London, it still manages to drift somewhere between New York R&B and Southern soul, and deserved a better fate than lamguishing on the flip side of "Goin' Back".

Something Special indeed: drama without melodramatics, emotion without excess, almost every song a celebration of the heart and soul. There's no one quite like her.

Peter Doggett
Record Collector, April 1996