<AMERICA>

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD
WOMAN of REPUTE

CHAPTER FIVE

AMERICA

Dusty Springfield, along with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Dave Clark Five, and a host of other male-dominated bands, is often cited with spearheading the "British Invasion" of the American pop charts in the early to mid 1960s. Such a claim is not without grounding, as her debut single as a solo artist, "I Only Want To Be With You," entered the American Top Twenty in unison with the Beatles first spate of hit singles.

More of Dusty's early British hits followed, including "Stay Awhile," "In The Middle of Nowhere", "Little By Little," and of course, "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me," which peaked at number 4 in June 1966. The Bacharach and David penned "Wishin' and Hopin'" was released as a single only in the United States, and became a Top Ten hit in 1964. To further boost her American career, Dusty toured the States extensively in the early sixties, and recorded an E.P. in New York in 1965.

"I did a lot of stuff in the States. I did all those shows that were the equivalents of READY, STEADY, GO! and they always seemed to be in somewhere god-awful on location, like the Riverside Racetrack in a temperature of 118 centigrade and they'd put those lights up, you know, those huge silver [mirrored] balls and you were supposed to look glamourous . . . You know that scene in the film NASHVILLE where they're singing in the middle of the racetrack? That's exactly what it was like. They never did it in the same place like READY, STEADY, GO! . . . It was pure Robert Altman, it really was."

It was during her numerous forays into the States that Dusty became familier with the Tamla Motown label and its stable of artists and bands. She was immediately smitten.

"It [the Motown sound] was so obviously better than a lot of things that were happening. They were really good songs done extremely rhythmically. It was the first time there had been that kind of song structure. Some of them were sloppy, but it was this sloppiness which made them attractive. I noticed a lot of it was to do with the bass player, the drummer's licks, Holland-Dozier-Holland and musicians like Jim Jamerson if you were lucky. That was the motor of Motor City. You could put anything on top of it and it would still sound like Motown. The artists were probably secondary and certainly there were a lot of people who sang but who didn't last. Whether it was because they got worn out by the situation, I don't know. They were talented and certainly you could put all sorts of people over a splendid bass line and have a hit."

". . . it was just, this factory, as you know. I mean, the stories one gets to hear about people being brought back at gunpoint to sing off a tour and the tracks were always recorded in keys far too high--especially for THE FOUR TOPS--which gave it that incredible energy because he was always grasping for these keys that were too high for him because nobody had bothered to ask him . . . They were just made like a conveyor belt. I mean, I met one percussion player who'd been playing for Motown for about fifteen years and had never met Diana Ross, never met anyone, never met a singer. They would churn this stuff out and then go, 'Now, who'd sound good on that?' or 'Who do we have this week?', 'Who can we get off the Harold Theatre in Washington between four and six o'clock?'. And they'd fly them back or whatever--drive them back--and record them and put them back on the stage the next day . . . How they managed it, I don't know. I mean, hit after hit after hit . . ."

Dusty's enthusiasm for the Motown sound reached its zenith with her and Vicki Wickham's invitation of a selection of artists from the Detroit-based label to England for a Ready, Steady, Go! special and a subsequent tour of major British cities.

The special, The Sound of Motown, was aired in April 1965. Dusty acted as host, introducing each of the Motown acts and at one point dueting with Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas on Wishin' and Hopin'. Dusty's friendship with Martha went back to the previous year when they first met in New York. Dusty was a "special guest" of D.J. Murry the K's Motown Revue at the Brooklyn Fox, a revue that also featured Martha and the Vandellas. For the homesick Dusty, who vented her loneliness and trepidation by throwing crate loads of reject china against her dressing room wall, Martha Reeves became a trusted and loyal friend. Later that year, Martha accompanied Dusty and her brother Tom on a holiday to Rio - an event that both women have recalled fondly.

"I was a certain influence on the booking of READY, STEADY, GO! unbeknownst to me because I was so enthusiastic about black acts coming over that they used to book them because I'd be raving about them so much. I'd forgotten, actually, that I'd a lot of influence over what went on, without meaning to. I was just so incredibly enthusiastic . . ."

"[The shows with Murray the K were] a dream come true. It was priceless. I would've paid to do it. I was the token whitey. The token honky. They were very affectionate--if someone caused me any trouble, they'd say: 'Don't lean on her. She's with US!' I blundered my way through Harlem not knowing what was around me - a beehive surrounded by pimps, hookers . . . addicts and pushers. I stayed at the Hotel Teresa with broken windows and Malcolm X . . ."

"There were a couple of other white acts on the show. I think Jay and The Americans were there . . . Murray hedged his best with a few white acts. I mostly hung out with THE RONETTES . . . and shared a dressing room with them which was an extraordinary experience! Y'know, it was like a hundred and four degrees in this very, very small dressing room and all our beehives were in there - three black beehives and one white one. It was collisions constantly. Next door were MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS and [on] the other side, were THE SUPREMES. I remember Mary Wilson was always reading latin books, and Diana Ross' mum helped me turn my hems up because I was always buying things that were too long."

"I had a lot of good times, very heady times being involved in that period. After all, what could be more stimulating than listening to the brass arrangements of THE TEMPTATIONS from the side of the stage? That was heaven for me . . . I wanted to stand at the side of the stage and soak it all up so that I could use it. I knew all the routines and knew exactly how to sound like a Vandella . . . and a Shirelle if it came to that . . . Whoever it was I wanted to be I'd slavishly copy them because we hadn't caught on to them in this country [Britain] so I could get away with it."

"My brother went [to Rio] . ..Who else went? Martha? Did she come? Yeah, but I can't remember who else. I remember Martha being there because we had a picture taken of Coco Vada, you know, the big, big statue of Christ that overlooks Rio . . . She's standing there and she's got gold lame pants on. I do remember that and a headscarf. And I think I had a head scarf because it was windy up there and you know, the beehive . . . I didn't want to see it floating - flying down to Rio! It was very bizarre. There was somebody else there . . . It's all a bit of a blur. It was the greatest. That was before it got truly violent. I mean, now, it's actually quite dangerous and it's also . . . extremely touristy. Remember this was 1964 . . . before it became such a massively commercialised thing. Anyway, I've never had feelings like that before or since. Just being incredibly high on music . . . they rehearse all year round . . . Each district has its own band and they go onto this parade ground. At the end it's like a collecting ring for all the bands and they're all rehearsing in there . . . getting ready for the parade . . . and they all, one at a time, come out of the collecting area and go through these vast bleachers of people and they're all dancing and playing and there may be forty drummers and they never get in each others' way . . . Drummers and then the trombones and the dancers - it's just brilliant, and I went and crawled into the collecting ring, through the police and everything . . . I've never experienced a feeling like it. I mean, it was just insanity but it was sheer joy of the sound and the rhythms. Nothing, nothing has ever been like it again. And it was great until I was dancing in bare feet and I trod on a broken bottle and that was the end of my trip to Rio. But actually, I stayed up for three days and three nights dancing and didn't drink a thing. It was purely just the drug of the music and to this day there is nothing that will make me get crazier or dance more than hearing a Samba band. It's fantastic. There are so many different kinds of music. Even within Brazil, there are different regional musics . . . There is a style that is pure street Samba and it's not, you know, polite. It's savage and tribal . . . it's unlike anything else. Nothing else is like it in the world.

Dusty From The Soul by Sharon Davis, Blues & Soul, Vol. 564, 1990.

Here's How A Group Gets To Back A Top Singer by David Griffiths, Record Mirror, April 9, 1966.

Dusty Changes Her Name To Gladys Thong! by Penny Valentine, Disc & Music Echo, September 24, 1966.

CHAPTER SIX

MEMPHIS