What's ironic in this scenario, and a bit sad, is that in the '60s the young set had crooners of their own generation, a group ignored for years and ripe for rediscovery. One of the best, England's Dusty Springfield, brought her slightly husky and intimate, sexy voice to a number of hits in the mid-'60s, but as the decade came to a close she was increasingly seen as unhip - belting out ballads in front of an orchestra became shorthand for the Nixon crowd's idea of entertainment. Like Scott Walker, another young crooner, Springfield had good taste in songs and rarely gave less than a great performance, but had trouble fitting into a shifting musical marketplace that was moving away from pop and toward psychedelic rock.

While American expat Walker successfully reinvented himself (for a while anyway) as a black-clad, shades-wearing existentialist, and had some improbable hits in England with songs about prostitutes and death (he often covered then-hip Jacques Brel material), Springfield (who also covered Brel) was seen as strickly show biz with her glam gowns and mile-high hair and conspicious make-up. Her attempt at an image makeover, 1969's Dusty in Memphis which teamed her with the then-hot Memphis Sound, was an artistic triumph but only scraped the bottom of the charts, even with a top ten single, "Son-Of-A Preacher Man." And since then, the hits have been few.

Because of these commercial shortcomings, and the fact that she once recorded for two labels at the same time (Philips worldwide, Atlantic in the U.S.), a great deal of Dusty Springfield's music was not released in this country [the U.S.]. Rhino Records is now attempting to fill in the gaps in her catalog with two new CDs that include many unheard songs, and it's a good opportunity for those who missed Dusty Springfield the first time around to catch up.

The years since the release of the album Dusty in Memphis have not diluted its charms, but Rhino's new "deluxe edition" CD (out 2/16) may thin the soup too much. It adds 14 bonus tracks of varying quality to the album (there were a mere three when the label last remastered Memphis six years ago); 10 previously unreleased. If you're a Dusty fan, the more the better, but Memphis was a model of clarity, 11 songs that made a satisfying, complete statement, a rare thing in these days of CD overload.

Listening to Dusty in Memphis 30 years after its release, the listener notices that rather than being a "white soul" album as reputation suggests, it's a veritable song cycle of intelligent, melodic adult pop songs, with only a few tracks ("Preacher Man," "Don't Forget About Me" and "Breakfast in Bed") that can really be call R&B. It's a blueprint for what an adult pop record should be: sophisticated, heartfelt, affecting. That the songs come from so many different writers (Mann-Weil, Goffin-King, Randy Newman, Bacharach-David, etc.) makes the cohesiveness all the more impressive. Hey, if most singers' albums were this good, "adult contemporary" would not be considered such a bombastic wasteland.

A lot of credit for Memphis goes to the production dream team of Altantic Records' Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd and Arif Mardin, and the Memphis musicians whose versatility went beyond stock R&B chops. The songs and arrangements allow the intimacy in Dusty's voice to shine (the instruments don't compete with her, as is sometimes the case on her British songs). But the greatest arrangements in the world can't make a difference if the singer can't sell the song, and boy, can Dusty sell a song. She can go from a hushed whisper to a scream with amazing power, but never to show off. Her gift is the intimacy she brings to a song, and she can really seduce a listener.

On "I Can't Make It Alone," when she pleads for a lover to return, or on "Breakfast in Bed" when she pours on the come-hither honey, it's very hard (particularly if you're male) not to get a bit weak in the knees. Dusty made vulnerability attractive. (Which may explain why Dusty was out of favor during the years of the burgeoning women's movement; "girl" singers were not considered role models. Dusty was no doormat, though; she was known for taking charge in most of her recording sessions, and once decked obnoxious bandleader Buddy Rich when he called her an unflattering term you can hear all too frequently on any gangsta rap album.)

Filling another gap in the Springfield songbook is Dusty in London (also out 2/16), a collection of songs released by Phillips worldwide between 1968 and 1972 but passed on by Atlantic in the States because they wanted her to work with their hand-picked producers. (Her follow-up to Memphis was an album with Philadelphia soul kingpins Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, before their great string of hits with the O'Jays, Billy Paul, etc.) The songs on London are more in the tradition of her earlier British hits, "big ballady things" as she once called them, very influenced by Motown and American R&B, with lots of orchestration and studio polish. The songs are again from top writers, and the arrangements reflect a growing sophistication.

Dusty rises to the challenge, leaving her stamp even on overly familiar songs like "A Song For You" and "Take Another Piece of My Heart." It's impossible to top Janis Joplin at the latter, and Dusty wisely avoids competing, instead offering a slower, swaying version. And her take on Goffin-King's "Wasn't Born to Follow" is an imaginative departure from the psychedelic country of the better-known Byrds version. Even the duds, like the rote "Love Power," are more a failure of composition than execution. Overall, these odds and ends are better than the extra tracks on Memphis, and it's a treasure trove for the American Dusty fan.

A couple of notes about Dusty in London: Two songs were arranged and conducted by session man John Paul Jones just before Led Zeppelin conquered the world. And Memphis and London arguably prove Springfield to be the best interpreter of the songs of Randy Newman. Her introspective takes on "I Don't want To Hear It Anymore," "Just One Smile" and "I Think It's Gonna Rain Today" really get under the listener's skin. It's too bad they never did an album together. Now if someone would just release Dusty's long out-of-print Dunhill material.

Peter Melton
Pulse, February 16, 1999

See also A Voice To Stir The Windmills Of Your Mind