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By Jesse Monteagudo
Dusty Springfield's death from complications from breast cancer
ended the life of one of pop's greatest divas. Long before Celine, Gloria,
Mariah and Shania, Springfield topped the British and American charts with
her own blend of English pop and blue-eyed American soul.
Critics consider Springfield the best interpreter, next to Dionne Warwick, of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's songs. Those of us who grew up gay in the sixties admired Springfield as a role model and an icon; a woman who went her own way, doing what she wanted and having a good time doing it. Her songs were good, and you could dance to them.
Blessed with a singing voice, Dusty decided to pursue a musical career. She was a member of the Lana Sisters, a pop group, in the late 50's. Later she joined her brother Tom and Tim Field to form the Springfields, a folk group, hitting the charts with songs like "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" (1962). When the Springfields broke up Dusty, who kept "Springfield" as her stage name, began a solo career. The rest is music history.
As Dusty Springfield, the former Mary O'Brien became, in Charlie
Gillett's words, "the best studio singer of the mid-sixties". "Dusty,"
wrote Bruce Eder, "made herself over vocally, evolving from a folk alto into
a powerful, white soul singer, capable of credibly covering Motown material
(she dueted with Martha Reeves on television's Ready, Steady, Go without
embarrassing herself at all) and belting out British pop numbers with
seismic intensity."
"Unlike many of her British contemporaries, who usually sounded almost painfully English," wrote Thomas Ryan, "Springfield has a singing voice and style that fit right in with her American counterparts," which explained her success in the States. Between 1964 and 1967 Springfield recorded a series of records for Phillips that are now classics. Four songs from that period were hits on both sides of the pond: "I Only Want To Be With You" (# 12, 1964); "Wishin' and Hopin'" (# 6, 1964); "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me" (# 4, 1966); and, for the James Bond movie Casino Royale, "The Look of Love" (# 22, 1967).
In her heyday, Dusty Springfield was as famous for her looks as she
was for her music. Springfield, wrote James Hunter for SPIN, "often emerges
as the knowing ruler of some unnamed universe whose subjects live to be 108,
subsisting entirely on Kools."
Springfield's beehive hairdos, her fantastic eye makeup - which took her hours to apply - and her "mod" clothes made her a symbol of sixties' "swinging London", the musical counterpart to Diana Rigg's Emma Peel in The Avengers TV show. This camp appeal made Dusty a gay fave and a role model for cross dressers on two continents. It also made her popular with British television producers, who hired her to host The Sounds of Motown special in 1965 and then the series Ready, Steady, Go. Vicki Wickham, producer of Ready, Steady, Go, later gave Springfield credit for introducing the British public (and Vickham) to American soul music.
To many Brits, "American soul music" meant Motown. However, to
those in the know, real soul came from Atlantic Records, the home of Solomon
Burke, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin. Atlantic honcho
Ahmet Ertegun, then seeking to expand into the English pop/rock market - he
later signed Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones - brought "the White Queen
of Soul" on board.
The result was Dusty in Memphis (1968), recorded at the legendary Stax Studios. Though a cut from the album, "Son of a Preacher Man", was a hit (# 9), Dusty in Memphis was itself a commercial failure. A year later, Springfield made the Top Forty for the last time in almost two decades with "A Brand New Me" (# 24). Dusty Springfield's career declined during the 1970's. Claiming to be "bored with Britain," she moved to Los Angeles in 1972, where she endured 15 years of drink and drug binges and clinical depression, and at least one suicide attempt. One unknown gem from that period was "Closet Man" (1978), which Wayne Studer called "one of the very few songs I'm aware of in which a heterosexual female narrator accepts and supports an ex-lover after learning that he's gay." Alas, "Closet Man" is currently unavailable, even in Springfield's three-CD box set Anthology. By the time Dusty returned to Britain in 1987, she was long forgotten. Happily, Springfield made a musical comeback that year, thanks to the techno-pop group the Pet Shop Boys. Like so many other gay men, the Boys -- Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe -- adored Springfield, and showed their devotion to her by featuring her in their hit "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" The video for that song was one of Springfield's last public performances. "Dusty was a tender, exhilarating and soulful singer, incredibly intelligent at phrasing a song, painstakingly building it up to a thrilling climax" said the Pet Shop Boys, in a statement delivered after Springfield's death. Springfield cut her last album, A Very Fine Love (1994), shortly before she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The never-married Springfield valued her privacy, and seldom discussed her personal life to the media. In spite of this, her bisexuality was an open secret, which only added to her popularity within the gay community.
Only occasionally would Springfield let down her guard, as she
did in an interview with the London Mail. "I shed about three tears in the
hallway and then said, 'Let's have lunch'", Dusty recalled, when she was
first diagnosed with cancer. "My brother came, the neighbors who brought me
to town, my secretary, my accountant. I had a really good time - don't know
why. That's the spirit of my family, as if to say, 'Oh, to hell with it.'"
"It was only when I came home one night and saw my cat lying asleep that I thought, 'Who's going to look after you?' It was as if somebody had run a train through me. I wept and wept and wept because then I realized: It is you. It's you. Yes, it might kill you." Springfield underwent chemotherapy in 1995, and was then diagnosed as being clear of the disease. But the cancer returned the following year, and eventually it killed her. Dusty Springfield, said her agent Paul Fenn, "was one of the icons of the music industry". "She was one of the most talented female singers of this century." Though she fell short of the standard set by Aretha Franklin and other African-American soul singers, Springfield was Britain's greatest pop diva in the generation before Joan Armatrading and Annie Lennox. This week Dusty Springfield will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an honor that she knew about but sadly will not live to experience. It is the culmination of a magnificent musical career. |
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