Dusty Springfield

Troublemaker Dusty!

That's what the press called Dusty Springfield in the winter of 1964, after she managed to get herself deported by the South African government during a tour. In truth, the clause in Dusty's contract was clear from the outset: the singer refused to perform in front of an audience segregated under apartheid law. Instead, as the dates progressed from Pretoria to Cape Town, the faces in the crowd were unmistakably getting whiter and whiter. Dusty raised her voice in protest, and officials came to see her at the hotel to hand her a mini residence permit with a convenient expiry of... twenty-four hours: just enough time to pack her bags before she and her band were put on the first available flight and sent back to Britain. On arrival at Heathrow, journalists had set up a press conference to get to the bottom of the incident; Dusty appeared as placid and composed as ever, but well aware of the world she moved in and determined not to be intimidated. She would never set foot in South Africa again.

When it comes to one of the most recognizable British singers of the twentieth century, the anecdotes abound, but Mary Isobel Catherine Bernardette O'Brien was a truly fascinating and infinitely complex personality, both in public and in the twists and turns of her often dramatic, sad private life.

On stage appears Dusty Springfield, the famous peroxide-blonde face of the Swinging Sixties and the first British Invasion, a flamboyant Diva, a perfectionist with a difficult temperament, though never lacking in irony. Perpetually late wherever she goes, she never leaves the house without at least three layers of make-up, a mountain of wig and long trains of velvet and sequins that make her look even smaller than her five-foot-three frame. Some think she's a bitch, since she never talks to anyone in public; in truth, Dusty is severely short-sighted and refuses to wear glasses so as not to smudge her eyeliner, which makes for gorgeous photos in the papers, but means she can barely make out the faces of the people stepping on her toes, fueling rumors about her supposedly demanding persona.

Mary O'Brien, on the other hand, is warmer and more down-to-earth in her personal relationships, though always outspoken and passionate, true to the Irish and Scottish blood running through her veins — she was given the nickname Dusty as a child, because she preferred playing football in the street with the boys to playing with dolls' houses. Devoutly Catholic yet just as fiercely gay, Mary is a constant rollercoaster of anxieties and fears; beneath that soft, faintly London-inflected voice churns a confused, terrified soul, given to sudden outbursts of anger followed just as quickly by fits of laughter. The larger-than-life public persona she built to mask her insecurities about her looks and sexual orientation brought her huge success, but it soon turned into a monster that triggered episodes of what has been speculated to be schizophrenia, and one of the most blatant cases of impostor syndrome ever seen in the record industry.

There is, however, a sacred place where Mary and Dusty meet: the voice. It's genuinely hard to put into words that unmistakable, one-of-a-kind mezzo-soprano: smoke and steam, sophistication and passion, pure pop artifice and deep feminine emotion. They called her the magpie, for her innate ability to reshape her timbre like malleable 24-carat gold; here she is soaring above the melodramatic strings of Italian song, then tackling the murkiest Delta blues alongside Jimi Hendrix's guitar, the sensuality of sophisticated jazz-pop songwriting (Burt Bacharach goes positively wild when she sings back to him "The Look Of Love"), and folk ballads and even Zulu song.

This time, her short-sightedness comes to her aid: unable to make out the faces in the audience, Dusty overcomes her stage fright because, in a way, once the sound of applause fades, it's as if she's alone in front of the microphone. This is also why her performances are never overtly directed at the audience, yet watching her lose herself in a song has something almost supernatural about it.

With the arrival of the Sixties, Dusty is also among the first British singers able to take on the musical vocabulary of African American soul and rhythm and blues and make it her own without merely aping the originals, instead adding a quietly passionate elegance of her own. Her admiration for the work of James Brown, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin and others runs deep — her decision to take a stand against apartheid in South Africa was thus no mere political stunt, but a small yet significant gesture of solidarity.

Things get even more electrifying in April 1965, when Dusty convinces the producers of the famous TV show "Ready Steady Go!", broadcast on Friday nights on Atv, to let her present a special entirely devoted to her favorite idols, the new artists of Motown. For the first time, British audiences see on screen the smiling faces of Smokey Robinson And The Miracles, the impossibly stylish Temptations with their coordinated dance moves on the famous "My Girl", and a barely fifteen-year-old Stevie Wonder. The Supremes perform hits of the caliber of "Stop! In The Name Of Love" and "Baby Love", Martha Reeves And The Vandellas present "Nowhere To Run" and join Dusty for a memorable four-voice rendition of "Wishin' And Hopin'". Across fifty minutes of choreography, high spirits and an impressive setlist, the show is a huge success and helps spread the Motown gospel across Europe. For the American contingent invited by Dusty, made up of people who had grown up under the long shadow of Jim Crow segregation laws, the reception in Britain comes as a shock. Put up at the Ritz on Piccadilly, they have a driver at their disposal to take them to the Atv studios. Then, in the evening after taping, everyone heads to Soho to party in the jazz clubs, surrounded by the elite of Swinging Sixties London, from revolutionary hairdresser Vidal Sassoon to famous model Twiggy, the Kinks, the demanding actor Kenneth Williams, and a crowd of young journalists, photographers and assorted hedonists.

In Memphis (but also in New York)

Soon it's time to return the favor; if Motown is a hit in Europe, Dusty can cross the Atlantic and introduce herself to American audiences. The renowned record man Arif Mardin and the seasoned producer Jerry Wexler invite her to sign a contract with Atlantic, at the time one of the leading names in soul music.

But the first sessions are disastrous. Jerry has put together a binder with eighty demos, and Dusty rejects them all, one by one. After months of back-and-forth, eleven songs are finally chosen. The time comes to record at American Studios in Memphis, where Jerry has assembled much of the same band that worked on an equally historic album released on Atlantic just a few months earlier, Aretha's "I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You". There's Reggie Young (guitar), Gene Chrisman (drums), Bobby Wood (piano), Bobby Emmons (keyboards), Tommy Cogbill (bass), Mike Leech (percussion) and the Sweet Inspirations, a devastating quartet of backing vocalists at the time made up of Sylvia Shemwell, Estelle Brown, Myrna Smith and Cissy Houston (already, by then, the mother of a certain Whitney). The tracking sessions move along briskly, but a petrified Dusty refuses to lay down any vocals; beyond the fear of measuring up to her own idols, she feels placed under a microscope by the intimate atmosphere that has taken shape in the studio, light years away from the detached orchestral sessions she was used to back in England.

After two weeks of frustrating silence and the usual maddening delays spent doing her makeup before leaving the hotel, Jerry and Arif take her to New York along with co-producer Tom Dowd, to write the orchestral arrangements and see if they can get her to actually open her mouth.

Jerry's account of the New York sessions is bizarre, to say the least: Dusty, shut away in the vocal booth in front of the microphone, keeps constantly asking for more volume in her headphones while singing, because she can't stand hearing the sound of her own voice, which she considers ugly and unsuitable. Jerry gradually lowers it to help her stay in tune; an irritated Dusty has him turn it back up, in a cat-and-mouse game that goes on for entire days. Eventually Jerry is exhausted, and puts on the headphones himself to gauge the volume level the singer is working with.

How on earth is she not deaf?

Good question. But one thing is certain: the performances on "Dusty In Memphis" reach the sublime, a rise and fall of old-fashioned tenderness, smoky torch songs and unexpected bursts of energy that blend European pop and American soul in an inseparable embrace. Surrounded by the sound of an exceptional band, and only afterward dressed up with strings, brass, harmonica and a cimbalom, Dusty's voice is pushed gracefully forward in the mix, bringing out every last nuance to its fullest. This is a dynamic recording, already more modern than the standard of sung pop up to that point - and with a tone so supple and ever-shifting, listening to it is pure bliss.

It only takes the intro of "Just A Little Lovin'" to savor the charm of an orchestral wrapping calibrated down to the smallest detail around the melody, with the voice shining above it like a May sun: the Anglo-Saxon Dusty is highly controlled, yet hides a universe of murky emotions just beneath the surface, and in an instant she's capable of leaping forward into airy soul outbursts. If anything, it's paradoxical to listen back to the many interviews she gave throughout her career, in which Dusty always claimed to be a terrible singer, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary and the praise not only of the public but also of numerous African-American musicians willing to tip their hats to her at a time when such relationships were hardly at their best.

But that's just how Dusty is: constantly putting herself down in public, only to then commit to tape vocal performances still studied to this day. Take "Son Of A Preacher Man", a restless gospel-tinged funk number with libertine lyrics, whose metaphor for romantic sinners takes on an even sharper edge when sung by a lesbian singer who had to build an alienating scaffolding of self-defense around herself - the way she towers over both the backing vocalists and those roaring walls of brass leaves very little to the imagination, preacher's son or not. And speaking of double meanings, there's also the other single, "Breakfast In Bed", written especially for this album by Eddie Hinton and Donnie Fritts: with a grace streaked with steel, Dusty plays the predatory lover waiting for others to slip up so she can satisfy her own selfish craving, in a self-destructive game of low self-esteem and loneliness clouded by sinful, erotic little kisses - there could not have been a better interpreter to convey such contrasting shades within the span of a few lines.

As many as four tracks on the album are credited to the duo Carole King/Gerry Goffin, because Dusty is deeply impressed by the pair's songwriting skills, and the variety on display here proves their qualities even before the arrival of "Tapestry"; the rousing "So Much Love" is a continuous unfurling of elastic soul harmonies over a pulsing bassline, while the subtly dramatic "I Can't Make It Alone", placed at the close, employs lush orchestral swells to tie thematically back to the European taste of the singer's earlier catalogue. The introspective pop ballad "No Easy Way Down" is a different beast altogether: it sounds as if played in slow motion, forcing Dusty to stretch out the syllables without ever slipping into melisma for its own sake, a vocal masterclass so subtle it takes several listens to realize the incredible self-control being applied just below the surface of the emotion. And then there's the pulsing gospel-blues of "Don't Forget About Me", carried by a thunderous rhythm section and Cogbill's psychedelic electric-guitar flourishes.

The album's more introspective side offers a series of delicate, refined touches that give the listen just the right expressive depth; it's easy to overlook "I Don't Want To Hear It Anymore", written by Randy Newman, seemingly the least striking track of the bunch, but one that's ultimately elevated by a first-rate performance swaying between lascivious detachment and theatrical drama. "Just One Smile" also bears Newman's signature; this time Dusty complicates the simplicity of the lyrics, dropping beads of passion over a majestic orchestral crescendo.

Bacharach is honored through the choice of "In The Land Of Make Believe": between falsetto and sitar, it's the most curious and idiosyncratic interlude not only on the tracklist but in her entire discography. The European connection resurfaces once again in the songwriting of French composer Michel Legrand and in the melodramatic "The Windmills Of Your Mind", a perfect musical-theatre progression set to a samba rhythm, on which Dusty gets to pine away and reach every octave available to her. As admirers of her singing style often say, at times she barely sounds like the same person.

In purgatory, and finally to posterity

Despite the curiosity stirred up by the idea of "white soul", still an experimental notion at the time, and the positive reviews from industry insiders who immediately grasp its significance, "Dusty In Memphis" initially fails to achieve any success. In fact, it marks the beginning of a long chart decline that will last nearly two decades, interrupted only by the fortuitous arrival of the Pet Shop Boys. In between, there's an unlucky string of albums and clumsy comeback attempts, long silences, financial crises, drug abuse, suicide attempts, and a toxic relationship that will end with her in hospital, a tooth knocked out by a frying pan.

With the end of the Sixties, Dusty, the decade's emblematic face, remains frozen in the collective memory, adored by nostalgics yet orphaned from her own future. There are other anecdotes that can help explain, at least in part, the changing of the guard and shifting public tastes with the arrival of the Seventies. During the recording of this album, Dusty suggests to Jerry Wexler the name of a young band called Led Zeppelin, and he signs them for two hundred thousand dollars without having heard a single note - the rest is history. Just a few months after the release of "Dusty In Memphis", Judy Garland also passes away, in June 1969, symbolically closing out this first golden era of orchestral-television diva performances - not just for Dusty, then, but also for Petula Clark, Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw, Lulu and, at least in part, the definitive Bond girl, Shirley Bassey.

But quality never ages. As the years passed and soul music evolved, "Dusty In Memphis" became the standard to live up to, a particularly long-lasting love affair especially in England, through a lineage of white singers in love with soul, from Annie Lennox and George Michael to Duffy and Adele. In 1994, even Quentin Tarantino got in on it, with a scene from "Pulp Fiction" underscored by "Son Of A Preacher Man", reintroducing Dusty to a whole new generation of listeners.

Reissued, adored, mythologized, and, more recently, handed down to posterity as a timeless testament to a bygone era, "Dusty In Memphis" remains, to this day, a wonderful listen.

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18/12/2022