46. Dusty Springfield - A Girl Called Dusty (1964)

Tracks: Mamma Said // You Don’t Own Me // Do Re Mi // When the Lovelight Starts Shinging Through His Eyes // My Colouring Book // Mocking bird //Twenty-Four Hours From Tulsa // Nothing // Anyone Who Had A Heart // Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa // Nothing // Anyone Who Had A Heart // Will You Love Me Tomorrow // Wishin’ and Hopin’ // Don’t You Know

Did you know that Dusty Springfield once punched-out Buddy Rich? Apparently they were on tour together, and he made a snide comment about her being a woman after she had the temerity to ask if she could use his band (which, incidentally, was booked as the shared band) to rehearse. A few hackles raised, a strong word said, and then BAM! That alone makes Dusty Springfield alright in my book.

Anyway, I spent this evening listening over A Girl Called Dusty, and had a very pleasant time with it too. That’s right, not only was Miss Springfield a talented pugilist, she was also one hell of a singer, and she put together a pretty cool album way back when. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that she had a really good ear for the right material. With A Girl Called Dusty, we finally get a full-fledged, crazily-produced album in the Motown style, and there are quite a few times when the production gets a little off the wall. Thankfully, all the material (with the exception of “My Colouring Book”) is good, all of Dusty’s performances range from fair to excellent, and the insane Phil Spector-ish walls of choirs and drums and strings and horns are often actually a lot of fun, and in the end this is just a really cool soul album. It’s pretty darn good!

Still, it’s kind of a pity that the arrangements are so overboard at times. Even on Dusty in Memphis, which is often praised as the album where Springfield finally realised that she was a good enough singer that she didn’t need to bury herself under layers of arrangements (and which is the only other album of hers that I’ve heard - only $9.99 at JB-HiFi! What a steal! Oh, and I suppose a cassette of one of her disco albums too), there’s still far too many strings and backing vocalists. Can someone tell me if she ever cut and album that was just her and a little four-person blues combo or some such (aside, obviously, from “The Look of Love“)? It seems like it would be something worth hearing.

Which isn’t to say this isn’t worth hearing. “Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa” is fantastic, what with the big groovy rhythm section and the chorus that just keeps getting bigger - I was OOOOOONLyyyyyy TWENty FOUR HOUrrrssssss froooMMMMM TULLLLSAAAAAAAA!!!! as it were. “You Don’t Own Me” not only has freaking amazing vocals but is just a freaking amazing song - scary, sexy, stern and empowering all at once (somehow). “When the Love Light Starts Shining Through His Eyes” swings so lovely, and the version of “Anyone Who Had A Heart” is all creepy and melodramatic and really good, even if not as good as the original. It sounds, I swear, like nothing so much as early-70s Bowie. “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”, however, is one of those clear examples of producers mangling Dusty’s vocals. The backing track on the song is great, and sells the thing as a whole, but then you have Dusty’s vocals piped right into the middle awfully quite as though they’ were being played back via a P.A. system. Very odd. And unfortunate, since Dusty had such a wonderful and versatile voice. I mean, she does big balladeering, and then she turns out and closes the album with a rocking Ray Charles number complete with proto-rapping. The woman had talent! The woman knew how to make a knee turn to jelly. With hair like that, I suppose it would have helped o have been able to sing.

In the end, this is a nice, if not exactly earth-shattering, little album. It’s a very fine bit of African-American pop music being done by a bunch of pasty British people and that, after all, is what the 60s were really about. Yes, forget Kennedy and Vietnam and putting people on the Moon - the 1960s were about the growth in popularity of female British soul singers. I thought everyone knew that. After all, I think the fact that Dusty Springfield inspired Roisin Murphy’s Ruby Blue is at least as important a contribution to world culture as Robert Frost crapping on about his road trip at the Presidential inauguration. I may be wrong, but then I may also be half-asleep. I bet it’s both. I mean, if I can't even remember that the Rolling Stones were suppose to come after this then what hope have I for anything as complex as 20th Century History. Professor Prudence Flowers, your student has failed you.

So this is good. Quite good. The next one is better, though.

8/10

I’m not sure if I’m going to keep putting tracks up for download, since they went and deleted my Genius of Ray Charles entry just the other day on account of the MP3s I mean, I could repost it but I'm really lazy. Then again maybe I can work around it.

As a compensatory gesture, here she is singing a couple of her songs in German: