One complex kid, that Dusty. She was variously a profound influence on several generations of female singers, a camp icon, a socially-conscious performer, a madwoman, an abject substance abuser, a fallen star, a resuscitated star, a "difficult artist" (as deemed by male producers) and something of a bane to the women's movement of the '60s.
Above all, Dusty Springfield, who died of breast cancer in 1999, was one of the most brilliant singers of the rock era, a performer with the innate ability to crawl into a song and make it come alive.
Here's a couple of anecdotes that illuminate the contrasting legacy of Dusty Springfield.
• In 1964, as a budding pop star, she was deported from South Africa for refusing to perform in front of racially segregated audiences.
• In 1999, her will provided care for her cat Nicholas, including a marriage to the female cat of a friend in a private ceremony.
Dusty Springfield:
Trailblazing opponent of apartheid.
Cat lady.
Her best work came in the 1960s. Blending girl-group pop with Motown soul and wrapped in grandiose production à la Phil Spector, she sounded like anything but an Irish-Catholic girl from London's West End. It's hard to track the wellspring of blue-eyed soul, but Dusty was certainly one of its pioneers.
On her early U.S. hits, released in 1964 — a year after the publication of The Feminine Mystique — she played the doormat. "Wishin' and Hopin'," Dusty's first Top 10, counsels girls to essentially do whatever it takes to land a man: "Show him that you care just for him/ And do the things he likes to do/ Wear your hair just for him/ 'Cause you won't get him/ Thinkin' and a-prayin', wishin' and a-hopin'."
Elsewhere, she's lost without her man ("I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself"), begs for him to stay ("Losing You"), or reluctantly moves on because she's "All Cried Out." On the Goffin/King-penned "Some of Your Lovin'," she's just happy to be in the rotation. ("I'm aware you got a lot of wild oats to sow.").
There's no evidence to suggest that these songs were forced on Dusty by domineering male producers. It's often been said that she was effectively her own producer, but the record-biz ethic of the day prevented her from taking credit.
Those songs' naïve sexism may cause you to cringe, but they were hits — and that was priority one. Dusty conveyed the tunes as real-life situations. There was a pleading to her voice, a vulnerability, which made the songs believable. Many of them included sexual content that pushed the envelope of the times. Some of it was codified ("You don't have to say you love me/ Just be close at hand"), some pretty obvious ("Yeah, just do it and after you do, you will be his").
Of course, the commercial success of these singles had something to do with the melodies crafted by a roll call of front-rank tunesmiths, tops among them Burt Bacharach. And when she signed with Atlantic and recorded Dusty in Memphis (1969), simpatico producers surrounded her with top-notch musicians.
In the end, though, it was Dusty Springfield's interpretive prowess that rendered many of her records classics.
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2008.