For me personally, she is one of the most important recording artists of my considerable lifetime. Her music has moved me, thrilled me & comforted me for nearly 50 years. For me, the album- Dusty In Memphis is a perfect LP & in my top 5 albums of all time.
Dusty Springfield was an unlikely celebrity. Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien was London born on this day in 1939, a month before that start of WW2. She started life as an Irish Catholic schoolgirl, yet she gained stardom as a sultry singer of soul, the "white girl singing black music."
Her love for other women was forbidden & in the UK at the time, illegal. The most frustrating thing for any creative person must be an inability to express in your work the things that mean the most to you. Art is inspired by our strongest emotions, including love & desire. It must be difficult to write, compose, paint or act when your own feelings of love & desire are considered off limits to most of society. Like most of the great gay artists in history, we have found innovative ways of sidestepping the heterosexual expectations of the public yet covertly conveying our constrained emotions in our work.
Springfield’s sexuality is at the heart of the melancholy & vulnerability that she brings her recordings, including this one. Her songs go straight to my heart: How Can I Be Sure, All Cried Out, I CloseMy Eyes & Count To Ten, Some of Your Lovin’, The Look of Love, You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me, & my personal favorite, her really truly devastating version of IJust Don’t Know What To Do With Myself. She does more than sell the song; she inhabits & makes them her own in the way that only the true great artists can do.
With a strong, masculine countenance but a feminine style, she appealed to gay men, lesbians. She even went one step further by studying and copying drag acts, creating the image of a woman, dressed like a man who is dressed like a woman. Gender bending & confusing to a 1960s listening public. In the press, her image was still being vigorously protected against her sexuality. Every press release stressed her Catholic faith & middle-class roots. The fact she was living with a fellow singer Norma Tanega was conveniently overlooked. after Springfield & Tanega had split up, there was always an other woman keeping her company.
Springfield also managed an iconic image for herself, tall beehive hair & thick, dark eye make-up. Her look was copied by fellow artists of the time, teenage girls, & drag queens. Her short career left an lasting legacy on modern fashion.
But she had other image matters to worry about too. Having become an expert in all aspects of sound recording, the male dominated industry felt resentment by this young woman who seemed to know it all. She also had a sharp ear for quality & a perfectionist approach to her work. Women were simply not allowed to lean across the mixing desk & proceed to take over. Soon, she had acquired the unfair reputation for being difficult & eccentric. Most producers braced themselves for an argument when they heard that Dusty Springfield would be in their studio that day.
Her headstrong ways & strong working knowledge of the technical aspects of recording did not endear Springfield to the professional male dominated professional musical community, but she certainly enchanting her fans.
In 1964, while on tour in South Africa, & with no real interest in politics, she found it abhorrent that it was illegal to perform a concert to a mixed audience. But there was a loophole in the law presented to her that allowed live performances to mixed audiences as long as they were in a movie theatre. Springfield booked the biggest cinema she could find & played to a large mixed audience. When she arrived back at her hotel, Springfield & her entourage were placed under arrest & deported from the country immediately. Back home the public loved her for it. She was hailed as an anti-apartheid hero.
Springfield was at her apex in the mid-1960s. She had several hit albums, a #1 single-You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, & her own TV show. She had also been credited as the woman who brought Motown to the UK. But in the early 1970s, when I loved her the most, Springfield’s style was pushed aside in preference for more experimental styles & songs with a strong political message. Her simple love songs & throaty jazzy voice, began to lose popularity.
Springfield was sucked into the spiral of drink, drugs & the party culture. She abused a variety substances on a daily basis. The pressure of her double life manifested itself in cutting, depression & a desire to avoid the spotlight. Then an album she had started to record for Atlantic Records was shelved due to her ‘poor mental health’.
Aghast at the abandoned album, Springfield moved to LA & dropped deeper drug abuse, alcohol & self harm. Abandoning her career, she spent most of the 1970s living late nights of partying & drug taking. Her cutting so severe that on several occasions, she was hospitalized.
Late in the 1970s Springfield had begun to speak openly about her attraction to both sexes, although she was never known to ever have had a boyfriend. The poor press she received for coming out devastated Springfield. She told her parents she was gay, but far from outraged, they laughed & did not take the situation seriously. This seemed to hurt her even more.
In the 1980s Springfield’s drug abuse was at an all-time high. She continued to enjoy short-lived affairs with women in the music industry, including Rough Trade’s lead singer, Carol Pope. Her recordings made little impact & had low sales . Springfield was constantly between rehab or the hospital.
Salvation came in 1987 when her long time fans the Pet Shop Boys asked her to collaborate with them . The resulting record,-What Have I Done to Deserve This was a worldwide smash hit & one of my favorite singles ever. All of a sudden, the 48 year-old faded star was among the smart set again. Pet Shop Boys to produce an album for her. Her life started to get better. No drugs & no long nights partying. More hits singles followed.
In 1994, just as Springfield was riding high again in 1994, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She seemed beating the cancer, but remission was to be short lived. For several years, she fought against the second bout of cancer. Before long, it was clear that this time, there would be no remission. Springfield lived with lifelong friend & backing singer, Simon Bell, who took care of her.
On New Year’s 1999, Springfield was awarded an Order of the British Empire for her contribution to music. Too sick to make the ceremony, her long time manager, Vicki Wickham, with permission from Queen Elizabeth 2, picked up the award on her behalf. It was carried directly to Springfield & given to her in front of a few friends, & her doctor. On the day when Springfield would have received the award, she lost her fight against cancer. Her funeral took over the small town where she had spent the end of her life- of Henley, & the service was attended by thousands of mourners including Elvis Costello, Lulu, Elton John & Pet Shop Boys. 10 days after her death. her friend Sir Elton inducted Springfield into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame, stating: “She was the greatest white singer of all time”.
How about this minimilist interpertation of Burt Bacharach's huge, sweeping aria, recorded in 1963 by Cilla Black (#1 in the UK) & by Dionne Warwick (#1 in the USA)? I am zany for the Shelby Lynne album of tunes associated with Dusty Springfield- Just A Little Lovin' from 2008. I like cover versions that ask us to look at a familiar song in a whole new way.
This song has also been covered by by Michael Ball, Björk with the Brodsky Quartet, Tim Curry, The Four Seasons, Maureen McGovern, Olivia Newton-John, Maxine Nightingale, Marc Almond, Martha Reeves &the Vandellas, Linda Ronstadt, & Luther Vandross.
Here is the Just A Little Burt playlist:
1. The Look Of Love- Dusty Springfield
2. Do You Know The Way To San Jose?- Dionne Warwick
I put together a custom music mix every month, & I will also produce a mix for special days & holidays. These mixes are quite the hot commodity in my circle. Independent of each other, I had a request from WCK3- “Stephen, I loved the April Mix. Thank you! But, you know… I am in the mood for a little Burt”, & the husband requested- “Steve, I would love to have just a little Burt to listen to when I have the house to myself. It would really help my mood.” Even Little Jake wanted a little Burt. What a pleasure it was to listen to a big chunk of the Burt Bacharach/ Hal David catalogue, attempting to choose just 17 for the Just A Little BurtMix.
Burt & I have quite the relationship. It started in 1959 with Heavenly, recorded by Johnny Mathis (there was a lot of Johnny Mathis in my parent’s album collection). A little 8 year old Stevie grooved around the house, dancing & singing to the Shirelles- Baby, It’s You. I would croon Don’t Make Me Over into my brass candlestick microphone, brushing my Beatle Haircut bangs out of my eyes, as I watched my uncannily mature performance in the bathroom mirror. As a youth, I couldn’t get enough of Dusty Springfield doing I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself & The Look Of Love (& the Sergio Mendes version!).
In my teen years I stayed with my Burt & Dusty, but Dionne Warwick joined my album collection. What song could be more perfect for 1967 than What The World Needs Now Is Love?
Burt Bacharach has never left my listening orbit in the past 50 years. In the 1980s, I took to singing- I Say A Little Prayer at auditions for shows with rock or pop scores. I could sing the hell out of it, & Burt's songs are not easy to sing. I thought I was being so cutting edge & ironic to sing this great Bacharach song without changing the gender. I got me more attention than parts.
No other Bacharach work is more meaningful to me than his 1998 Grammy winning collaboration with Elvis Costello- Painted From Memory. It is just one of those albums that came out at a perfect time in my life, when I needed to hear it. The collaboration started with God Give Me Strength, a commission for the 1996 film Grace of My Heart, a terrific movie about the Brill Building songwriters. The 2 master craftsman of pop expanded the project to this full album, the first for Costello after an absence of 2 years, & for Bacharach after an absence of 21 years. Lyrics & music are credited to both Bacharach & Costello, but I can really feel, to some degree, the melodies are by Burt & the lyrics by Elvis.
God Give Me Strength (along with God Only Knows by the Beach Boys) is a song that holds real power for me. It was a time & place where the composition just spoke to me, as if the duo of Bacharach & Costello knew my life or had read my diary. I find the entire album enthralling, magnificent,& sweeping. It has all the usual Bacharch touches: unusual chord progressions, striking syncopated rhythmic patterns, irregular phrasing, frequent modulation, & odd, changing meters & great climactic effects.
Possibly inspired by his new partner, Costello's lyrics hit new highs on this album. He explores the familiar themes from interesting new perspectives. This House is Empty Now has the narrator walking round an empty home, left alone by his partner & looking to face life alone, remembering the times they shared in their now deserted home. This House IsEmpty Now, with Burt on baton & piano, & Elvis on vocals is absolutely sublime, & a true high in the art of the song. The lyric- "Does the extinguished candle care about the darkness?" is almost tossed as an aside, yet it is absolutely heartbreaking. This song is the perfect bookend to Hal David & Burt Bacharach’s towering masterpiece- A House Is Not AHome.
The title track- Painted From Memory, suggests that eventually even the faces of those we loved will fade from memory. I Still Have That Other Girl is about an affair that is doomed before it starts, but I read it as about the Husband & my 1st dog- Baby, who died at the time that we were listening to Painted From Memory. I wanted her to know that I would never forget her, & that she could never be replaced in my heart. The Sweetest Punch.
Mr. Bacharach, looking good in his 80s.
We all can use a little Burt. To make us feel & to make us remember. It always helped that he was & is still, a real dreamboat. He turns an astonishing 82 today. Happy Birthday, Mr. Bacharach!
I have spent a number of rainy days with a little whiskey & conjuring up some tears because of this impossibly beautiful & angry song by Costello & Burt Bacharach... literally asking for God to give me strength, including the day that our first dog- Baby died in 1998.
