POPULAR MUSIC - DUSTY SPRINGFIELD

Dusty Springfield was that rare sort of singer, the kind capable of inhabiting the songs she sang.  She got right in there. It was like Dusty knew every hidden corner, knew the cracks where the cold came through, could show you things inside that place you wouldn’t have noticed if you were just visiting.  She sang a song like she’d always been there, was just waiting for you to show up.  You can hear this.

 It’s no surprise that Dusty’s fans are a devoted bunch.  Her gifts as a singer and an interpreter of song merely begin with her ability to get inside a song and carry its message as if the story were her own-she also has the profound capacity to make her listeners feel that she is talking just to them.  Particularly when Dusty Springfield, the ballad singer, drops down into one of her breathy vocals, stripping it back to the texture of the voice, it’s like she’s whispering in your ear, confiding.  This is between us.  She can convey a sense of intimacy like few other singers.

 Of course, it’s common knowledge that The Royal Albert Hall holds more than two people.  But, in the most striking moments of Dusty’s 1979 Albert Hall performance, done in the presence of Princess Margaret, the singer gives her audience what they came for: a moment alone with Dusty Springfield.  The intimacy that makes a Dusty Springfield recording so affective, unnerving and deeply satisfying at one and the same time, is transferred to London’s most esteemed venue.  Amidst the up-tempo numbers, whether “We Are Family” or “I Only Want to Be With You,” Dusty delivers the ballads and the midtempo grooves, the crucial stuff that reveals her uncanny ability to compress the distance between performer and listener.  In songs like Karla Bonoff’s “Lose Again” and Goffin and King’s “Goin’ Back,” Dusty pulls listeners up close and takes them straight to the emotional center of the songs.  It’s the Dusty Springfield effect, live. 

 Reputed to be a performance that was not the result of a whole lot of rehearsal, the Albert Hall show does have a decided looseness about it.  One even has to wonder whether Dusty’s legendary perfectionist streak would have allowed this document to see the light of day were she around to weigh in on its release.  But, that said, there is no question that the imperfections of the performance contribute to the value of this document.  The band falters in a few spots. The back-up singers are not always on, sometimes seem glued to the sheets on their music stands.  Dusty’s vocal is sometimes too low for her between song patter to be heard.  But amidst the mistakes, something important emerges.  The Dusty who brought her listeners close through song but otherwise kept people at a distance seems more exposed here, more willing to let us catch a glimpse.  Even if it’s just a moment in which Dusty cannot help but giggle mid-song—and there are a few (see “The Look of Love”!)-there’s a sense that in this performance she has let her guard down in ways that, at least purportedly, she rarely did.  At times it feels like the joy of the event gets under her skin in the best ways.  At times it proves infectious.

It’s difficult not to project onto Dusty Springfield all that one knows of her.  Legendary for her insecurity and self-doubt, it’s hard not to see in her a deep-seated frailty.  And it’s also a challenge not to take the next step in that chain of logic and see such frailty as the very thing that makes Dusty Springfield singularly capable of getting at the emotional center of a song.  But the Albert Hall concert undoes some of this line of thinking.  Dusty does not shrink in the face of the show’s looseness but instead plays into it--and in a way that suggests anything but a person suffering the paroxysms of self-doubt.  If her comfort was a mask, the mask was very, very convincing on that night.

 At one point in the Albert Hall show (not included in the DVD edit), Dusty makes reference to her gay and lesbian audience members, many of whom would be pressing the stage by the show’s end.  In the light of Princess Margaret’s presence, Dusty remarks that she’s “glad to see that royalty isn’t confined to the box.”  Not taken lightly by the Royal Family, Dusty’s offhand remark about the “queens” in her audience led to her signing a public apology.  But one gets the sense that the last thing she might have intended was offense.  In fact, it’s unlikely that she was saying anything about her royal audience; her mind, one senses, was simply on her fans, the fans for whom the singer’s gift of intimacy had meant so much for so long.

 So, this release is a document to be celebrated, concert footage that Dusty might not have issued, but concert footage in which we find some things crucial to fill in our picture of Dusty the person, to deepen our understanding of her relationship to her fans, and to remind us of her reverence and respect for the songs she sang.  But, most importantly, we get to hear her sing live.  The details of Dusty Springfield’s personal life, distracting as they are, have diverted attention from Dusty’s singular abilities as a singer.  While she is frequently associated with white soul, the truth is that Dusty’s territory extends far beyond that.  She could move among the genres and never seem to be just passing through.  When she took up a style, she “went native,” giving you the impression that she was raised on it.  Dusty Springfield Live at the Royal Albert Hall gives us the chance to renew our acquaintance with the singer’s rare gifts. 

Dust Springfield - Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien OBE (16 April 1939 – 2 March 1999), known as Dusty Springfield, was a singer. Of all the female British pop artists of the 1960s, she made one of the biggest impressions on the American market. Owing to her distinctive sensual sound, she was one of the most notable white soul artists.

Born to an Irish Roman Catholic family that loved music, Mary O'Brien learned to sing at home. Springfield began her solo career in 1963 with the upbeat pop hit, "I Only Want To Be With You". Her following hits included "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself", "Wishin' and Hopin'" and "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me".

A fan of American pop music, she campaigned to bring the little-known soul singers to a wider British audience by devising and hosting the first British performances of the top-selling Motown Records artists in 1965. Her rendition of "The Look of Love", written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, was included on the soundtrack of the James Bond movie Casino Royale (1967) and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song. The marked changes of pop music in the mid-1960s left many female pop singers out of fashion. To boost her credibility as a soul artist, Springfield went to Memphis, Tennessee, to record an album of pop and soul music with the Atlantic Records main production team. Dusty in Memphis earned Springfield a nomination for the Grammy Award and it received the Grammy Hall of Fame award. International polls list the album among the greatest of all time. Its standout track "Son of a Preacher Man" was an international Top 10 hit in 1969. Subsequently, Springfield's success dipped for eighteen years. Collaborations with the Pet Shop Boys returned her to the Top 20 of the British and American charts with "What Have I Done to Deserve This?", "Nothing Has Been Proved" and "In Private". In 1995, Springfield was diagnosed with breast cancer which eventually caused her death in 1999.

Springfield was voted the Top British Female Artist in the New Musical Express reader's polls in 1964, 1965 and 1968. Interest in Springfield's early output was revived in 1994, due to the inclusion of "Son of a Preacher Man" on the soundtrack of the movie, Pulp Fiction. She is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the U.K. Music Hall of Fame. International polls have named Springfield among the best female rock artists of all time.

Source: Wikipedia the free encyclopedia