Dusty related snippets

[Corinna]

Very sweet postcard. I hope she got her autograph.

I found this little snippet on Mr. Smith's web site:

MrSmithsManchester.png (121.93 KiB) Viewed 1043 times

[daydreamer]

You must have magical powers Cor, I tried to copy that, along with the picture of Mr Smiths but it wouldn't let me, hence the link instead!

[Corinna]

I worked around it. Pity there's not much else about Dusty there!

[Cas19]

Nice little snippet, thank you ladies.

Casx

[Clive]

In yesterday's Guardian newspaper Dusty gets a couple of mentions in their feature

50 key events in the history of pop music


Ready Steady Go!

"Dusty Springfield persuaded Vicki Wickham, one of the show's producers, to do a Motown special that she would introduce."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/11/ready-steady-go?INTCMP=SRCH

Pet Shop Boys resurrect Dusty Springfield's career

"the Pet Shop Boys struck gold by hooking up with arguably the most revered vocalist of her generation – Dusty Springfield. Their single together, What Have I Done to Deserve This?, was a win-win situation: the band got kudos for enticing Springfield into recording what was the classiest record the PSB ever made, her career got a new lease of life, and it reached No 2."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/11/pet-shop-boys-dusty-springfield?INTCMP=SRCH

[daydreamer]

Thanks Clive, nice to see Reading their list of top 50 Pop recordings of the last 50 years, good to see that Dusty was one of the few to make the list twice.

While looking through the site, I saw this review of the South Bank Show from a few years back, can't remember reading it before (though I may have), think it's interesting and deserved a showing here.




What has she done to deserve this?

Peter Robinson on Dusty Springfield, a rare case of a self-doubting superstar

Peter Robinson
The Guardian, Saturday 8 April 2006
Article history



Soul woman: Dusty Springfield in 1964. Photograph: AP


You'll find out more about the passion and history of Britain's best ever pop voice from Dusty Springfield's brief biography on Wikipedia than from tomorrow night's gloomy - and largely unilluminating - South Bank Show profile, but one of the documentary's high points comes in an exchange between the Pet Shop Boys. Noting that Dusty has been elevated to that higher plateau of one-name pop stars, Neil Tennant explains that the singer was "like Elvis, or Bowie, or Liza..."

Right on cue, Chris Lowe pipes up: "Or Preston."

Later, archive footage reveals Dusty feeling "disassociated" from that famous moniker. It rather makes sense, given that Mary O'Brien only adopted her stage name for the purposes of popstardom, but what seems more stark is her other admission that, in terms of making music, "it's important what they think and not quite so important what I think".

At first glance this puts Dusty on a creative par with your average X Factor winner - none of whom write their own material, either - but, as is well documented, this is not the bleating of a willingly malleable starlet. Nor is this akin to an artist of today like Robbie Williams, derided for drawing attention to himself and throwing red herrings into his persona, then blubberin' and hollerin' when people don't understand him. It sounds like an admission of defeat, symptomatic of the ennui which plagued Dusty's professional life - even when she was at the height of her commercial or creative powers.

The South Bank Show documentary suggests that, had Dusty ruled the pop charts in 2006, her depression might have been more formally identified and even "cured", and that in these more permissive times the battle she found with her sexuality may not have been so acute.

It's certainly true that in 2006 Dusty would have immediately been outed as a lesbian, and that this may have taken some pressure away from her painfully insular private life, but it's wrong to assume that things would otherwise have been hunky dory. At one point in the programme, Kenny Everett's widow recalls an instance when she was severely winded after jumping in front of a Dusty so intent on killing herself that she was charging, headfirst, at a wall. You can imagine the sensitivity this story might have received from the News Of The World.

Similarly, the reaction of Heat magazine would have been to take Dusty's self-harm, depression and drink and drugs escapades and to cast her as a peculiar cross between Kerry Katona and Pete Doherty. All of which would have obscured her unique talent, just as the South Bank Show's treatment does.

Mercifully, the show contains some stupefying performances from Dusty, and the untouchable class of her act remains spellbinding. It's a class that cuts through the shoddy camerawork of 1960s pop TV. Without dancers or a visible band, one flick of a wrist from a woman on an empty stage makes Madonna's recent boombox humping seem as depressing as the fact that, even when the cameras stopped rolling, Dusty was still that one woman on an empty stage

[SweMaria]

Thank you very much for the review Carole!
That was really interesting to read!

[Clive]

Interesting item about Ronnie Wilkins on the writing of Son Of A Preacher Man
(his co-writer on the song, John Hurley, passed away in 1986)

Ronnie remembers. “We were in the control room when [Wexler] asked me and John, ‘Why don’t you guys write a song for Aretha?’”

Producers often say stuff like that to hot writers, more as a courtesy than a real request. But Wexler was serious, and Hurley and Wilkins knew it.

“A few days went by and John and I were in our writing room and were trying to come up with something,” Ronnie recalls. “We were thinking of Aretha, and her father was a preacher and both of my grandfathers were preachers. I said, ‘She’s the daughter of a preacher man and you might say I’m the son of a preacher man,’ and that’s how we came up with the title. It took us half an hour, maybe 45 minutes, to write the song.”

Wexler loved the song. Two or three weeks later, he cut it with Aretha, and at the time he thought it didn’t fit the album they were doing. It was too gospel-sounding for her, but he was planning to record Dusty Springfield in Memphis. In early 1968, Springfield recorded “Son Of A Preacher Man” and toward the end of the year it was released on the LP Dusty in Memphis, and it became the song that defined Wilkins’ songwriting career. It was a Top 10 pop hit in the United States and Number 1 in England and all over Europe.

http://www.americansongwriter.com/2010/11/street-smarts-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving/

[karen]

Found this after posting a Muppet Song.. did anybody see her on this.. [ click to enlarge ]

[Clive]

Unfortunately I don't think this got made Karen , I think it was a suggested show on a Muppet Show fan forum.
Pity, as Dusty would have made a great guest on the Muppet Show.

[karen]

Thanks for this Clive did wonder , as am sure something I would have seen...like you say it would have been a laugh and yes a great guest..

[karen]

My gardener who plays in a band just brought this souvenir programme for me ... you can check out Suzi Jari - 125th street London Show on google singing one of Dusty's songs.

[karen]

AND THIS

[karen]

Programme cover

[karen]

Dusty article in programme..

[karen]

Suzi Jari , who sings Dusty's songs..

[Cas19]

A nice programme Karen, can't say I've heard of Suzi, not a fan of other people singing Dusy songs as you know, but I will check her out later.

Casx

[charlotte]

Wow - nice souvenir Karen ! I envy you all your treasures

You guys have the best Dusty memorabilia.... "sigh"

[Clive]

Surprised to read in this 1980 article about Buggles (Trevor Horn & Bruce Wooley) that Trevor Horn was not happy with Dusty's version of Baby Blue which they wrote

as songwriters they provided Dusty Springfield with a small success in “Baby Blue”. But small success equals failure with Buggles and Trevor Horn, who writes most of the duo’s lyrics, says that he got no kick out of Dusty recording the song.

“No-one ever records our songs as well as we can do them - I firmly believe that. Dusty’s ‘Baby Blue’ was a bit of a let-down because we had done a great demo.



http://www.zttaat.com/article.php?title=859

[IWannaBeABluesSinger]

... but what seems more stark is her other admission that, in terms of making music, "it's important what they think and not quite so important what I think".

At first glance this puts Dusty on a creative par with your average X Factor winner - none of whom write their own material, either - but, as is well documented, this is not the bleating of a willingly malleable starlet. Nor is this akin to an artist of today like Robbie Williams, derided for drawing attention to himself and throwing red herrings into his persona, then blubberin' and hollerin' when people don't understand him. It sounds like an admission of defeat, symptomatic of the ennui which plagued Dusty's professional life - even when she was at the height of her commercial or creative powers.

I've read this critique before of what Dusty said and it's obvious the writer didn't understand what she was referring to - namely her habit of finding fault with every performance. When Dusty made this statement she had gotten to a point where she realized that she didn't have to be perfect and if the audience enjoyed the show maybe they were right and she was wrong. Far from being an "admission of defeat" it was actually a mark of professional maturity and self-acceptance.

Maggie