Dusty!: Queen of the Postmods

Three Notes and You Knew it Was Dusty

I've loved Dusty Springfield's music for over forty years. I was at sea when she passed away, so I missed knowing about it for a couple three years. I was saddened when I found out. She was a great talent. Born Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien, Dusty started singing way back in 1963 and I still remember when I was out at my Dad's record shop on Hollywood Boulevard listening to "I Only Want to Be With You."

I remember when "Dusty in Memphis" came out, thought it was one of the best records ever recorded. I still listen to her stuff, but I never knew much about her life. I'm really into music, have a couple big hard drives full of it, listen to all day, twenty-four/seven, but I've never cared to delve into the lives of the people who create it. Oh, you can't get away from some of it, it's in the tabloids you see in the stores and they make movies about music greats and I've seen some of them, the one about Johnny Cash and the one about Ray Charles, too. I enjoyed them both.

So when I got this book I wasn't all that eager to read it. But once I started, I got right into it. There's a plethora of info about Dusty Springfield here I never knew. For example I really thought her real name was Dusty. The book was easy for me read, because I was already knew her music cold. If you like Dusty Springfield, this is a book for you. And even if you don't, there's a lot of stuff in this short book about what went on in the early 60s from a different point of view. I'm glad I read this book, glad I own it.

Gifted and Talented

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What is the meaning of Dusty Springfield's success? This book seeks to explain it. It is wonderful. Her name was Mary O'Brien. Her sixty years of existence are associated with the music of the sixties. She had a role in creating and defining British soul. The book studies the music and the career of Dusty Springfield. She was a cultural icon of the 1960's. There was a late 1980's revival.

The author's fifth grade teacher dressed like Dusty Springfield, although she didn't realize it at the time. There was a ready audience for American soul among the British mods. Dusty Springfield died in 1999. She was a model of self-transformation emerging from the folk group, the Springfields. Her look was a form of drag. She was camp, a lie that tells the truth.

Dusty's favorite performer was Tina Turner. She was the actual producer of her own records. She was a fan of Spector's 'wall of sound'. Black American music invented the back beat. Soul in Britain was a new genre. Madeline Bell, a singer for Alex Bradford's BLACK NATIVITY, and Dusty influenced each other. (DUSTY IN MEMPHIS was a case of fissure. The album was produced in a manner contrary to Dusty's usual practice.)

Through soul and melodrama, the pop aria was developed, a Dusty Springfield speciality. Dusty had a soul voice and a melodramatic body. Her gestures are compared to melodramatic poses in the book by means of photographs detailing the similarities. Physical gestures doubled her voice's impact.

In the early 1970's Dusty moved to California. There she had less contact with British and Italian composers. U.S. managers and producers did not view Dusty's virtuosity in multiple genres as a positive attribute. British fans grasped the singer's emotional range.

One appendix lists record releases and events. Another has a list of significant people. Finally, notes, index, and bibliography complete this excellent book.

The Real Dusty

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Finally, an un-sensationalist look into the life and music of Dusty Springfield.

Which was the real Dusty? The `White Queen of Soul'; the Britpop diva; the over-the-top camp performer with the beehive hairdo, overdone mascara and melodramatic hand gestures; the studio perfectionist who didn't like to work alongside musicians while recording and who took outrageous numbers of tries before being satisfied with a recording of her vocals on a track; the lesbian who never outright denied her sexual persuasion but who was cautious about admitting it?

All of these sides of Dusty are examined in Randall's thoughtful book. Also looked at are aspects of the singer's life some may not have heard about before, such as the time she took a defiant stance against the government of South Africa when they wanted her to sign a statement saying she would not perform to mixed race audiences while touring in their country. And we get a glimpse of the mentally unbalanced side of Dusty - she was bipolar and possibly suffered from a kind of multiple personality disorder, `Dusty' maybe being a character that exploded out of the more staid psyche of Mary O'Brien, a middle class English lass and one-time convent girl.

Randall is a professor of Musicology at an American university, and while most of her book is something that can be read and appreciated by lay people, she slips into dull academic speak in the section where she deconstructs the `establishing shots' in the openings of some of Dusty's `pop arias.' It's hard to imagine who will gain any insight or appreciation of Dusty's music by knowing how many seconds into a certain song we are given a clue about its ultimate emotional intent.

However, that same chapter contains the most entertaining part of the book, where Randall makes a connection between the varied and always dramatic hand gestures Dusty used while singing with the similar motions employed by 19th century opera singers and actors. The photo figures which compare some of Dusty's moves with those of actress Sarah Berhnardt's are both hilarious and convincing.

It would be great to read a book on Dusty's music by someone with less of a scholarly leaning. But as a serious exploration of the complicated character of one of the great pop and soul singers to have ever held a mic, this is quite effective.