Dusty Springfield - The Complete Atlantic Singles 1968-1971 (2021) LP

By 1968, Dusty Springfield had begun to suspect that there was no easy way down. Cool enough to duet with Jimi Hendrix on her regrettably named ITV show It Must Be Dusty but hobbled by increasingly dowdy material, Springfield realized it wasn’t a good time for singers with bouffant hairstyles who hoped to stay hip. Signing with Atlantic and relocating to Memphis that year looked like a smart move, resulting in a body of work as substantial as Aretha Franklin’s own Atlantic recordings. The Complete Atlantic Singles 1968-1971 collects most of the magisterial Dusty in Memphis (1969), its lesser follow-up A Brand New Me (1970), and a bevy of tracks orbiting the albums like lonely satellites.

Before turning to this fecund epoch, it’s important to appreciate Springfield’s achievements. To savor the run of singles recorded between 1963 and 1967, from “I Only Want to Be With You” to “The Look of Love” means appreciating Springfield’s combination of winsomeness and submersion; unlike Dionne Warwick, another beneficiary of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s compositions, Springfield wasn’t detached, as her performance of the 1966 Pino Donaggio and Vito Pallavicini composition “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me,” rewritten in English, testifies. But Springfield, who wrote a song here and there and exerted more production control than credits aver, had grown restless. She insisted on working with the redoubtable producer Jerry Wexler. The eight songs he brought to what became Dusty in Memphis represented the best of the so-called Brill Building songwriters: Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Randy Newman and Michel Legrand chipped in too. With Arif Mardin and engineer Tom Dowd joining Wexler, the venture had promise.

A combination of Springfield’s mild anxiety about singing live with a rhythm section and her insistence on controlling the material stalled the project at first. “To say yes to one song was seen as a lifetime commitment,” Wexler carped later. Most of the vocals she eventually recorded in New York, a development with no bearing on the album’s swampy, undulating sonics: Dusty was in the fantasy-selling business. Aretha had already rejected a John Hurley-Ronnie Wilkins soul number called “Son of a Preacher Man.” Time and impatience with the Pulp Fiction mythos hasn’t dulled Springfield’s signature tune, in which she sasses and upbraids one “Billy” while an ebullient horn section blows its support and bassist Tommy Cogbill plucks the sweetest line she’d ever sung over. So self-assured was Springfield’s performance that Franklin recorded a version for This Girl’s in Love with You (1970)—and it’s merely decent (Springfield and Annie Lennox remain the only women to have gone eye-to-eye with Franklin and survived).