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#1 2010-07-19 09:31:22
- Rip Rig & Panic
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Top Mod: Dusty Springfield
She seemed to be an important figure when I was growing up; at least before I'd heard of Aretha Franklin or Dionne Warwick. I listened to her a few years ago and she still sounded good. People like her and Georgie Fame (and a handful of others) seem to represent another, hipper side to the 60s: a necessary alternative to The Beatles and all that pop/hippy output. Very English, very US influenced. Did the mods take to her? I'm only saying 'Top Mod' for appearances' sake, you understand.
#2 2010-07-21 08:32:17
- fxh
- Big Down Under.
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Re: Top Mod: Dusty Springfield
Dusty In Memphis is on rotation in my 6 CD car system - possibly the best, slightly flawed in a brilliant way
#3 2022-07-11 08:32:10
- AFS
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Re: Top Mod: Dusty Springfield
I picked up a 'Best Of' CD yesterday for a few pence.
There's a song, 'Dusty Springfield', by Blossom Dearie, just as there's 'Sweet Georgie Fame'.
A few years ago I had a chance encounter with a couple of women who'd been late 60s Mods. One looked, still, a little like Cathy McGowan, the other like Dusty. It must have taken some thinking out.
fxh is no longer with us, but I was grateful for his post at the time.
'Look Of Love' anyone?
#5 2022-07-11 08:56:56
- Kingston1an
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Re: Top Mod: Dusty Springfield
Mary O’Brien born in the posher part of NW6.
She used to be in The Springfields with her brother. Quite big on shows like Sunday Night at The London Palladium.
"Florid, smug, middle-aged golf club bore in this country I'd say. Propping up the 19th hole in deepest Surrey bemoaning the perils of immigration."
#6 2022-07-11 09:07:16
- AFS
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Re: Top Mod: Dusty Springfield
It is a fantastic tune. Transports you into a different world, mid-60s. Dusty was adorable.
#7 2022-07-11 09:53:08
- RobbieB
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Re: Top Mod: Dusty Springfield
Dusty - One of the great female soul singers. I have a lot of her music now on CD.Must give her a listen.
'I am a closet optimist' Leonard Cohen.
#8 2022-07-11 09:57:28
- RobbieB
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Re: Top Mod: Dusty Springfield
My Finnish niece who studied opera singing learnt Dustys songs. She once gave us a Dusty tribute rendition at my house to my older cousins. She couldn't believe it when they all joined in. It was their era and their music.
'I am a closet optimist' Leonard Cohen.
#9 2022-07-11 11:25:35
- Tworussellstreet
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Re: Top Mod: Dusty Springfield
I like her husky vocal on Carole King's wonderful 'Some Of Your Lovin' but otherwise she leaves me a big cold. I still cringe when I see her duetting with Martha Reeves on the RSG Motown special. 'Wishin' & Hopin' - yeah, Dusty, wishing you could sing like Martha or the other vocalists from Detroit.
#10 2022-07-11 11:25:53
- AFS
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Re: Top Mod: Dusty Springfield
Same era: check out Cat Stevens on YouTube: 'Matthew And Son'. Even the kids dancing look bored stiff but there are one or two attractive young women and the, I suppose, late Mod look is not uninteresting (rather plain). Donovan was from around that time, and Peter Sarsdedt, something of a favourite of mine as a kid. Pop music certainly, but far, far better than almost anything that surfaced later.
#11 2022-07-11 11:28:52
- AFS
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Re: Top Mod: Dusty Springfield
TRS, you sourpuss - I'd say I love the image more, in some ways, than the voice. But 'The Look Of Love' gets me every time - for thoroughly personal reasons - just like Harold Melvin singing 'Don't Leave Me This Way'.
#13 2022-07-11 11:33:44
- Tworussellstreet
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Re: Top Mod: Dusty Springfield
She kind of sums up the gulf between America and Britain back then. The US had all the music, the style, the clothes, the cinema. The UK? Quirky, charming but ultimately pale imitations. I had this chat with an American Beatles obsessive, my age, in New York a few years ago. I told him all the greatness was already surrounding him in America - it all came from there - jazz, blues, R&B, soul. He just did not get it. I do think that in America the race issue is so sublimated into their culture and history they simply cannot see where their blindness lies.
#14 2022-07-11 11:57:52
- AFS
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Re: Top Mod: Dusty Springfield
Jazz caught on in Europe when it was still misunderstood and despised in the United States is what one commonly reads. It's a complex story. Plenty of middle-class black Harlemite families loathed jazz and blues; wanted European classical music instead. I'm just reading James Lincoln Collier's biography of Duke Ellington. Those attitudes are stressed. 'Pale imitations' in the UK? Yes: agreed, for the most part. I'd doubt if most jazz clubs could hold a candle to places like Jimmy Ryans or the Village Vanguard. And when Condon visited England in the mid-50s they thought English jazz so backward they began muttering about dinosaurs. 'Mouldy fygge' still had the upper hand.
#15 2022-07-11 12:00:53
- AFS
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Re: Top Mod: Dusty Springfield
Of course the first recorded jazz was white. I guess that was by accident. But it led to any number of misunderstandings, including claims that whites had pretty much 'invented' jazz. No similar claim could be made for blues, though, which grew as a musical form during Reconstruction.
#16 2022-07-11 16:21:05
- Runninggeez
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Re: Top Mod: Dusty Springfield
Getting back to Mary O'Brien, " I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself" love that too.