Twenty-six years ago this week, the world lost Dusty Springfield, the woman widely considered the “White Queen of Soul.” Known for her hits in the 1960s such as “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” and “Wishin’ and Hopin’,” the London born singer also pioneered the beehive hairdo and panda-eye makeup crazes that swept the fashion world. Universally regarded as one of the first white women to sing black soul music, Springfield’s style served as a blueprint for modern followers, such as Adele.
I first fell in love with Dusty Springfield’s voice when I was two years old. I saw her on MTV in the video for The Pet Shop Boys’ “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” in 1987. From there, I discovered the 1960s icon she would forever become in her native Britain. Few knew the lady herself better than her longtime backup singer, Simon Bell, who agreed to an email interview in November 2024.
“I was working with Madeline Bell, who had been Dusty’s backing singer in the ‘60s,” he recalled of their first meeting in 1978. “One night, after a show, we got back to Madeline’s home, and Dusty was on the answering machine asking for recommendations for backing singers, as she was coming back from LA to do Top of the Pops with ‘A Love Like Yours.’”
There is a single photograph and an existing recording of under a minute featuring Springfield on her Ready, Steady, Go television series, duetting with another favorite of mine, Tina Turner, in the mid-’60s. Bell mentioned having heard the clip.
“When Dusty had the success with the Pet Shop Boys, she got a congratulatory message from Tina,” Bell said.
These British TV shows exhibited Springfield’s incredible versatility in duets with artists like Mel Tormé and Jimi Hendrix. Her version of Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street” surpasses the original. While I would love for American fans to hear these outstanding performances, Bell said the likelihood of them appearing on CD is slim.
“Though not impossible, different companies own all those recordings,” he explained. “I think that would be a challenge.”
“There is no surviving footage of the Hendrix duet,” he added.
I also wanted to know if there was any truth to the rumor that Phil Collins was supposed to produce a never-released Dusty album around 1989. If so, that would have been the greatest musical collaboration in history—and a golden opportunity missed for worldwide music lovers.
“I remember the Phil Collins rumor,” Bell recalled. “But Dusty never mentioned it.”
“Neil [Tennant] was a huge fan of Dusty,” he said of the Pet Shop Boys collaboration. “He simply wanted to have her on the record.”
Of course, after hearing that song, I discovered “Son of a Preacher Man” in Pulp Fiction, which led me to the Dusty in Memphis album. Not only did it become an all-time favorite, but it also inspired my book Dusty in Memphis: Chronicle of a Classic, which I published in 2019.
“I think it’s because there is a kind of cohesion between the tracks that makes it a solid body of work,” Bell said of the album’s enduring legacy, though he was not quick to list it as her crowning achievement.
“Other fans from the ‘60s hold other albums in higher regard,” he added. “That’s worth noting.”
Not mentioning my work, I asked Bell to recommend a writing on the Memphis sessions.
“I haven’t read anything I would recommend,” he said.
It is tragic to me that America never properly recognized Springfield as the rock pioneer she was.
“I think Philips [her record label] badly handled her American releases,” Bell offered. “There was no coordination with her UK successes.”
Despite being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame two weeks after her passing, Bell says Springfield, at 59, was aware of the accolade before her premature death from breast cancer on March 2, 1999. The Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame included Springfield on their list of inductees just last year.
Still, I can’t help but wonder if a tour of the American South, particularly during the Memphis era in 1969, might have endeared Springfield to fans in the States. To Bell’s knowledge, she never performed in our area. She recorded in Nashville twice: once with the Springfields, the group that became the first-ever British act to have an American hit with “Silver Threads and Golden Needles” in 1962, and again in 1994 when she recorded her final album, A Very Fine Love.
As for how Springfield might have reacted to a wheelchair-bound, crazed Southern fan like me, Bell did not venture to comment. Wherever she might be now, I hope she knows there are Americans who loved her as the world should have. We will never see the likes of Dusty Springfield again.
