Stay Awhile: Upcoming Dusty Springfield Box Set Offers Rarities and More
I can hardly wait to hold you, feel my arms around you/How long I have waited/Waited just to love you, now that I have found you/Don’t ever go…
Dusty Springfield’s breathy plea lingers in the air like a plume of smoke, her tones sultry, sensual and sophisticated. Who could resist? In her all-too-short 59 years, Springfield became a white soul queen, gaining entrance into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, notching eighteen singles in the Billboard Hot 100 and recording one all-time classic LP, 1969’s Dusty in Memphis. Perpetual insecurities and substance abuse problems couldn’t derail the former Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien, who continued to produce music of great beauty and depth even in her lean years. She was finally rewarded with a 1980s comeback courtesy of her admirers, The Pet Shop Boys, as well as an OBE from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II immediately before her death from cancer in 1999. Springfield’s enormous legacy will be celebrated with the November 4 release of Goin’ Back: The Definitive Dusty Springfield, a 4-CD/3-DVD deluxe box set from Universal’s U.K. arm.
A “singer’s singer” and renowned interpreter of the works of Goffin and King, Bacharach and David, Jerry Ragovoy, Randy Newman and countless others, Springfield has already been celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic with countless compilations [[many containing unique mixes and edits) plus two career-spanning box sets. The Legend of Dusty Springfield was a 2,000-copy limited edition 1994 box from Philips, containing previously unreleased material and grouped into four volumes: Hits and Bits, Pearls and Rarities, Downright Dusty and The Look of Love. 2000’s Simply Dusty was another four-disc anthology, compiled by Paul Howes and Mike Gill on the Mercury label, and containing new-to-CD mixes and live tracks. One of the true keepers of the Springfield flame, Howes [[author of the indispensable, exhaustive discography The Complete Dusty Springfield from Reynolds and Hearn Ltd.) has compiled the new box set which again will introduce material both new to CD and never-before-released.
Hit the jump to find out exactly what you can expect from the new box, including the complete track listing with discographical annotation!
Like the original Dusty box set, The Legend of Dusty Springfield, Goin’ Back is arranged thematically rather than chronologically. The box contains four compact discs: The Hits, Rarities, At the BBC and Stage and Screen, plus three DVDs. The CDs total 92 tracks, 22 of which have never been released. [[We have confirmed 20 of those tracks to the best of our knowledge, below, with a few more likely possibilities for the remaining two songs.) A further five tracks are making their CD debuts. As for the three packed DVDs, a full 32 performances have never been commercially available.
CD 1, The Hits, covers most of the major successes for Springfield both in America and the United Kingdom, dating between 1963 and 1995. [[As this disc focuses on her solo hits, “Silver Threads and Golden Needles” by The Springfields is absent, though the group appears numerous times on later discs.) CD 2, Rarities, may be the most coveted disc by collectors, kicking off with Kay Swift and Peter James’ “Can’t We Be Friends” as recorded by a teenage Dusty and Peter Miles. A brace of live and alternate tracks from The Springfields follows, and then we plunge into a number of alternate takes and mixes. This disc is capped off by two mixes created especially for this collection. Tris Penna has remixed “The Look of Love” and “Goin’ Back” at Abbey Road Studios to emphasize Springfield’s vocals in a stripped-down setting.
The third disc of BBC Sessions offers more exceedingly rare live material. Some tracks have been reprised from the privately-pressed discs once available through The Dusty Springfield Bulletin while others still are making their first appearance anywhere. These tracks are particularly exciting as Springfield often covered songs in her live appearances that she never tackled in a studio setting. [[One of these tracks is Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “I Say a Little Prayer.” Though Dusty may be the single most admired performer of the Bacharach/David catalogue following Dionne Warwick, she only recorded ten of their songs in the studio. Thankfully her performances of many more of their songs have been preserved, and “I Say a Little Prayer” makes its first-time debut here, while “Knowing When to Leave” from the musical Promises, Promises premieres on the DVD portion. Still in the vaults awaiting release are live versions of Bacharach/David classics like “[[There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me,” “Wives and Lovers” and “A House is Not a Home” with Bacharach accompanying.) There’s a rare jazz medley performed with Mel Torme, and a soulful medley dating from 1969 where Dusty incorporates such diverse songs as The Isley Brothers’ “It’s Your Thing,” The Rascals’ “People Got to Be Free,” the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody” and Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” all with absolute conviction.
CD 4, Stage and Screen, offers some of Dusty’s own soundtrack performances [[including the original film versions of “The Look of Love” from Casino Royale and Lee Hazlewood’s title song for The Sweet Ride) in addition to songs originally written for film and stage productions, and songs later rediscovered in films. Among the harder-to-find tracks on this disc are her first-ever soundtrack performance for 1967’s The Corrupt Ones [[U.K. title: The Peking Medallion) and Michel Legrand’s “Sea and Sky” from 1972’s Paris Was Made for Lovers, titled Time for Loving in the United Kingdom. Her final soundtrack performance, “Nothing Can Be Proved” from 1989’s Scandal, is also included. [[Two notable omissions to this disc are “Bits and Pieces,” Dominic Frontiere and Norman Gimbel’s 1980 theme to The Stunt Man, and the 1980 re-recording of Randy Newman’s “I Don’t Want to Hear It Anymore” for the 1980 film Love and Money. While the former has been released on CD, the latter remains unavailable despite Dusty’s comment that “in some ways I like it better than the one on [Dusty in] Memphis”
What’s missing from this staggering set? There’s no material from Dusty’s early stint as a member of The Lana Sisters, though that group’s complete output has just been compiled by RPM. Many fan favorites are absent due to the set’s organization; there was no place for “Just a Little Lovin’,” “Breakfast in Bed” or the original “I Don’t Want to Hear It Anymore.” There are still many, many unreleased songs languishing in the vaults, and it’s hard to single out any particularly egregious omissions. In no particular order, though, this author would love to have seen release of the 1980s-era Joel Dorn-produced remake of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” a duet mix with B.J. Thomas of David Gates’ “The Other Side of Life,” her 1970 performance of Tony Hatch’s rare song “Messing About on the River,” the 1973 performance of frequent concert opener “But Alive” from the Charles Strouse/Lee Adams score to Applause [[“I feel twitchy and bitchy and manic/Calm and collected and choking with panic/But alive!”) and BBC takes of The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” and Stephen Stills’ “Love the One You’re With.” Despite their mutual admiration, Springfield only performed one complete Beatles song, a 1989 version of “All You Need is Love” which was recorded for a Japan-only Panasonic commercial. She also recorded a Beatles medley for a television special with Burt Bacharach, Juliet Prowse and Mireille Mathieu; wouldn’t either of those have been something to hear! Similarly, she only sang one Elton John/Bernie Taupin composition, and “Take Me to the Pilot” remains commercially unavailable.
The set’s three DVDs represent a treasure trove for longtime collectors. The first DVD appears to replicate the contents of Dusty Springfield – Live at the BBC, a 2007 collection with over 2-1/2 hours of footage drawn primarily from Springfield’s BBC television programs of 1966 and 1967, plus selected bonus material. The second DVD offers 1961 performances from The Springfields plus Dusty’s performances on Top of the Pops [[1978 and 1979), They Sold a Million [[1973) and The Rolf Harris Show [[1971) , and interviews on The Old Grey Whistle Test [[1978) and Wogan [[1985). The third and final DVD contains performances from the 1988 BPI Music Awards plus videos of favorite late-era tracks like Dusty’s collaboration with Richard Carpenter, “Something in Your Eyes,” her duet with Daryl Hall on “Wherever Would I Be” and collaborations with The Pet Shop Boys.
Goin’ Back: The Definitive Dusty Springfield is housed in a deluxe box measuring 250mm x 200mm x 100mm. In addition to the four CDs and three DVDs, the pink box contains two hardback books and four photo prints of the star. The first book reprints Howes’ truly comprehensive Springfield discography and the second is a new collection of essays by Dusty’s manager and friend Vicki Wickham and Mojo writer Lois Wilson plus testimonials by artists like Sir Tom Jones, Carole King, Annie Lennox, Burt Bacharach, Neil Tennant and Smokey Robinson. Plenty of photographs are also contained of the singer, a true British Invasion fashion icon with her immortal beehive!
Until a Complete Recordings box set comes along to straighten out the many discrepancies in Springfield’s U.K.-vs.-U.S. albums and singles catalogues, Goin’ Back may indeed be the next best thing! [[That said, wouldn’t further releases of the existing BBC performances described in Paul Howes’ book be warranted?) This lavish testament to the enduring music of Dusty Springfield is in stores overseas on November 4, and we’ll be sure to add pre-order links as soon as they become available.
Paul Nixon gave me this news....great innit!
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