Dusty Springfield Albums (15)
'White Heat'
Release Date 2/5/2002
Tracks 10
Label Polygram International
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
In 1993, Dusty Springfield journeyed to Nashville and, working with producer Tom Shapiro, generated this jewel of an album, illuminated by as soulful and passionate a performance as the singer gave in her post-'60s incarnation. Indeed, the performances and the songs here stack up favorably next to, say, Brand New Me, her early-'70s intersection with Philly soul. One song here, "Where Would I Be?," which features a duet with Daryl Hall, got a little play for being in the movie While You Were Sleeping, but otherwise, sad to say, this album passed relatively unnoticed for most of the public. The sounds are fairly diverse, including relatively subdued songs such as "You Are the Storm," showing the softer side of her singing, but Springfield is at her best going full-out, backed by strings and a full band, as on "Roll Away" and "Lovin' Proof," which make this a very fine album, indeed. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
'Living Without Your Love'
Release Date 1/1/1979
Tracks 10
Label Mercury
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
More than just a very excellent recording from Dusty Springfield, Cameo is one of the finest efforts from the team of Steve Barri, Dennis Lambert, and Brian Potter. Springfield reinvents Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey," including a verse not among the enclosed lyrics nor heard on Morrison's familiar FM radio hit. What you can hear is a carefulness, not from the singer, but from the production team who worked in different degrees with the 1972 and 1975 Grass Roots. There is nothing disposable here, nothing of the throwaway nature found on portions of those Grass Roots discs. "Learn to Say Goodbye" is a masterpiece of tortured soul. Thankfully, it was included in the ABC movie of the week Say Goodbye, Maggie Cole and got some additional exposure, but for the label that brought "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night to the multi-platinum level, ABC's failure to break this potential hit is glaring. Hugo Montenegro -- the man responsible for 1968's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" theme -- co-wrote this, and it is superb. While Helen Reddy was filling the airwaves with "Delta Dawn" and "Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress)," it was prime time for Dusty's "Learn to Say Goodbye" or the brilliant opening track "Who Gets Your Love" to rescue radio listeners. That Lambert and Potter piece is outdone by their "Breakin' Up a Happy Home" which follows. This is pure Philly sound, and with the help of Hal Blaine, Michael Omartian, and the everpresent Vanetta Fields and Clydie King, it is simply amazing that this album didn't get more attention. When Dusty Springfield takes on "Easy Evil" by frivolous songwriter Alan O'Day -- the man who wrote "Rock & Roll Heaven" and sang "Undercover Angel" -- you understand she can do no wrong here. The production and the performance is top notch. "Mama's Little Girl" sounds like it inspired Gamble & Huff's Elton John hit "Mama Can't Buy You Love," which came six years after this, the brilliance of Gamble and Huff clearly influencing Steve Barri and company. The choice of material is wonderful; David Gates' "The Other Side of Life" shows how a song of his can blossom outside of the confines of his hit group, Bread. All 12 titles are sublime pop, some of the best Lambert and Potter you'll find anywhere. What a hook they wrote for this artist with "Comin' and Goin'," and what heart! It moves and grooves like one of those album tracks you wish was beat into your head on a daily basis by Top 40 radio. Ashford & Simpson can be very proud of "I Just Wanna Be There"; Springfield just claims the tune as her own, with horns and backing vocals creating the wave for her magical voice to ride. Audiences can get caught up in the hit records of an artist, and often they fail to seek out the material they never got familiar with. Universal's Hip-O label has re-released Cameo under the new title Beautiful Soul with additional tracks. It hopefully will get people to hear Dusty Springfield take Willie Hutchison's "Who Could Be Loving You Other Than Me" to another realm. Just a wonderful, wonderful record. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Never released in the US, See All Her Faces was a hodge-podge of tracks from the late 1960s and early 1970s, some of which had previously appeared on Atlantic singles in the States, although it did have some good moments. One of those was the bossa nova-influenced title track, and she does another bossa nova-flavored number, "Come for a Dream," co-written by Antonio Carlos Jobim. As always there were some really straight orchestrated pop ballads, like "I Start Counting," and something that sounded like an attempt to emulate whatever was happening at Motown at the moment ("Girls It Ain't Easy"). There were also some deep soul-speckled outings (the 1969 single of Tony Joe White's "Willie & Laura Mae Jones," Goffin & King's "That Old Sweet Roll (Hi-De-Ho)"), and some half-decent cuts from early-seventies singles that Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry helped write ("What Good Is I Love You," "Nothing Is Forever"). Eight of the tracks are on Rhino's compilation of 1968-71 British recordings, Dusty in London; all but one ("Girls Can't Do What the Guys Do") of the six remaining tracks appears as one of the bonus cuts on Rhino's reissues of Dusty in Memphis and A Brand New Me. If you live in the US, picking up all of these Rhino reissues, rather than hunting for the See All Her Faces album, seems like the way to go. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Sticking with the soul stylings of her stellar Dusty in Memphis recording, Springfield takes her sensual huskiness north to the City of Brotherly Love for this 1970 slice of Philly soul. Doing incredible justice to a batch of top-quality Gamble & Huff songs, Springfield trades in the Stax-inspired swamp grit of her Memphis album for the urban soul kaleidoscope of A Brand New Me. Surrounded by angelically funky string and horn charts from guitarist Roland Chambers and Thom Bell (along with Gamble & Huff, Bell can be counted as an architect of Philly International sound), Springfield sounds positively liberated ranging through the gospel pop closer "Let's Talk It Over," an Aretha-inspired "Silly, Silly Fool," and the Bacharach-styled ballad "Joe." These get topped off by the upbeat Jackson 5 knockoff "Bad Case of the Blues" and covers of two of Jerry Butler's best Mercury hits, "Lost" and "A Brand New Me." Along with Dusty in Memphis and her early You Don't Have to Say You Love Me record, Brand New Me figures into Springfield's handful of really top-notch albums. ~ Stephen Cook, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Sometimes memories distort or inflate the quality of recordings deemed legendary, but in the case of Dusty in Memphis, the years have only strengthened its reputation. The idea of taking England's reigning female soul queen to the home of the music she had mastered was an inspired one. The Jerry Wexler/Tom Dowd/Arif Mardin production and engineering team picked mostly perfect songs, and those that weren't so great were salvaged by Springfield's marvelous delivery and technique. This set has definitive numbers in "So Much Love," "Son of a Preacher Man," "Breakfast in Bed," "Just One Smile," "I Don't Want to Hear About It Anymore," and "Just a Little Lovin'" and three bonus tracks: an unreleased version of "What Do You Do When Love Dies," "Willie & Laura Mae Jones" and "That Old Sweet Roll (Hi-De-Ho)." It's truly a disc deserving of its classic status. ~ Ron Wynn , All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Where Am I Going is a phenomenal album by Dusty Springfield, and though it doesn't have any American chart hits made famous by the icon, it would have been a blessing had every single performance here conquered the Top 40. The British version contains 12 tracks, while the U.S. counterpart, entitled The Look of Love, has 11, four of which are not on the vinyl version of this: "Small Town Girl," "What It's Gonna Be," "Look of Love," and "Give Me Time." That means the U.K. fans got five tracks not available on The Look of Love. To further complicate things, the CD version contains three bonus tracks, including the Goffin/King tune "Don't Forget About Me" from Dusty in Memphis, "Give Me Time" from the British pressing of this, and "Time After Time." The All Music Guide lists John Franz and Jerry Ragovoy as the producers, while the original album version lists nine arrangers, conductors, and directors, but gives no production credit. The LP cover is great -- a black and white of a smiling Springfield with wide-brimmed hat, mini skirt, and a comic book quotation in psychedelic off-pink and orange stating Where Am I Going. The music inside with strings and orchestration is a relentless delight. The Pat Williams arrangement of Bobby Hebb's "Sunny" with conductor Peter Knight reveals a touch of the James Bond riff, a definite sign of the times. One can hear the wondrous voices of Madeline Bell and Lesley Duncan, the backing voices blending perfectly with the orchestration in songs like "I Can't Wait Until I See My Baby's Face" and "Don't Let Me Lose This Dream." "Where Am I Going?" is as perfectly surreal as its title suggests -- imagine Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music twirling around in the windmills of Springfield's mind. This is not the driving pop of "I Only Want to Be With You" or "Wishin' & Hopin'," this is symphonic adult contemporary. "They Long to Be Close to You" is the serious and dramatic blues that the Carpenters aspired to develop. "Welcome Home" is out of this world rhythm & blues told with authority. It and other tracks from Where Am I Going? puts Springfield in that elite class reserved for the best of Janis Joplin, Etta James, and Ella Fitzgerald -- female vocalists who found notes in niches of songs that were unavailable to lesser mortals. While Springfield was filling the airwaves in America with "The Son of a Preacher Man" toward the end of 1968, a band called Vanilla Fudge had "Take Me for a Little While" on the U.S. charts, but their disc was issued in July of 1967 and their success in the States was a delayed reaction. Dusty Springfield takes that great composition and turns it into snappy pop with an amazing vocal. Add "If You Go Away" and the musicians on these grooves take the listener on a wild ride running the gamut of genres without disrupting Where Am I Going?'s flow. This is a tremendous and often forgotten masterpiece in the repertoire of Dusty Springfield which deserves more attention. It truly is the record which keeps on giving. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
A true mixed bag, from the sensual title track to the melodramatic "If You Go Away," and some fine soul stylings in between, most notably "Small Town Girl" (check out the choruses) and "I've Got a Good Thing." The latter is one of four choice bonus tracks on this, the last of Springfield's Philips albums to be released in America (she signed with Atlantic in the USA soon after, and the label declined to release most of her Philips output here) -- "I'll Try Anything" makes its first U.S. appearance in stereo, and the CD ends with the previously unissued, very dramatic "It's Over." ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
