6. Dusty SpringfieldDusty In Memphis
It’s obvious… but great albums are obvious, aren’t they? Dusty was very much a pioneer for bringing soul music over here, to the UK, so it makes sense that she went to Memphis to do this. Look at the personnel on this: it has The Sweet Inspirations on backing vocals, and Jerry Wexler, Arif Mardin and Tom Dowd involved in the production. Fuck, fuck, fuck. That’s a great team. Wowzers. Jerry Wexler did the same with Aretha Franklin, at Atlantic: he really knew how to let an artist shine. This album has got ‘Just A Little Lovin”, oh my god, which I love. And ‘The Windmills Of Your Mind’. And obviously ‘Son Of A Preacher Man’, the classic. And ‘No Easy Way Down’, an amazing Gerry Goffin/Carole King song. And I really relate to that one, because I always think it’s a bit of a manic depressive anthem: ‘Your toy balloon has sailed in the sky, love/ But now it must fall to the ground/ Now your sad eyes reveal just how badly you feel/ ‘Cause there is no easy way down…’ Like it’s about trying to climb down off a manic high. I’m not sure what the impact would have been at the time, because I can’t put myself in that context, and it wasn’t a huge commercial success and remained out of print for a long time, but it’s just a great album with great songs, and Dusty Springfield’s probably the best vocalist, probably the vocalist, of all time. She’s just phenomenal. I heard a story that when Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys invited her into the studio, she was really insecure and said ‘What do you want me to do?’ And he said, ‘Just be Dusty Springfield.’
