Dusty!: Queen of the Postmods - Hardcover

Randall, Annie J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195329430 ISBN 13: 9780195329438

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2008

Synopsis

Dubbed the "White Queen of Soul," singer Dusty Springfield became the first British soloist to break into the U.S. Top Ten music charts with her 1964 hit "I Only Want To Be With You"--a pop classic followed by many others, including "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" and "Son of a Preacher Man." Today she is usually placed within the history of the Beatles-led "British Invasion" or seen as a devoted acolyte of Motown. In this penetrating look at her music and career, Annie J. Randall shows how Springfield's contributions transcend the narrow limits of those descriptions and how this middle-class former convent girl became perhaps the unlikeliest of artists to achieve soul credibility on both sides of the Atlantic.
Randall reevaluates Springfield's place in sixties popular music through close investigation of her performances as well as interviews with her friends, peers, professional associates, and longtime fans. As the author notes, the singer's unique look--blonde beehive wigs and heavy black mascara--became iconic of the mid-sixties postmodern moment in which identity scrambling and camp pastiche were the norms in swinging London's pop culture. Randall places Springfield within this rich cultural context, focusing on the years from 1964 to 1968, when she recorded her biggest international hits and was a constant presence on British television. The book pays special attention to Springfield's close collaboration and friendship with American gospel singer Madeline Bell, the distinctive way Springfield combined US soul and European melodrama to achieve her own musical style and stage presence, and how her camp sensibility figured as a key element of her artistry.

About this title

About the Author

Annie J. Randall is Associate Professor of Musicology at Bucknell University. The coauthor of Puccini and 'The Girl': History and Reception of Girl of the Golden West and editor of Music, Power, and Politics, she is Vice-President of the International Society for the Study of Popular Music-US branch and Co-Editor of the Music/Culture Series of Wesleyan University Press.

Reviews

Born Mary O’Brien to a middle-class British family, Dusty Springfield would go on to a career that spanned England and the U.S. as a pop and soul singer, eventually earning the title of “white queen of soul.” Music scholar Randall examines how Dusty, through her voice and her camp personality, transcended the boundaries of race, sex, class, and even nationality, although she has become marginalized in histories of pop music of the 1960s. Citing Henry Louis Gates Jr., Nelson George, and others, Randall explores Springfield’s career in the context of cultural appropriation at a time when more and more white musicians were getting rich from copying the sound and style of black American music. She traces that movement across the U.S. and into Britain in the 1960s and the explosion back across the waters of the British revolution in music that included the Beatles. Randall draws on archival research and interviews with friends, fans, and fellow performers. Photographs and graphics, including detailed instructions on how Dusty achieved her bouffant, add to the story of a pop icon. --Vanessa Bush

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195329430
• ISBN 13: 9780195329438
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 219