Reelin' In The Years, who produced definitive Motown retrospective dvds also produced some on the British Pop Invasion of America post-Beatles and one of these was on the incomparable Dusty Springfield.
By focussing on the 1960s when Dusty had 5 US Top 20 hits (13 in the UK) it avoids the 1970s career slump, ironically when she moved to America.
Interspersing TV interviews with Dusty alongside new ones with Burt Bacharach and Dusty's backing singers Madeline Bell (in the 1960s) and Simon Bell (from the '70s and '80s), a sympathetic portrait emerges of an artist both of her time but before it: refusing to play segregated gigs in South Africa in 1964 and her uncredited production of some of her records.
It is interesting to contrast mimed performances - where passionate recorded vocals are almost sent-up by embarrased shimmying - and live performances where she is totally in the moment.
Shelf or charity shop? Dusty will be singing from the shelf for a long while. David Peck has produced another fine overview of my favourite British female singer with all her iconic 1960s anthems. A weird by-product was marvelling at the bizarre background objects the TV set designers chose to surround her with - you wonder what happened to these peculiarly-shaped objects after the show. I am happy to report many appearances of the Dusty wrist *flick*!
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