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ATLANTIC SD-8214  DUSTY SPRINGFIELD DUSTY IN MEMPHIS 1969 VG++

COVER IS VG++ W / A CUT-OUT SLIT

RECORD IS VG++ W / A FEW LIGHT SURFACE / PAPER SCUFFS- STEREO 1969

This is the first printing from 1969. The album features one of the singer's top 10 UK hits, Son of a Preacher Man. Although it did not garner significant commercial success upon its original release, and remained forgotten for many years, Dusty in Memphis is now frequently included in lists of the greatest albums of all time.

A commercial disaster on both sides of the Atlantic and the album that effectively ended Dusty Springfield's career, Dusty in Memphis has taken on a new life since its 1969 release. Rightly so. This is arguably the greatest white soul album ever and the definitive release by a relentlessly underrated artist! Recorded in 1968, five years after Springfield debuted on the British chart with 'I Only Want to Be With You', this is the sound of a 29-year-old star finding a new voice. A true voice. Seductive and innocent, adult and childlike, ethereal, dramatic, playful - often all at once - and from the low purrs to the soaring heights, these vocal performances are the most affecting Springfield would ever commit to record.  Springfield's fittingly titled previous album, Where Am I Going, had not been a huge hit, and she found herself being edged into the cabaret market. So she signed to the US-based soul label Atlantic, but with one proviso: that Jerry Wexler would produce the album. In the 1940s, Brooklyn-born Wexler, then a journalist on Billboard , had coined the term 'rhythm and blues' to replace the magazine's dubious 'Race Records' chart, before joining Atlantic as vice-president. Springfield's contract cited Wexler as a 'key man', meaning that if Wexler declined to produce the album, the deal was off. But Wexler, who had first heard Dusty's voice on a car radio in 1965, was in no mind to turn the project down.  The first step was to choose the songs. Wexler played Springfield 80 acetates he'd compiled; she rejected them all. Weeks later, Wexler presented Springfield with a further 20 songs. She loved every one - Goffin & King's sumptuous 'So Much Love', Randy Newman's fragile 'Just One Smile', Michel Legrand's flightily bonkers 'The Windmills of Your Mind'. Springfield didn't twig that each of these songs had, in fact, been in the pile she'd previously rejected. During the sessions at American Studios in Memphis, Springfield stayed in a suite at the Holiday Inn, Rivermont. But none of the Dusty in Memphis vocals were actually recorded in Memphis. Springfield was used to arriving at a studio to find the backing tracks already recorded. In Memphis she was recording in Wilson Pickett's vocal booth with Aretha Franklin's musicians. An obsessive soul fan, Springfield should have felt like a homecoming queen. But she hated it.  So the production moved to New York, to a studio with just the three producers present. Springfield would insist on so much backing track in her headphones that she could not hear her own vocals - heartbreaking, really, that of the four people on the planet present at the precise time that these legendary vocals were ever heard live, one of them refused to listen. But Springfield hated this album, and it took her a year to be won round. Perhaps her own indifference was contagious: it limped to Number 99 on the US album charts, and never hit the British Top 40. Only one UK single was issued, but what a choice: 'Son of a Preacher Man'.  Far from rescuing Springfield's career, Dusty in Memphis froze it in time, and she would not have another Top 40 hit for more than two decades. But for this album's army of fans, Dusty in Memphis is not only a popcultural milestone but a timeless emotional reference point.  Burn it: Son of a Preacher Man  How it felt for producer Jerry Wexler, as he commented: "The album wasn't totally ignored when it was released but it certainly never came close to achieving the prominence with which time has imbued it. Of course we had the good fortune to have a hit single, 'Son of a Preacher Man', which gave it a little extra life and the chance to percolate over the years."  'Does it sound retro? "No! Not at all - it's very crisp. The rhythm tracks are beyond category or temporal marking - they were the very best of Southern soul, so just like the original Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett tracks, they sound as good now as they did back then. Gradually the album came to the forefront to be regarded as a seminal record - now you couldn't kill it with a stick! " 'But I wonder how many people do like it. "There have always been highly evolved people who are ahead of their time - a cult of people who like good things. The fact that a few of the illuminati consider it worthy of reproduction, with remasters and re-releases, tells us nothing. To me it feels like having preserved a painting, or putting something in a vacuum-sealed case. Maybe, for the labels, it's been from a feeling of obligation and conscience, rather than a desire to make money." Side A"Just a Little Lovin'" "So Much Love" "Son of a Preacher Man""I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore""Don't Forget About Me""Breakfast in Bed" Side B"Just One Smile""The Windmills of Your Mind""In the Land of Make Believe""No Easy Way Down""I Can't Make It Alone

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