Dusty Springfield

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.

Dusty Springfield recorded so much good material that it's hard to summarize her very best recordings in the space of a 12-track collection. Nevertheless, 20th Century Masters does a good job of squeezing several of her biggest songs – "I Only Want to Be With You," "Wishin' and Hopin'," "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me," "The Look of Love" – onto this collection. There are notable omissions, such as "Son of a Preacher Man" or anything from Dusty in Memphis, but that does not belong to the Universal Recording group that released this album – consequently, this only concentrates on Phillips-era recordings, and it's a pretty good snapshot of that time which, after all, gave Dusty her very biggest hits.

Several months ago I read articles on the Dusty In Memphis cd reissues and it seems to be widely accepted that the 1992 Rhino issue is the best sounding one. Earlier this year I posted the 1999 Rhino Deluxe Edition which came in second to this one. I always thought that they were the same mastering but it seems that I was wrong. I just got this out-of-print mint cd last week on eBay and I wanted to share it with you guys.

Mercury records, which controls the Phillips records catalog, has compiled this Dusty Springfield set by referring to Springfield's U.K. and U.S. chart successes from 1964 to 1967, then licensing her two biggest hits for Atlantic records, "Son of a Preacher Man" and "A Brand New Me." The result, in terms of song selection, is an excellent 20-song, 57-minute disc that includes most of her best-known material.