Dusty Springfield

BBC - Definitely Dusty (1999)
HDTV | 1024x576 | .MKV/AVC @ 1633 Kbps | 58mn 22s | Audio: English AAC 128 kbps, 2 channels | Subs: English | 682 MiB
Genre: Documentary | Biography | Music

Documentary looking at the life and work of soul and pop diva Dusty Springfield, singer of such classics as You Don't Have to Say You Love Me and Son of a Preacher Man who was equally famous for her trademark panda eyes and blonde beehive. Using archive footage and interviews shot in the UK and the US, it charts her progress from plain Catholic schoolgirl to glamorous star and ventures behind the extravagant image to reveal a complex and vulnerable character. The programme features interviews with fellow musicians from a career spanning four decades including Elton John, Burt Bacharach, Neil Tennant, Lulu and Martha Reeves. Dusty's protective inner circle of friends have never spoken about her on camera before. Dusty's personal secretary for her entire solo career, Pat Rhodes, her manager Vicky Wickham, ardent fan-turned-backing singer Simon Bell and others talk about the highs and lows of the woman they knew and loved.

Two CDs devoted to the Springfields is probably a bit much for casual fans. This set could likely have been trimmed to one 70-minute CD, leaving out "Silver Dollar," "Row Row Row" and some of the other lesser material from their first album, although it is strange in an enlightening way to hear Dusty singing the latter, a pre-World War I standard more suited to the likes of Ruth Etting. What's good is that none of the high spots are left out, including "Allentown Jail," the ethereal "Far Away Place," "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" (natch), the delightful "Little Boat" (the best of their international numbers), and the gorgeous, near-British beat style "Come On Home," where Dusty starts to show off some of the soulfulness that would later identify her voice. The notes are well detailed, and the mastering is flawless.

The ultimate compendium of a half century of the best music, now revised and updated. 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die is a highly readable list of the best, the most important, and the most influential pop albums from 1955 through today. Carefully selected by a team of international critics and some of the best-known music reviewers and commentators, each album is a groundbreaking work seminal to the understanding and appreciation of music from the 1950s to the present. Included with each entry are production details and credits as well as reproductions of original album cover art. Perhaps most important of all, each album featured comes with an authoritative description of its importance and influence.

A ‘Complete Albums Collection’ box set of Canadian-American rock band Buffalo Springfield output will be released on vinyl and CD at the end of June. Although the band, which featured Neil Young and Stephen Stills, only issued three studio albums, the Complete Albums Collection will be a five-disc set since it includes 1966’s self-titled debut in both stereo and the band-preferred dedicated mono mix (which Young and Stills insisted on, after disliking the original stereo mix). The follow-up – 1967’s Buffalo Springfield Again – is also included in both dedicated mono and stereo. 1968’s Last Time Around (stereo only) completes this box.

For her 34th studio album, Anne Murray recorded a set of duets with many of her favorite female singers, from Nelly Furtado to Sarah Brightman. There are a number of country duet partners here, such as Shania Twain, Emmylou Harris, and Martina McBride, but there are even more pop-oriented women singing with Murray, encompassing the likes of Celtic Woman and Celine Dion. This makes perfect sense, as Murray's always straddled the pop-country fence effortlessly. Her singing on Duets: Friends and Legends is just as effortless. Now in her fifth decade as an active recording artist, her voice hasn't lost a beat, sounding just as pure and clear as it did on 1970s "Snowbird" (done here with a surprisingly relaxed, easy vocal from Brightman, sounding for all the world like a young Olivia Newton-John). The majority of these songs are ones which have been sizeable hits for Murray in the past, most of which work nicely recast as duets, or at least showcases for harmony singing.

The British Invasion was a cultural phenomenon of the mid-1960s, when rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom and other aspects of British culture became popular in the United States and significant to the rising "counterculture" on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Pop and rock groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Kinks, the Dave Clark Five, Herman's Hermits, the Hollies, the Swinging Blue Jeans, the Animals, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and the Searchers were at the forefront of the "invasion".