32 - Dusty Springfield with Lucy O'Brien (West Hampstead)

Join us to take a deep dive into the life & career of LBGTQ icon Dusty Springfield - starting with her early life first in West Hampstead in London & then briefly in High Wycombe, Dusty attended a convent school but reinvented herself after leaving school into the glamorous blonde icon she became famous as.

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When our guest biographer Lucy O'Brien first wrote about Dusty in the late 1980s little was known about her but her legend has grown exponentially since - we talk about her interest in Hollywood film stars & what might have triggered her transformation from the shy & slightly plain Mary O'Brien to the larger than life Dusty Springfield.

Dusty joined singing act the Lana Sisters in 1959 & they sign to Fontana - a year later she leaves to join The Springfields with her brother Tom Springfield. The band achieve success with hits in the UK & unusually for the time, the US.

Sun Records boss Shelby Singleton was among the first to identify her R&B potential & brought The Springfields to Nashville to record, but not long after a show at the London Palladium in late 1963 Dusty leaves the band.

Within a month her first solo release 'I Only Want To Be With You' reaches number 4 in the charts - her debut album A Girl Called Dusty follows in 1964. A track from the album 'You Don't Own Me' was recently used as the intro music for Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour - we talk about why we think it may have been used.

Dusty helped introduce Motown to the UK & attended the first UK tour & championed the label - we also talk about the influence of her key collaborators Bacharach & David, Goffin & King, Ivor Raymonde & more.

She was the foremost female of the British Invasion of 1964 & scored a huge hit with 'You Don't Have To Say You Love Me' in 1966 & a Dusty Springfield track became a Northern Soul classic under the name Patti Austin but remained unreleased until the 1970s.

By 1968 the hits weren't coming as easily as before which leads Dusty to turn to America to reinvent her sound.

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