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Dusty Springfield

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Dusty Springfield was born April 16, 1939, in West Hampstead, London as Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien. She was a musical icon, whose music spanned genres and whose influence spanned generations and across oceans. Her father was an avid fan of and , and he would beat out rhythms on the back of her hand, asking the young girl to guess which piece of music that was. She was brought up listening to a wide variety of music. Her mother would bring her to the movies at any opportunity. This was a foundation for an appreciation for the arts.



Dusty herself was a big fan of Peggy Lee. When she was asked at age ten what she wanted to be, she said “I want to be a blues singer!”

Her first foray into the music scene was when she joined the British vocal group the Lana Sisters in 1958. Over the next couple of years she recorded several singles with them. In 1960, Mary and her brother Dion and Tim Reid formed a folk trio called The Springfields. She took the name Dusty Springfield and her brother became Tom Springfield. They became popular in Great Britian, and by 1962 The Springfields had some success in the U.S. as well.

While on tour in the U.S., Dusty fell in love with the Motown sound, especially the girl groups. Needing to escape the controlling influence of her older brother, she left The Springfields in 1963 to become one of only a handful, if not the reigning queen, of white women soul artists. When someone had overslept for a show where the Martha Reeves And The Vandellas were singing backup for Marvin Gaye, Dusty was quoted as saying “…So I got to be the third Vandella, and that, to this day, is the biggest thrill of my life.”
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