HOWZAT

This must have been heartbreaking. By 1969 she had made the courageous move to live and work in America, leaving trusted British associates such as her producer Johnny Franz behind. She next worked on an album with the Brill Building legend Jeff Barry in New York — it was never completed. Her confidence was shot by the poor sales of In Memphis and From Dusty With Love, and now she was far from home.

This, at least, gave her the courage to come out in an Evening Standard interview, knowing that the press wouldn’t be on her doorstep the next morning. “I know I’m perfectly capable of being swayed by a girl as by a boy,” she told Ray Connelly. She had been assumed gay by the media for years, and finally it was in the open. This being 1970, her profile plummeted immediately.

Years of abandoned or ill-advised projects followed, 1984 being record low for her career. Dusty signed a deal with Peter Stringfellow, who was starting a record label. He produced a single, a weak Donna Summer B-side called Sometimes Like Butterflies, and mixed it without consulting her. It was desperate. When she heard the single, Dusty hissed: “I could strangle the f*****.” Three years later, the Pet Shop Boys put her back in the Top Ten with What Have I Done to Deserve This, and her reputation has climbed steadily ever since.

What now seems most remarkable about Dusty Springfield was her self-invention. Nobody helped her to become the beehived, sequined creature seen in stark monochrome on the cover of her Greatest Hits; it came out of nowhere in much the same way as Winehouse’s impossibly piled-up hair, bright red lipstick and tattoos. When she left the Springfields at the height of their popularity in 1963, Dusty binned the stiff petticoated skirts in favour of the all-denim outfit that she wore on the cover of her debut album, A Girl Called Dusty. It told you that she was in charge, a strong woman. “I was raised on potatoes,” she later said. “I developed this front so people wouldn’t know. Because if they knew the real me, they wouldn’t like me.”

Times Archive, 1972: Dusty Springfield live at Talk of the Town

The audience roared its approval, this was the stuff of show business

Multimedia

• Dusty Springfield

While Sandie Shaw had Eve Taylor to push her into Eurovision and the indignity of Puppet on a String, and Marianne Faithfull’s manager Andrew Oldham organised a soft-porn photoshoot of her in lacy underwear, Dusty was in sole control of her public image. This would lead to the occasional ropy decision — promoting a new single on TV in 1969 she decided to wear a ludicrous red page-boy wig; the song was Am I the Same Girl, to which the obvious answer was “no”. Sartorial issues were often a problem. “Sometimes I look like a ten-cent hooker,” she said in 1984, “other times like a drag queen.”

On the other hand, her independence meant that her opinion was well respected. According to Jerry Wexler, Dusty was responsible for Atlantic signing Led Zeppelin, a recommendation of which she had no recollection when Howes reminded her: “It’s just that I get so incredibly enthusiastic about things — it was the same with Motown — I suppose somebody listens. Gee! I wish I’d got a commission. I’m really dumb!”

When I Only Want to Be With You, her first single, burst into the Top Ten in January 1964, Dusty Springfield liberated the Sandies, Lulus and Twinkles, the British Sixties beat girls, by reinventing the American girl group sound for the kids of Bradford, Bellshill and Bournemouth. More recently, fierce originals such as Kate Bush, Siouxsie Sioux and Björk all owe Dusty a debt — she was there first, she fought the war for originality and emancipation single-handedly.

For everybody else, there’s I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten. The lyric is in the same giddy vein as the Shirelles’ Will You Love Me Tomorrow, an instant crush at a party, only the singer here is no 15-year-old. She is old enough to realise that love is frightening and dangerous; few recordings convey its gut-churning highs and lows so well. The delivery is undisguised, wide open, sensual, dark and quite beautiful. And this is why Dusty Springfield’s music will never grow old.

Dusty, the singers’ singer

Duffy

“Dusty was a woman who strove for quality and, in many ways, she was ahead of her times. During the Sixties it wasn’t as straightforward as it is today to hop on a plane and make a record in America, yet she proved that geography meant nothing in search for great music.

I will probably be introducing someone’s grandchildren to Dusty’s Dusty in Memphis record. As sure as we are of her brilliance, her records and legacy will never disappear.”

Explore Music

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

• Classical

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010