Elly Roberts reviews
Dusty Springfield: Full Circle
Distributed by
Universal Pictures
- Cat.no: 8234170
- Released: March 2006
- Format: DVD 5
- Rating: 6/10
- Running time: 60 minutes
- Region: 2, PAL
- Fullscreen: 4:3
- Sound: Dolby Stereo 2.0
- Classification: E (Exempt)
- Languages: English
- Retail price: £9.99
- Extras: None
- Songs included: Son Of A Preacher Man, I Only Want To Be With You, In
Private, Nowhere To Run, Dancing In The Streets, Some Of Your Lovin', The
Look Of Love, I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself and more.
From frumpy folkie to panda-eyed pop star, Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien
(aka Dusty Springfield) became one of Britain's leading vocalists
and best musical exports.
In her formative years she was exposed to an
eclectic 'songbook' by her parents, even though her dad was a "Beethoven
nut". On leaving folk trio The Springfields (with brother Tom and Tim Field)
in 1963, she scored several trans-Atlantic hits, regularly being voted the
UK's top female singer. Between November 1963 and November 1995 she charted
26 singles, with only one chart topper - You Don't Have To Say You Love Me
in March '66. She also registered 12 albums, the highest being Golden Hits,
a number one, in the same year.
This light-hearted 1994 documentary, with guest appearances by French and
Saunders as spoof interviewers and the lady herself, we get an easy stroll
through her highly successful career. She openly explains the crucial
musical directions and decisions that expanded her repertoire and fame.
Featuring many of her best known songs, there's some scary hair,
eye-make-up, dresses and even scarier TV studio sets from the 60s and 70s.
Ranging from the NME Poll Winners show (circa early '60s) to her own
'Dusty' shows, which includes a 'flickering' duet with Jimi Hendrix on Inez
and Charlie Foxx's Mockingbird (the only known existing footage) to a
sublime duet with Burt Bacharach.
She doesn't reveal much of her private
life, but relishes the opportunity to explain her eclectic choice of songs
that served her well. Key to her success, as you'll see, was her
fearlessness in tackling ballads to powerhouse Motown classics like Nowhere
to Run, Heatwave and Dancing In The Street, which brought her the tag of 'white lady
of Soul'. Following considerable chart absence in the '80s (she lived in
Holland from '73 -'89), she re-emerged in a blaze of glory on the Pet Shop
Boys' hit What Have I Done To Deserve This in '87.
Snippets include duets with emerging Soul legend Marvin Gaye, Tom Jones, and
Dame Edna.
After a lengthy battle with cancer, she died in 1999 in England, just before
her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and two months after
receiving an OBE.
Review & concert pics copyright © Elly Roberts, 2004-2010.