Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien, OBE (16 April 1939 – 2 March 1999), known as Dusty Springfield, was a leading pop singer and entertainer. Of all the female British pop artists of the 1960s, she made one of the biggest impressions on the U.S. market. Owing to her distinctive sensual sound, she was one of the most notable white soul artists.
Born to an Irish Roman Catholic family that loved music, Mary O'Brien learned to sing at home. Dusty Springfield began her solo career in 1963 with the upbeat pop hit "I Only Want To Be With You". Her following singles charted on both sides of the Atlantic: "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself", "Wishin' and Hopin'", and "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" . A fan of American pop music, she campaigned to bring the little-known soul singers to a wider U.K. audience by devising and hosting the first British performances of the top-selling Motown Records artists in 1965. Her song "The Look of Love", written for Dusty Springfield by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, was featured in the film Casino Royale and nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song in 1967.
The sudden changes of pop music in the mid-1960s left girl singers out of fashion. To boost her credibility as a soul artist, Dusty Springfield went to Memphis, Tennessee to record an album of pop and soul music with the Atlantic Records' main production team. The LP Dusty in Memphis earned Springfield a nomination for a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1970 and received the Grammy Hall of Fame award in 2001. International readers and viewers polls list the record among the one hundred greatest albums of all time. The LP's standout track "Son of a Preacher Man" was an international Top 10 hit in 1969. Springfield's low period after the album ended in 1987, when collaborations with the Pet Shop Boys returned her to the Top 20 of the U.K. and U.S. charts with the singles "What Have I Done to Deserve This?", "Nothing Has Been Proved", and "In Private". In 1995, Dusty Springfield was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Dusty Springfield scored 18 singles in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1964–1970. She was voted the Top British Female Artist in the New Musical Express reader's poll in 1964, 1965, and 1968. Interest in her early output was revived in 1994, due to the inclusion of "Son of a Preacher Man" on the soundtrack of the Quentin Tarantino movie, Pulp Fiction. She is an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the UK Music Hall of Fame. Dusty Springfield has been named among the best 25 female rock artists of all time in several international readers and artists polls.
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