Neither compliation takes the obvious tack that has, after all, already been well mined by other 90's anthologies and reissues. Love Songs is just that - a 16-song set that opens with the impossible torch of "The Look of Love" then meanders through the next four years' worth of fragile romance and impassioned hearts, touching familiar bases on occasion ("Son of A Preacher Man," "Spooky") but it's just as prone to dig into the archives.

Dating from three years later than the bulk of Love Songs, Beautiful Soul marks the return of the long-demanded (but not particularly long-loved) Cameo album, recorded in 1973 at a time when Springfield's profile was at it's lowest ebb ever - a sad fact we are reacquainted with by the inclusion, too, of nine unreleased songs intended for her next album, Longing, but scrapped when the album itself was abandoned.

Personal problems and chemical difficulties were already looming large in her life, even as the sessions (with producer Brooks Arthur) got underway. Matters only worsened as the sessions continued and, when Springfield finally took her leave of the studio, with several tracks still painfully unfinished, it wasn't only the album she was leaving behind. She quit performing as well, launching into a retirement that ultimately lasted three years.

Despite this, and despite the CD being blessed with two of the least flattering cover photographs (front and back) in the entire Springfield portfolio, Longing turns out to be a remarkable album. Her voice is fragile, cracking, and painful, and the songs follow suit. Maybe Longing never will be spoken of in the same hushed, awed reverence as postcards from the edge such as Neil Young's Tonight's The Night or Marianne Faithfull's Rich Kid Blues, but behind Arthur's attemps to sweeten the pill with orchestration and lush arrangements, there is an ugly void that simply cannot be cloaked and that Springfield's choice of material would only unwrap if it could be. "Exclusively For Me" and "Make The Man Love Me" (one of several tracks re-created using Springfield's original rehearsal vocal) are haunting and hurt in equal doses, while Janis Ian's "In The Winter" is simply an icy blast of desertion and drama. Hear it and weep.

The original artwork for Dusty Springfield's aborted 1974 album
which was first entitled Elements, and then Longing. Nine of the ten tracks
from this album appear on Hip-O's release Beautiful Soul: the ABC/Dunhill Collection

Neither of these collections offer up the "best" of Dusty Springfield in the sense that accountants and sales executives would recognize; neither, beyond the handful of hits mentioned earlier, contain anything of even remotely ground-shaking commercial resonance. But music should be worth more than that, and the very existence of these two collections suggests that a few other people believe that it does. If you want the golden oldies you know and love, look elsewhere. But if you just want something to love, start here.

Dave Thompson
Goldmine
June 2001

When Dusty Springfield, OBE, passed away in March 1999, in time-honored fashion, reissues and compilations of her work began to appear. Beautiful Soul might at first seem to be just another timely release by a cynical record company, but from a fan's perspective, there's a lot more to this album than a spot of post-mortem cashing-in.

Beautiful Soul features material recorded by Dusty Springfield in the early '70s for the American ABC/Dunhill label and it will no doubt please long-time devotees on two counts. For starters, it marks the first CD repackaging of her long-out-of-print 1973 gem Cameo. More importantly, though, Beautiful Soul brings together for the first time nine tracks recorded in 1974 that were to have been included on Longing, her unreleased follow-up to Cameo.

In 1972, the queen of so-called blue-eyed soul left her native London for Los Angeles. Although this enabled her to realize childhood dreams of living in California, there was also a pragmatic dimension to the move since it would permit her to concentrate on the US side of her career. Springfield had enjoyed enormous solo success in America since her 1964 hits with "I Only Want to Be with You" and Bacharach and David's "Wishin' and Hopin'", but by the end of the decade her status had begun to diminish.

With the benefit of hindsight, this decline in popularity seems supremely ironic. In 1969 Springfield had released Dusty in Memphis, an album that, arguably, still stands as the most accomplished fusion of pop and soul by a British female artist. In its own time, however, it didn't make a significant impact on the charts and, following the commercial disappointment of the critically acclaimed A Brand New Me (1970), Springfield's prospects at the start of a new decade did not seem promising.

Having signed to the ABC/Dunhill label, Springfield began recording Cameo in Los Angeles during the summer of 1972. The in-vogue duo Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter - who were also overseeing the post-Motown career of the Four Tops - produced the album and penned five of its twelve tracks. With its big orchestral pop-soul configurations of strings, horns, and female backing vocals, Cameo is very much of its time. Although that sound has certainly become hip again in a kitschy way and as fodder for pastiche trip-hop renderings, history hasn't looked favorably on the kind of lushness that characterizes much of Cameo.

But while, for the most part, such arrangements haven't traveled particularly well beyond the late '60s and early '70s, on Cameo Springfield's unique vocal sensibility invests the proceedings with a measure of timelessness, in much the same way as Scott Walker's inimitable vocal authority conferred eternal cool on his own exercises in symphonic pop.

In places, Lambert and Potter bring a more explicitly Motown feel to Cameo. This manifests itself most of all on the up-tempo Ashford and Simpson number "I Just Wanna Be There," which could be a Jackson 5 song if you ignore Springfield's vocals (which of course you can't).

The album's dual highlights are the plaintive "Who Gets Your Love" and a majestic version of Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey" that evokes the legendary sound of Dusty in Memphis. In both cases, amid the lush arrangements, Springfield's voice emerges in all its husky sweet glory as the most affecting instrument of all.

Despite its positive critical reception, Cameo sold poorly. And although "Tupelo Honey" was the obvious candidate for a single, Dunhill released "Who Gets Your Love" and "Learn to Say Goodbye", neither of which was a hit. Years later, Springfield herself commented that her lack of input regarding matters such as single selection was symptomatic of a larger lack of creative control that she experienced during the making of Cameo.

That loss of control also translated to Springfield's personal life. She was feeling progressively alienated in Los Angeles and her dream of California was turning sour as she became increasingly mired in drugs, drink, and self-doubt. Sadly, the projected follow-up album, Longing, was never released. Although the cover art was completed, a catalogue number was assigned, and advertisements were run in Billboard in late 1974, the album was ultimately shelved. Popular accounts suggest it was nixed in equal measure by Dunhill, who were reticent to release it owing to the relative failure of its predecessor, and by Springfield's inability to finish it, owing to her personal problems. (Subsequently, Springfield disappeared into the wilderness of the mid-'70s, reappearing in 1978 with It Begins Again.)

The sessions for Longing began in New York in July 1974 with producer Brooks Arthur. Arthur was familiar with Springfield and her work, having been a studio engineer on her Philips sessions eight years earlier, and for this project he felt that more introspective singer-songwriter material would provide an ideal context for her talents to shine.

While the numbers recorded for Longing might not rank alongside Springfield's truly memorable songs, they nevertheless attest to her unparalleled ability to inhabit others' material and to inscribe it with emotional depth and complexity. Outstanding in that regard are her version of Chi Coltrane's "Turn Me Around" and her beautifully dramatic rendition of Janis Ian's "In the Winter". Equally compelling are her treatments of Colin Blunstone's "Exclusively for Me" and Barry Manilow's "I Am Your Child." (Manilow himself contributes piano to the track.)

Remarkably, while some of the tracks from the Longing sessions were in fact unfinished, that's not immediately apparent. For example, it's hard to tell that the vocals on the joyous rendering of "A Love Like Yours" - first recorded by Martha & the Vandellas, whom Springfield had championed in Britain a decade earlier - are from a rehearsal version.

Being a consummate perfectionist, Dusty Springfield would probably not have considered the songs gathered on Beautiful Soul as her greatest achievements. Certainly, Cameo and Longing don't reach the dizzy heights of Dusty in Memphis, but to these mortal ears, much of this material sounds wonderful. This is especially true of the tracks from Longing, which, for the most part, are well worth the nearly 30-year wait.

(Note for the completists: Reworked versions of "A Love Like Yours" and "Turn Me Around" appeared on It Begins Again and "I Am Your Child" was included on the b-side of the 1977 single "Let Me Love You Once Before You Go". The four-CD box-set, Simply Dusty (2000), featured "Exclusively for Me", "Turn Me Around", "In the Winter", and "Home to Myself" from the Longing sessions.)

Wilson Neate

Justin Hartung

Though she always stood beehive and shoulders above the flock of 60's pop songbirds, Dusty found herself in a place all her own after 1969's watermark Dusty In Memphis.

Leaving Atlantic, Springfield signed with ABC Dunhill and was quickly teamed with songwriters/producers Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter to bring a smoother, more soulful sound to her passionate pop than the bluesy sensuality of Memphis. 1972's Cameo, despite stellar tunes and seductive performances like "Who Gets Your Love," "Easy Evil," "Mama's Little Girl," "Comin and Goin'," Ashford and Simpson's "I Just Wanna Be There" and a knockout version of Van Morrison's romantic vision "Tupelo Honey" did not become the smash follow-up all had hoped.

The rarely-daunted Dusty returned to the studio in 1974 to record the never completed and never released Longing with producer Brooks Arthur (who had engineered many of her 60's sides and was in the midst of producing Janis Ian's Between The Lines and overseeing fledgling recordings by Bruce Springsteen). Choosing to emphasize Dusty's intimate and vulnerable timbre, they recorded more emotionally complex material like the lonely opener "Exclusively For Me," Ian's moving "In The Winter," Mann and Weil's "Make The Man Love Me" and the very progressive (for its time) and delicate paean to a lesbian affair "Beautiful Soul," which Dusty explores with both acute sensitivity and sadness.

Personal problems and substance abuse prohibited Dusty from completing Longing and resulted in a three year absence from the music business. Beautiful Soul manages to faithfully and respectfully anthologize this otherwise forgotten period in her brilliant and beautiful career.

Mike Jurkovic

The album title and its subheading tell only part of the story. These 1972 and 1974 sessions have been difficult to find -- only a few have been released on Dusty's 1998 triple disc box -- and many have never before been heard. In the early '70s, Brit Springfield signed with the American-based ABC imprint and moved to California to work on her US career. Only one album was released from those sessions, 1973's Cameo, which makes its CD debut here in its entirety. Additional work was done for a prospective follow-up, Longing, but the results -- some of which were rough mixes -- were shelved. Those nine tunes make their first appearance here, pushing the disc to 20 tracks and over an hour of music.

But it's not quantity, it's quality, and although this isn't Springfield's most rootsy work, on par with her '60s classic Dusty In Memphis, it's perhaps a more typical musical portrait of the singer. With lush orchestrations, top session players - including a young Barry Manilow, who also pens some touching liner notes - and sympathetic production, Springfield applies her emotional, honey-sandpaper voice to a wide variety of songs written by Van Morrison, Ashford and Simpson, The Zombies' Colin Blunstone, and the popular '70s songwriting team of Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter. While some of the production is a bit heavy-handed, Dusty's phenomenal vocals and heartfelt delivery make even the least impressive tunes worth hearing. Like Aretha Franklin, anything she sings takes on her distinctive trademark, and even on the few rough, unfinished takes, she exudes an affecting honesty.

Certainly not the place to start a Dusty Springfield library, Beautiful Soul is an essential and previously missing link in the singer's phenomenal 30-year career. Its smooth, typically '70s pop style takes some getting used to, but the album proves that the incredible Springfield was always a little better than her material. It remains an enjoyable and fascinating window into the soul of one of the era's best and most underappreciated artists.

Hal Horowitz

Both Elvis Costello and Elton John, a couple of guys who know their musical history and a thing or two about pop records in general, deify Dusty. Her stock's been rising lately, with a RRHOF induction and some long overdue reissues, but she's still an underappreciated singer - nobody's ever exceeded her soulfulness or sexiness. The first 11 tracks on Beautiful Soul - a reference to both the music and the singer, no doubt - are from her 1973 LP, Cameo, which featured session greats like Hal Blaine, Carol Kaye, and Larry Carlton. It's lush and full of soul. Highlights include Ashford & Simpson's "I Just Wanna Be There" and a perfect and aching version of Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey." The last nine tracks, all previously unreleased, were recorded for her never finished Elements LP, which was retitled Longing - it was even assigned a catalog number and listed in Billboard ads before being canned. There's not a damn thing wrong with the tracks - Martha & The Vandellas' Holland-Dozier-Holland penned "A Love Like Yours" and Mann & Weil's "Make The Man Love Me" are particular standouts - so the claim that it was abandoned because of Dusty's personal problems, and not because of musical ones, rings true. At least we have it now.

John F. Butland

Thanks to Ralph Covino and Grant Whittingham for first posting these reviews via DustyMail.