7th February 2021
What extraordinary nerve she had, risking her career to record my song, “Beautiful Soul,” in 1974.
How was it that Dusty Springfield became acquainted with this lesbian love song? I performed the song for the first time in concert as part of a day-long event called “Woman-Made Day” at the Los Angeles Women’s Building, celebrating publication of Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie’s New Woman’s Survival Catalog. An audience member recorded my set on a small cassette recorder and shared it with her friend, Dusty Springfield.
This is how things “happened” in the early Women’s Music movement: word of mouth — while passing bootleg cassette tapes from woman to woman, from one community to another, city to city, across the country and back.
Months later, I was in New York City for a gig at a women’s coffeehouse when I got the call. My host and friend, the brilliant cartoonist Carol Clement, handed me the phone. Dusty Springfield on the other line. “We’re in White Plains in the studio recording your song. Would you like to come up and join us?” My heart stopped. My ears rang. Dusty Springfield!!!! “Ooooh, Baby!” my molecules sang.
However, the timing of the session was such that I would have to blow off my performance at the coffee house in order to go. I was at the beginning of building an audience and finding my place in a very fresh network and industry we were calling Women’s Music. I did hesitate — and then said, No, I could not come because I had a gig.
It was 27 years before we got to hear what she did with my song. The recording she made in 1974 was released posthumously in 2001 on a CD named Beautiful Soul — The ABC/Dunhill Collection on Hip-O Records. I must say I was surprised and very pleased to hear that even with the most sophisticated arrangers at her disposal, she chose to use the style and substance of my arrangement off that cassette tape.
The New Yorker magazine published a feature in early February announcing the release of a several songs Dusty recorded on Atlantic Records called Dusty Springfield: The Complete Atlantic Singles 1968–1971. Here’s the last paragraph of the piece by Amanda Petrusich:
“The music Dusty made with producer Jerry Wexler between 1968 and 1971 remains her deepest and most dynamic. One gets the sense that Springfield never really let herself stop thinking about how her work would be received, but, for a brief time (1968–1971), she sounded open to every possibility.”
I respectfully disagree. It was after leaving Atlantic Records that she signed with ABC/Dunhill and risked her career when she recorded “Beautiful Soul.” What is worth saying at this moment is that after recording Dusty in Memphis with Wexler, a couple of years later, she walked back into a studio in White Plains, New York, and sang her life out. For reasons unclear, the song was never released during her lifetime.
Visit my YouTube Channel to hear her inimitable performance of “Beautiful Soul.” I have also posted three other renditions: one from Meg & Cris Live at Carnegie Hall, my original arrangement from Margie Adam. Songwriter., and finally, an instrumental version in medley with “Tender Lady” from my second solo piano recording, Soon & Again.
Enjoy!
