Dusty Springfield: Heart and Soul : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Since the sixties, when Dusty Springfield was London's sturdiest girl hitmaker, her distressed mezzo-soprano has magnetized listeners. As shown by this anthology of Seventies and Eighties duets, soundtrack songs and live recordings, she could go uptown and still retain her white-hot rock-soul fire; for instance, when Burt Bacharach produced Springfield on "The Look of Love," the result was her greatest track. That's why this often showbiz-y collection works: Springfield turns "(But It's a) Nice Dream" into pure regret, sings the splendid hell out of "Private Number" with Spencer Davis and, onstage, grabs -- authoritatively -- the Drifters' "Up on the Roof." Her voice was like a Ferrari engine, great at 135 mph but sublime at 70 because of the sensed possibilities of wilder speeds.