Search - Dusty Springfield :: Stay Awhile/I Only Want To Be With You

What a great 60's pop star Dusty proved to be.

gwynedwards2 | 05/03/1999

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Dusty Springfield is often thought of at her best in the soulful ballad genre and whilst I do not disagree with that point it is often forgotten what a great sixties pop star she was in the fast beat style. This album is a great reminder of her early days. As well as her famous early hits there is the classic recording of 24 Hours from Tulsa where she really sings not just the words but the emotion as well and is a real treasure. The other great track is Anyone Who Had a Heart where this song really comes to life compared to the version by Cilla Black which made number 1 in the UK. For anyone who wants to understand why Dusty was such a great star should listen to these tracks. Even the most banal numbers are sung with conviction and the unique Dusty sound is ever present."

Dusty Springfield's first U.S. album is fab!

gwynedwards2 | 03/26/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a reissue of Dusty's fab first U.S. album from 1964. This album has her hits "I Only Want to Be with You", "Stay Awhile" and "Wishin' and Hopin", but also has two more classics: Dusty's versions of "24 Hours from Tulsa" and "Anyone Who Had a Heart"-this last song here is as powerful as any she sang. Listen and see why.Dusty rules! A great voice and a great album!"

A girl called Dusty creates a fine debut even in the context

29-year old wallflower | West Lafayette, IN | 02/22/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"When one looks back on Dusty Springfield's momentous career, it still remains odd that she originally started out as simply Mary O'Brien in a group called the Springfields singing wholesome folk music. Indeed, their version of "Silver Threads & Golden Needles" was a huge hit, and certainly enough to build a career on. But supposedly when the group toured America, Mary was fascinated by the sounds of Motown & soul music, so much that she decided to change her singing style & go solo, keeping her Springfields stage name for the ride.



Of course, even in the middle of a very liberal decade like the 1960s, the idea of a White singer singing soul music was an oddity & likely not very commercial. So instead Dusty simply decided to use her new style on the latest pop music of the time, giving them a lot more life & spice than they otherwise would have had from other singers. The 1960s was also the decade in which the album went from expensive novelty to the primary form of creative expression for artists, but in 1964, that transition was still in its early stages. Most often, albums were showcases for singles & some similarly-recorded filler. Dusty's early albums followed this format, and just from its title STAY AWHILE/I ONLY WANT TO BE WITH YOU, it was clear which songs were intended to push the album's sales. However, even with the latest pop material being given the Dusty treatment, it is nevertheless interesting to see just how well she succeeds at inhabiting songs made famous by others while at the same time turning two originals into her own.



Yes, "I Only Want To Be With You" was the song that shot Dusty into the world pop stratosphere (reaching #4 in England, #12 in America), and it had all the hallmarks of a surefire hit, circa 1964: a good danceable beat, an enthusiastic vocal delivery & a chorus that would not leave your head even if you tried. However, while the song could have been recorded by any female singer & turned into just another run-of-the-mill girl-group hit, Dusty's fuller-bodied vocal leant it the right amount of soul one can expect from a White female. It has been covered countless times in the decades since, but it is safe to say the song remains Dusty's to the end.



If you thought "I Only Want To Be With You" was a perfect pop song, "Stay Awhile" at least showed how to continue the formula successfully. Coming from the same writers of the former, "Stay Awhile" leans a little more towards the Wall Of Sound side of things with enough of a pounding backbeat & sweeping orchestra to make Phil Spector wonder if he had not recorded this song himself with the Ronettes or the Crystals. While not quite the opening salvo that was its predecessor (#13 U.K., #38 U.S.), it still packs quite a punch for a song just under 2 minutes.



Naturally, those were the two songs the album set out to promote first & foremost (at least in America, while the British had an album called A GIRL CALLED DUSTY with which to first acquaint themselves with Dusty), but that did not mean the contemporary pop standards was one throwaway after another, since an artist like Dusty, who relied on material to be written for her, naturally had to turn to what was on the radio for songs to record. I am not sure if Dusty found Burt Bacharach, or vice versa, but just as he & Hal David were making Dionne Warwick into the living embodiment of their musical vision in America, Dusty began doing the same for her British audiences. "Wishin' & Hopin'" showed that Dusty could do more than just uptempo pop confections by slowing the beat down without sacrificing it altogether. Even with women's lib on the rise in the mid-1960s, such musical advice to women on how to snare a man was still commonplace, but where time has rendered most of these songs utterly sexist, Dusty's in-control delivery on this song hints at a more female-empowerment message. In other words, use your intuition to get your man, do not play hard to get. Only released as a single in America, it became Dusty's first top 10 hit (#6), and indicated just how far her creative range could extend.



Dusty takes on two other Bacharach songs with "Anyone Who Had A Heart" (a not half-bad try at a Dionne impression) & "24 Hours From Tulsa" (which lends a unique female perspective on a song that Gene Pitney had made a hit). From there, the pop covers are just a matter of which one you listen to. The Shirelles' "Mama Said" is a good example of keeping the original beat & rhythm of a proven song, but just falling short of outright plagiarism. All there is to distinguish it is the fact that Dusty is the one singing. Charlie & Inez Foxx's "Mockingbird" may have sounded like a cute idea at the time, but it shows that even Dusty is not immune to artistic stumbling with a song that sounds good while playing, but leaves little impression after it is over.



"When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes" is primarily known as The Supremes' first top 40 hit in America, but Dusty manages to create a winner for herself even while maintaining the note-for-note reproduction of most of the album's covers. It is Dusty's soulfulness & enthusiasm that wins the day. The same works for "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" (a better attempt at a Shirelles cover), Arthur Alexander's "Every Day I Have To Cry" & most especially Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me" (finally a White woman who can give this proto-feminist standard the kind of fire & brimstone it needed).



For someone who had to keep her ear to the ground for the hottest pop songs on the scene, Dusty still proved she was game at trying to write herself. "Something Special" is actually surprisingly well done for a first original song, and it makes one wonder why Dusty did not explore songwriting that much afterwards. But I suppose that can be chalked up to the interview in the liner notes where Dusty said she can "only write occasionally & very slowly."



The CD version of STAY AWHILE comes with three bonus tracks that did not make it onto the album for whatever reason. "Baby Don't You Know" & "If It Hadn't Been For You" are rather similar in sound & content, but they again show that Dusty was about more than uptempo dance-pop. Give her a chance, and she can make you feel loved. The former was released as a B-side, while the latter was canned until decades later. "Standing In The Need Of Love" is a traditional number that continues the "I Only Want To Be With You" formula, and maybe the reason it did not see the light of day at the time was because of that similarity. After two uptempo hits in a row, Dusty may have felt it was time to move on; hence, the slower, more romantic "Wishin' & Hopin'."



While singles still had plenty of clout in the pop music of the mid-1960s, the commercial viability of albums was also being discovered, even if the idea of a fully-cohesive work was still in its infancy (we were still a year or two from RUBBER SOUL, REVOLVER & PET SOUNDS, and 5 from Dusty's first truly-cohesive album DUSTY IN MEMPHIS). Even after that, the old singles-and-filler format never really went away, and would be a Dusty album staple well into later part of the decade. But while finding what contemporary pop song suited her best would be a target-shooting proposition for her for the first few years of her career, STAY AWHILE even at its bum moments proves that Dusty can be more than just as good as her last single."