Dusty Springfield - Live At The BBC [2007]

Customer Reviews:

Sounds and looks great!.......2008-03-03

My dvd arrived in Australia today from the UK. I am watching it as I type this review. The audio sounds fine at this end, so I can't quite understand why others have expressed concern about the sound quality.

Didn't Dusty have a fine voice and such a bubbly personality? On this dvd there's not much talking from Dusty and no special guests, just Dusty singing LIVE at her prime.

I wish the whole world could experience just what a great singer Dusty was.

Soft spot, fond memories, but............2008-02-12

I have always had a soft spot for Dusty. As a child I thought she was stunningly beautiful and loved her music so much I was bought "I only want to be with you". So I am something of a Dusty fan. This DVD takes me back into the sixties, of being allowed to stay up and watch Dusty on the TV. From the perspective of today it is obvious she was a far more talented perfomer than I ever recall. But Dusty did fade away during her career and that makes this DVD somewhat sad as you can see this vibrant perfomer losing her way. Dusty's best years were the sixties. After that you like me, might find it gets a little tedious, and rather sad.

Stunning performances from a legend!.......2008-02-11

I was listening to the news and saw that a certain artist had won 5 Grammy's; then followed a live performance from the said artist. The evening before this i was watching this DVD from Dusty, and i melted with her powerful voice and mesmerising stage presence, singing songs that are as relevant and strong today as then.
All i can say is that to see a truly amazing performer who can actually cut it live; choose this DVD, because Dusty delivers every time!

Simply Brilliant!.......2008-01-03

In the 1960s, in an effort to ride on the coattails of the burgeoning new-fangled pop music wave, television companies snapped up the more presentable performers and gave them their own TV shows.

It became apparent that Dusty was head and shoulders the best singer, but perhaps not the best host, so her show played to her strength and comprised little more than a succession of songs sung against a cheap backdrop, with a guest spot or two to break it up. This BBC DVD release of several surviving archive tapes of these programmes shows the format and is sensational.

These are programmes from an era when material was recorded `Live' and then broadcast (and then generally wiped!) so what the viewer is seeing is effectively a live concert of 6 or so songs. No miming, no edits. What strikes you when watching these shows is not how primitive they look, but what a stunningly good singer, Dusty was. She takes on every style and musical genre with consummate ease without the need for dance troupes or tele-visual effects. The songs include showtunes, standard ballads, gospel, folk, blues, and most important of all, R&B. Nothing seems to be beyond her canon and it is captivating. How many singers do you know today who could sing live on television and cross all these boundaries in 30 minutes?

Most interesting of all is the undercurrent of subversion. Here was a white, seemingly middleclass woman appearing on the bastion of middle England; the BBC, but singing a great wodge of black American music and one wonders how this went down with the establishment of the day?

These early tapes show her at her best, just singing and entertaining us as she did so. The slow descent into relative obscurity and eventual death through cancer seems so far away at this point it makes you want to cry.

Simply...Dusty!!.......2007-11-10

Dusty recorded 4 TV series, her first two entitled "Dusty" for the BBC in 1966 and 1967, "It Must Be Dusty" for ATV in 1968 and finally "Decidedly Dusty" for the BBC again in 1969.
Presented here are the shows that have been recovered from her BBC series', as the copies held by the BBC were wiped in the 70's. What survives (that has been located so far) are three shows from her '66 series and the entire run of shows from her '67 series. Her 1968 series for ATV was also wiped, and it appears nothing from her 1969 BBC series has survived either.

But what does survive is a testament to the monumental talent that was Dusty Springfield. Her position as one of the all-time greats, and to her fans as THE all-time great - is superbly vouched for by this footage.
Without any gimmicks or on-stage pantomime antics (that Dusty's female contemporaries were wont to engage in on their own TV shows), Dusty has to do nothing more than stand in the spotlight and let her voice do the rest. This is television and performing at it's purest and most effective; today's TV producers and singers shold take note!
Dusty's ablity to vocally take command of any material she sang allowed her to move across music-genres with apparent ease, verve and distinction. Just watch her passionate performance of Jacque Brel's "If You Go Away" (in her first show of the 1967 series)and without barely the blink of a false-eyelash she launches into "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love" singing with soul and passion un-matched by any other British female singer.

Her affinity with folk-music is apparent in her definitive and moving versions of "The Water is Wide" & "My Lagan Love", her love of soul in "Nowhere To Run", "If I Lose This Dream" and "Get Ready" and her utter command of the emotional ballad in "All I See Is You", "To Love and Be Loved" and "Time After Time".

I could continue with the superlatives, but put simply - this is the finest DVD presentation of Dusty's TV work so far and every Dusty fan and music-lover should own this...you'll never look back!!
Recommended (understatement of the year)!!!!

Dusty Springfield: Live at the BBC [2007]

Average customer rating:

Dusty Springfield: Live at the BBC [2007]
Starring: Dusty Springfield
Manufacturer: Universal
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Blues | Music DVDs | Categories | DVD | Video

Concerts | Music DVDs | Categories | DVD | Video

All Music DVDs | Music DVDs | Categories | DVD | Video

DVD | Format (binding_browse-bin) | Refinements | DVD | Video
ASIN: B000V9P5PA
Release Date: 2007-11-27

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