I followed Dusty's career attentively and then one day early in 1968 I got a call from one of the music business heavies, a lawyer named Steven Weiss who happened to be a neighbour of mine in Great Neck, Long Island. He said that Dusty was coming to New York to record and would I be interested in producing her. Would I not! She was contracted to record for Atlantic with the proviso that I would be her producer. This stipulation was called a "key man" clause, meaning that should I not be available for whatever reason, the agreement would be voided.

With the help of my assistants, Jerry Greenberg and Mark Myerson, we spent several months amassing a cornucopia of lead sheets, lyric sheets, and acetate demos (cassettes had yet to appear). I thought it would be comfortable for her to come out to Great Neck where we could work without distraction. Dusty showed up at my door and we went into my living room. We soon found ourselves "ass-deep" in acetates on tables, chairs, shelves, and floor. As I played her song after song I was hoping for a response. Would she like this one? If not, how about this next one?

After going through my entire inventory, the box score was Wexler 80, Springfield 0. Out of my meticulously assembled treasure trove, the fair lady liked exactly none. I had to immediately cancel the recording studio in Muscle Shoals where my favourite rhythm section was standing by. It was agreed glumly on both our parts that we would regroup some month later. And so we did. Back to my house to have another go with my assurance that fresh fodder would be on hand.

In retrospect, my assurance was bogus, maybe even intentionally so. Instead of a new group of songs, we culled twenty from the original eighty she had heard the last time. But this time she loved them all immoderately and joyously. We reduced the candidates to eleven and, because of prior commitments in Muscle Shoals, rescheduled to a studio in Memphis called American, the bailiwick of a brilliant producer/songwriter/guitarist named Chips Moman.

At the time, Memphis was the undisputed music capital of the world. There was Beale Street, W.C. Handy, Sam Phillip's Sun Records, Stax Records on McLemore-and American, with Chips at the helm of a dynamite rhythm section consisting of Reggie Young on guitar, Gene Chrisman on drums, Bobby Wood and Bobby Emmons on keyboards, the late Tommy Cogbill on bass, Mike Leach on percussion, and a backing group that I had named The Sweet Inspirations when they first worked behind Aretha Franklin. And so, with the collaboration of two worthy cohorts from Atlantic, Arif Mardin and Tom Dowd, we descended on a studio that turned out to be on the funky and primitive side-but with superb acoustics and engineering-and began to lay down tracks.

We learned not to wait for Dusty to show up before we started. Dusty was preoccupied for hours every morning in a makeup procedure that was virtually an exercise in lamination. Although she was ravishingly gorgeous her doubts and insecurities about her appearance amounted to neurosis. She also thought that her legs were less than lovely and so when she finally arrived she was swathed in fabric to the floor.

Days went by. We laid down some "smoking" tracks, but whenever I called on her to sing, she refused. I never got a note out of her throughout the entire Memphis sessions. Not even a scratch vocal-which would have greatly facilitated our arranging process. Her insecurity about her looks extended to her singing.

Later on she spoke on a BBC program about her fear: "Jerry's gone in print saying I was the most insecure singer he's come across. He didn't realize how intimidated I was. Because they were telling me stories about Aretha Franklin and I'm going, 'What am I doing on this label? Why are they recording me?' And that showed in the time it took to get vocal performances out of me. Because if there's one thing that inhibits good singing it's fear, or allowing the natural critic in me to criticize a note before it's left my throat. My intimidation probably came out as scowls and frowns."

Change venue to New York, a recording studio on 57th Street. It was the moment of truth. Show time. There were no sidemen present, just me, Arif, and Tom. The tracks were anchored by the Sweet Inspirations backgrounds and pure hell ensured. The psychic struggle between Dusty and me was Machiavellian. Singers always call for more track in their headphones: my method has always been to give them less. This forces them to project harder, with a raised volume and intensity.

But Dusty insisted on calling for more and more track, and pretty soon the band track was a blasting mar. I put on the phones to see how the level was coming through, and two bars were enough, the volume was agonizing. But then she began to do what she had come for. She sang! She kept saying, "Bring up the track, I can still hear myself!" This contravenes all traditional rules of recording. Simply imagine Dusty producing vocals without hearing herself sing! But what vocals: perfect intonation, every note correct, gorgeous tone production, and her own trademark individual phrasing.

With Arif and Tom providing rich and melodious strings and horns, the cult favourite Dusty in Memphis was born-the recording that eventually became her defining work.

Jerry Wexler
(Reprinted with editing from The Oxford American)