London: Singer Dusty Springfield died here on Tuesday night after a long battle against cancer, her agent said today. Paul Fenn, her British agent, said the 59-year-old star died at her home in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, at 10:40 pm (1110 AEDT).

The singer, whose real name was Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien, had been fighting breast cancer since it was diagnosed in 1994, shortly after she recorded her most recent album, A Very Fine Love. She was awarded an OBE in January this year.

Mr Fenn said: "She was one of the icons of the music industry. She was one of the most talented female singers of this century."

Dusty Springfield was Britain's white soul diva, mixing a cool, classy, husky voice with a kitsch blonde image. Her dark eye make-up was her trademark, but it was also a mask to preserve her privacy and she resented rumours about her sexuality that dogged her career.

Her star unfairly fell when woman-friendly pop was eclipsed by the advent of a growing taste for rock after 1967. She brought herself lower by years of drink and drugs in the United States. Several comeback attempts contributed to her survivor's reputation which heightened her appeal to gay fans as well as her stalwart supporters. Only in the late 1990s has the circle turned back to give classic pop the appreciation that was lost to her in the 1970s and 1980s.

Dusty Springfield was borm Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien on April 16, 1939, in Hampstead, north London, and was brought up in Buckinghamshire. Convent educated and shy, Mary started her singing career in the Lana Sisters in the 1950s.

She changed her name when she teamed up with her brother Tom in the folk trio The Springfields in the early 1960s and they had several significant hits. But they split after seeing The Beatles at the Cavern in Liverpool - "We saw the writing on the wall" - and after a Palladium farewell she went solo. A visit to Nashville at that time gave her the musical edge on her contemporaries. She later told how she first heard "Don't Make Me Over" by Dionne Warwick in the Capitol Motel, saying: "It was different to anything I had heard before."

"I Only Want To Be With You" shot her to solo fame in 1964. It was the first record to be played on Top of the Pops and its Motown-Spector sort of sound took it to No. 4 in the charts. Throughout the mid-1960s Dusty Springfield's name was rarely out of the hit parade. She consistently won the best female singer award, beating Lulu, Cilla Black and Sandie Shaw.

Her husky soulful style earned her the dubious soubriquet "the White Negress". Girls copied her blonde beehive and distinctive panda-like eye make-up, which she achieved by leaving her caked-up mascara on for three weeks at a time. The image was almost a parody, dreamed up by the convent girl to appear simultaneously attractive and unthreatening. "It was a good thing to hide behind. Without the mask I was a quivering wreck. I was terribly shy," she said later.

For a woman at that time, she unusually insisted on heavy involvement in production and gained a "difficult" reputation. But she had impeccable taste in songs, recording Bacharach and David, Carole King and Randy Newman. She benefited from Bacharach and David material already recorded by Dionne Warwick in the United States - "Wishin' and Hopin'" and "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself" were both hits for her [NOTE: Dionne Warwick recorded this latter song after Dusty].

Mick Jagger once asked her out, but she said she was "too terrified" to go.

Author unknown
The Sydney Morning Herald,
March 4, 1999