Simply Dusty [Box set, Import, Original recording remastered]

Dusty Springfield | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 23, 2000)
• Number of Discs: 4
• Format: Box set, Import, Original recording remastered
• Note on Boxed Sets: During shipping, discs in boxed sets occasionally become dislodged without damage. Please examine and play these discs. If you are not completely satisfied, we'll refund or replace your purchase.
• Label: Universal
• ASIN: B00004XP5G
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,963 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Dusty Springfield

2. Ragtiem Selection

3. (Seven Little Girls) Sitting On The Back Seat

4. Far Away Places

5. Island Of Dreams

6. Say I Won't Be There

7. No Sad Songs For Me

8. I Only Want To Be With You

9. Once Upon A Time

10. Stay Awhile

11. Will You Love Me Tomorrow?

12. Wishin' & Hopin'

13. I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself

14. All Cried Out

15. Losing You

16. Summer Is Over

17. I Will Always Want You

18. Your Hurtin' Kinda Love

19. I Wanna Make You Happy

20. In The Middle Of Nowhere

See all 98 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

4 CD box-set spanning her entire career. Featuring over 90 digitally remastered tracks, many hard to find and previously unavailable. Includes a 64 page color booklet including many rare and unseen photos and Dusty memorabilia. Also includes specially commissioned tributes from Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Carole King, Neil Tennant and Paul McCartney. 19 top 20 singles including 'I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself', 'I Only Want To Be With You', 'Son Of A Preacher Man', 'The Look of Love' and 'What Have I Done To Deserve This' (with the Pet Shop Boys). 2000 release. Hardback digipak measures 10' x 6' x 1' approx..

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Box Set Worthy of the Subject..., August 8, 2002

By 

S. Sittig "Divawatch" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Simply Dusty (Audio CD)

OH MY GOD! It's beautiful! Yes, I think they finally got it right this time! What a stunning Box Set! Finally, something worthy of the work of our dear Dusty. Beautiful book like format with a stunning full length photo of our Dusty on the cover! A fantastic booklet with wonderful photos (this time, I found no bad ones)...and some wonderful words and homages to our great lady from everyone from Burt Bacharach to Bette Midler and Annie Lennox.

The track selections are great and excellently sequenced in my mind. All the big hits are there, but there are also enough new tidbits to keep all of us old time fans happy.

The 3 previously unreleased tracks are breathtaking. I am still reeling from hearing "In The Winter". I will never be the same. The 2 new live tracks sound great also, and only make me wonder why they can't release ALL of the Royal Albert Hall concert? ..especially if they can get such a great sound mix from "Quiet Please..." and "Lose Again."

The other tracks I was glad to finally see on CD were "But It's A Nice Dream" and "Turn Me Around". They sound great and as crisp as if Dusty were sitting right next to me singing them. (chills! ) This version of "But It's A Nice Dream" sounds like a different take than the ones I heard over the opening and closing credits of KISS ME GOODBYE. Is this a 3rd version?

I also love the inclusion of the complete "Ragtime Selections" and the Lana Sisters track...gives a full idea of the growth of Dusty's voice and skill and how she changed throughout her career and how she stayed the same.

Last night, while listening to the Box set, among all my feelings of joy and excitement about this wonderful 4 CD set, I also couldn't help but feel a little sad.

I miss Dusty.

I miss having her pop up every few years and do something outrageous/different/fun/on the edge. I miss her voice in interviews, on television and in specials...and most of all, the release of any new material. I'm pretty sure we won't see another Dusty in our lifetime. Such a unique individual/performer/singer....nope. The mold was broken when she was made, I'm afraid.

But having this 4 CD set brings me a little bit of relief. The voice was silenced way too soon and the woman was taken from us way too young, but at least we have over 90 songs to enjoy and remember her by. Right? Right? (I'm trying to keep this upbeat guys!)

Hopefully, there is more that has still not been unearthed. I hope so. Listening to "Someone To Watch Over Me" my heart aches at the thought of what an album of jazz standards, with just Dusty and a piano, would have sounded like? Even though it never happened, I'm sure we all know it would have sounded like everything else Dusty sang...unique, stunning and as close to perfection as music can get. Let's hope there's more where these great forgotten tracks came from...

Until then, as Dusty once sang, "Roll Away...it's only time and the river....Roll Away, to the endless sea..."

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply Perfect, June 20, 2003

By 

Barry C. Chow (Calgary, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Simply Dusty (Audio CD)

I've thrown away a small fortune on boxed sets over the years, purchasing everything from Classical to Folk to Metal and spanning the decades from CDs to vinyl. But even among such fine company, this collection sparkles.

Firstly, a word about the quality of the recordings. They have obviously been made with tender loving care. Painstaking effort went into remastering these songs. This is especially evident in Dusty's earliest recordings from the beginning of her career, decades before digital technology when even analogue masters left out large chunks of dynamic range. In all likelihood, some of these analogue masters have either been lost or destroyed. The earliest songs were probably reconstituted from the best vinyl pressings that could be scrounged, then electronically filtered, cleaned and enhanced to yield as much quality as possible. The result is a set of recordings with marvellous body and clarity, and likely the finest reproductions extant of Dusty's early work.

But quality of recording is meaningless without the essence of the singer. It's Dusty who breathes life into these tracks, and it's Dusty who makes this set one of the finest you are ever likely to own.

Over the years, a lot of nonsense has been written about Dusty, and within the alternative community, she has taken on the stature of a poster queen Diva. This kind of camp worship does her a disservice, because if we listen to her carefully, it is clear that she is, from first to last, a singer. Not an entertainer, composer or artiste; nor a role model, glamour queen or political refugee; but a singer. Her dedication to the perfection of her craft was legendary and bordered on the obsessive. She may have recorded hundreds of songs, but she respected each of them as an individual friend; accorded each the delivery and uniqueness that she felt the song deserved. Not for Dusty the over-ripe sentimentality of Barbara Streisand, the cynical egocentricity of Diana Ross, or the overpowered caterwauling of Celine Dion. For Dusty, the song always came first. The singer's job was to showcase the song, not the other way around: to find just the right tone and just the right shading to do each and every song perfect justice. If she found fame and adulation in doing it well, that was just a very special and fortuitous fringe benefit.

Listen to the hustle in her voice when she sings Son of a Preacher Man and contrast this to the wistfulness in I Think It's Going To Rain Today. You'd swear you were listening to two different women. The first could be a street-wise barhop. The second could be a lost little girl. Or listen to the magic in Goin' Back. Somehow, she imbues it with an orange haze of nostalgia, but she does so with restraint, dignity and grace. Other singers might manage the nostalgia, but only by smothering the song in syrup. This is the Dusty difference; the mark of a dedicated singer to whom Self is subservient to Craft; an honesty completely lost on the plastic bimbos polluting the airwaves today.

Dusty is impossible to classify. She was a shape shifter, equally at ease singing blues, country, torch, pop, folk, showtime, bebop or dance. I can't name another singer who could claim a repertoire that so successfully spanned the bubblegum pop of Wishin' and Hopin' to the traditional folk of Poor Wayfaring Stranger to the techno of What Have I Done To Deserve This to the romantic balladeering of If You Go Away. The word 'talent' has been cheapened by relentless overuse and attribution to undeserving mediocrities, but Dusty was real Talent with a capital T. We lost her far too young.

This boxed set is manna for the discerning listener. Buy it. Buy it now. Then you will understand why this woman was so respected by her peers that she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as one of the most gifted and treasured singers in modern music history.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fitting tribute to the greatest voice of our century, January 20, 2003

By 

Chris "Glitterama" (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Simply Dusty (Audio CD)

Box sets usually fall into one of two categories. Either they are aimed at the casual fan, including all the hits and little else, or they are created for the diehard who has already got all the hits, so are jampacked with rarities and offcuts... kindly ignoring the songs that made the subject in question a household name. Regardless of which category the box set is produced under, they usually have some major flaws which remain highly uncomforting considering the extortionate prices people pay for the roddy things.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the world's first Perfect Box Set.

The fact that the woman's voice gracing this particular collection is Dusty Springfield's, a woman who simply by uttering a single note could send a whole room running for the tissues, is probably a defining factor in regards to its quality. I will not be as cliched to say that she never recorded a bad song because such a comment is certainly a mighty compliment to pay, but considering her back catalogue Dusty's repertoire remains frighteningly strong. 'Simply Dusty' spans four discs which run chronologically through all of Dusty's hits, other tunes she turned into classics even though they never gained a single release, a large slab of favourite album tracks, and enough rarities / unreleased material to keep even the most ardent fan happy.

What so few people realise is just how amazing Dusty's voice really was. Somewhat tragically, the majority of people can belt out a staggering amount of the sixties Motown-influenced tunes and perhaps one or two of the late '80's Pet Shop Boys-produced hits, but the rest of career is a dead zone. 'Simply Dusty' will reintroduce both casual and hardcore fans to what was, dare I say, the single most versatile voice on the planet. It follows her career through the heartwrenching ballads and toe-tapping Motown stompers of the sixties, the more Streisand-esque easy listening tunes of the early seventies, the silky ballads, disco, and R'n'B tunes of the late seventies, the punky power pop/rock of the early eighties, the synth-laden dance fests of the late eighties, and a brief flirtation with country just before her untimely death in 1998. Folk, country, easy listening, power ballads, Motown, R'n'B, pop, jazz, heavy rock, Eurotrash, punk, swing... Dusty did it all. And it is all covered in this 90+ collection.

For fans more familiar with her catalogue like myself, 'Simply Dusty' is a treasure trove for sought-after material. Firstly we get three songs from the legendary uncompleted album 'Elements' in the mid-1970's. 'In The Winter', 'Home To Myself' and 'Exclusively For Me' are three of the single most emotional tunes in her reportoire, and makes one wonder what other uncompleted Dusty classics are lying around in the vaults... The 12'' mix of Dusty's disco romp 'That's The Kind Of Love I Got For You' is included, as are a number of selections from Dusty's dance / pop / rock / Hi-NRG 1982 release 'White Heat'. Fans will rejoice at the thought of having 'I Wish That Love Would Last' and '(But It's A) Nice Dream' on CD, and with good reason... they're awesome songs! Add some cuts from the hat trick of unappreciated seventies albums 'Cameo', 'It Begins Again', and 'Living Without Your Love' plus the final song Dusty ever recorded (a short but touching version of 'Someone To Watch Over Me') and 'Quiet Please, There's A Lady On Stage' from the Royal Albert Hall gig in the seventies, and the collection is pretty well-rounded.

As well as being an aural delight, the packaging of 'Simply Dusty' screams pure class. Lovingly assembled by fan Paul Howes and a host of other people close to Dusty including Annie Lennox, Bette Midler and Elton John, the booklet includes tributes, rare photos, and a long write-up on every song included. A complete discography and 64 pages later, and the packaging really does scream 'quality'.

This project came into being shortly before Dusty's death, and was commissioned with her approval. This would perhaps explain the one glaring ommission, that of her 1985 'comeback' single 'Sometimes Like Butterflies' - not exactly her strongest vocal performance, but a rather sought-after rarity none-the-less. Nevermind, the rest of this amazing package more than makes up for it. Fall in love with Dusty all over again, and realise why she remains the single greatest voice of our times.