Dusty in Memphis: History and Key Facts

Dusty in Memphis is the fifth studio album by English singer Dusty Springfield, released on 31 March 1969 in the United States by Atlantic Records and by Philips Records internationally. Springfield worked on the album with a team of musicians and producers that included Jerry Wexler, Arif Mardin, Tom Dowd, conductor Gene Orloff, backing vocalists the Sweet Inspirations, bassist Tommy Cogbill, and guitarist Reggie Young. Initial sessions were recorded at American Sound Studio in Memphis, while Springfield's final vocals and the album's orchestral parts were recorded at Atlantic Records' New York City studios.

Dusty in Memphis sold poorly upon its initial release despite featuring one of Springfield's top-10 UK hits "Son of a Preacher Man". It has since been acclaimed as her best work and one of the greatest albums of all time. Music critic Robert Christgau called it "the all-time rock-era torch record" and included it in his "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings, published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981). In 2001, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

In 2020, the album was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In its official press release, the library stated that despite its modest sales when first released, "over time, Dusty in Memphis grew in stature to become widely recognized as an important album by a woman in the rock era."

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Dusty in Memphis by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.