The teacher can be forgiven if she dismissed as an impossible dream the English schoolgirl’s declaration that she wanted to be a jazz singer when she grew up. Young Mary O’Brien was a gawky tomboy with thick spectacles — always ready for rough-and-tumble play with the neighborhood lads. She hardly matched the image of glamorous and sophisticated entertainers seen in the cinema and the picture magazines of the post-war years in London. [1, 2]
Nevertheless, Mary began pursuing her dream early in life. At the age of 11, she cut a demo record of Irving Berlin’s When That Midnight Choo Choo Leaves For Alabama at a London music store. [3] I can’t be sure of what passed as popular pastimes with English children back then but I’d bet very few of them handed over their saved shillings and pence to make a demo recording.
As a teenager, Mary made music as a summer job, performing with her brother as a duo at holiday camps in the English countryside and coasts. After finishing school, she joined with two other girls in a trio then later reunited with her brother and another young man in what became a popular vocal group.
But it was after Mary struck out on her own, at the age of 23, that she became Britain’s most popular music star as well as the best-selling female singer in the world. Single-handedly — and quite by accident — she set the style that would define an era. Mary shed her glasses, applied heavy eye makeup (“panda style”), donned a sequined gown, and covered her ginger locks with a beehive platinum wig, transforming herself into a larger-than-life icon of the Swinging Sixties — the legendary Dusty Springfield.
It wasn’t Dusty’s striking appearance that turned her into a superstar; that was just the mask that allowed the terribly talented but terribly shy Mary to go on stage and share her gift with the world. It was her voice — sultry, sensual, and above all, authentic — that earned the devotion of untold millions of fans of her music.