The 500 - #89 - Dusty In Memphis - Dusty Springfield

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album #: 89

Album Title: Dusty In Memphis

Artist: Dusty Springfield

Genre:  Pop, R&B,  Blue Eyed Soul

Recorded: American Sound, Memphis, Tennessee

Released: March, 1969

My age at release: 3

How familiar was I with it before this week: One Song

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #83 - rising 6 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Son of a Preacher Man

Like some people of from my generation (perhaps many), my introduction to Dusty Springfield came in 1994 when I saw Quentin Tarantino’s modern masterpiece, Pulp Fiction. Springfield’s Son of a Preacher Man plays as a very stoned Vincent Vega, John Travolta’s effortlessly cool hitman. Vega is assigned by his boss, Marsellus Wallace, to take Mrs. Wallace, out for dinner while he is away. But this is Pulp Fiction, and Vega, and the audience, know there is nothing simple about spending an evening alone with the boss’s wife, Mia.

A heroin-buzzed Vega (Travolta) arrives at the home of his
boss, Marsellus Wallace, in Pulp Fiction.

The movie is classic Tarantino who has always expertly woven perfectly matching songs into his films. From Dick Dale’s frantic surf guitar Misirlou blasting over the opening credits of Pulp Fiction to David Bowie’s haunting Cat People that accompanies one of the many suspenseful sequences in Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino doesn’t only use songs as background music. He uses them almost like characters, forever attaching them to the scenes in which we hear them. I will certainly never hear Stealers Wheel’s Stuck in the Middle with You the same way after seeing Reservoir Dogs in 1992. What had been an impossibly catchy piece of early ’70s pop suddenly became the soundtrack to one of the most disturbing scenes in cinema.

Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) menaces a bound police
officer (Freddie Newandyke) in Reservoir Dogs.

Tarantino is famously obsessive about music, but Martin Scorsese has been doing something similar for even longer -- loading movies with songs that forever become identified with particular scenes. I started thinking about all the music I had discovered, or rediscovered, through the two movie giants and remembered a hypothetical question I once saw posted on social media.

Imagine you’ve been given the chance to inherit one of two record collections. There’s just one catch: you have to choose. Do you take Quentin Tarantino’s collection or Martin Scorsese’s?

Tarantino’s collection would be the more unpredictable of the two. I imagine crates filled with ’60s and ’70s soul and R&B, surf rock, garage rock, funk, psychedelia, country, rockabilly and forgotten pop singles, alongside shelves of old movie soundtracks and strange curiosities picked up in record stores over the years. There would be plenty of recognizable names, but the real fun would be digging through the records with unfamiliar titles. Tarantino is clearly drawn to songs that have slipped out of the cultural conversation, only to give them a remarkable second life by dropping them into exactly the right scene. His collection wouldn’t simply be a history of popular music. It would be a history of the weird corners and forgotten side roads of music history.

Scorsese’s collection, on the other hand, would be enormous and deeply rooted in the history of American music. I also imagine it meticulously sorted and on display on well-built shelving units in a large, dust-free room. There would be shelves of blues, early rock and roll, doo-wop, R&B, soul, jazz, folk and country, followed by seemingly endless stretches of the rock music that has populated his films.

Certainly, he would have most of the records on The 500 list, including those by The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Cream and Frank Sinatra. He would even have some Kanye, having used the song Black Skinhead in The Wolf Of Wall Street. But I suspect his collection would extend well beyond rock and roll into classical music, opera, traditional Italian music and old standards. Where Tarantino’s shelves might reward you with some forgotten 45 you never knew existed, digging through Scorsese’s would feel like opening a musical history book, one in which blues leads to rock and roll, rock leads to Dylan and The Stones.

A quick check with artificial intelligence gives Scorsese a convincing lead. Across his 26-film directorial catalogue, he has used music by 32 artists who have at least one album on The 500. Several, including Dylan, The Stones, Beatles and Cream, appear on the list multiple times. Tarantino’s movies feature only 17 such artists, although that comparison demands an asterisk. Scorsese has simply made more movies and filled them with far more music. Put together a playlist of songs from Scorsese films and you would sail past 300 tracks; do the same for Tarantino and you would land somewhere around 127. This isn't counting Scorsese's documentaries or The Last Temptation of Christ, which includes an additional 21 tracks by 500 alumni Peter Gabriel.

My friend Jeff was visiting us at the cottage this weekend and, during a post-dinner walk, he and I arrived at the same conclusion. We would much prefer Tarantino's collection. As Jeff put it:

"Quentin's collection would be so eclectic and filled with obscure records I have never heard of. Sure, Scorsese's would have all the classics, and because he knows the artists he would have some cool rarities and live albums. But, other than those, I have most classic records in my collection already. I would love to dig through Tarantino's crates."

Among them would certainly be Dusty in Memphis. It is exactly the kind of record Jeff and I were talking about, one I probably would never have thought to seek out had Tarantino not introduced me to Dusty Springfield through Pulp Fiction more than 30 years ago. Son of a Preacher Man is a gem, but Dusty in Memphis delivered far more than that signature song.

Dusty in Memphis was the result of Ms. Springfield crossing the Atlantic in search of the music she loved. Already one of Britain’s most successful singers, Springfield travelled to Memphis in September, 1968, to work with legendary Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler and the musicians at American Sound Studio. Memphis was one of the beating hearts of American soul, and Springfield wanted to step inside that world rather than simply imitate it from England. What emerged was a remarkable collision of British pop sophistication and Southern soul.

International cover for Dusty In Memphis.

The record was not a big hit when it was released but over time, its popularity grew. This was especially true in the early ‘90s when Tarantino put Son of a Preacher Man on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. It was a delightful listen while preparing for this blog. How much more frequently I would have played it had I actually inherited Tarantino's record collection? Probably not much more often. After all, QT would have gifted me so much to explore, I would likely be overwhelmed (and delighted) for months.

How about you?

Whose collection would you want, and why?