White Heat (album)
Encyclopedia
White Heat is the twelfth studio album recorded by singer Dusty Springfield
Dusty Springfield
Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'BrienSources use both Isabel and Isobel as the spelling of her second name. OBE , known professionally as Dusty Springfield and dubbed The White Queen of Soul, was a British pop singer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s...

, and eleventh released. It was only released in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

.

It was released so due to a change in record labels; in the aftermath of the disco backlash and its ensuing dramatic drop in record sales worldwide Springfield's American label United Artists Records
United Artists Records
United Artists Records was a record label founded by Max E. Youngstein of United Artists in 1957 initially to distribute records of its movie soundtracks, though it soon branched out into recording music of a number of different genres.-History:...

 was merged with 20th Century Fox Records. By the time the album was completed and ready for release 20th Century Fox had in turn been bought by the US arm of the PolyGram
PolyGram
PolyGram was the name of the major label recording company started by Philips from as a holding company for its music interests in 1945. In 1999 it was sold to Seagram and merged into Universal Music Group.-Hollandsche Decca Distributie , 1929-1950:...

 conglomerate. The release date was postponed another six months and when White Heat finally came out it had been relegated to the reactivated Casablanca Records
Casablanca Records
Casablanca Records was an American record label started by Neil Bogart, who partnered with Cecil Holmes, Larry Harris, and Buck Reingold in 1973, and based in Los Angeles. The label was formed after all of them had left Buddah Records and secured financing by Warner Bros. Records to start the venture...

, a label closely associated with disco, something that in the year of 1982 didn't improve its chances of sales. Springfield later stated that she was surprised that the album came out at all: "Everytime I made an album, the company I'd made it for would be swallowed up. They'd fire everyone that you'd worked with and the enthusiasm would disappear with them. Then I had to fire the original producer because he had put half the budget up his nose... there was a point where I began to feel that I was just some company's tax loss." To add insult to injury, the British subsidiary of Polygram, a label the singer had been with for some twenty-five years in various forms, declined to exercise its option to release the album in the UK; fans of Springfield's in her native country consequently had to buy import copies from the US and Canada.

More so than her previous two albums, It Begins Again
It Begins Again
It Begins Again is the tenth studio album recorded by Dusty Springfield and the ninth released. Recorded during the middle of 1977 and released in early 1978, It Begins Again was her first completed and released album since Cameo five years earlier...

(1978), and Living Without Your Love
Living Without Your Love
Living Without Your Love is the eleventh studio album recorded by singer Dusty Springfield, and tenth released. The album was recorded in summer 1978 and released in early 1979....

(1979), and the non-album single "It Goes Like It Goes" (1980), White Heat was a distinct departure from Springfield's Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 produced adult contemporary sound, being closely identified with the New Wave
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...

, synth-pop sounds of the early 80's but the album arguably contains the most diverse selection of genres to be collected on any Dusty Springfield studio album, ranging from Robbie Buchanan
Robbie Buchanan
Robbie Buchanan is a Canadian keyboardist, songwriter, arranger, and producer.Buchanan began playing the piano at the age of 6. He acquired his first paying gig as a pianist at the age of 12 playing 6 nights a week in Dawson City, Yukon Territory. While still a teenager, Buchanan joined a band...

's ballad "Time and Time Again", gently orchestrated by James Newton Howard
James Newton Howard
James Newton Howard is an American composer best known for his scores to motion pictures. He is one of the most popular and respected composers for cinema, and has scored over 100 films...

, to the aggressive hard rock of "Blind Sheep", co-written by Springfield herself. The sessions for the latter are historic in that they are the last designated sessions for Twentieth Century Fox Records in the Musician's Guild Logs.

The album's opening track and only single release was "Donnez-Moi (Give It To Me)" which production wise took more than a few hints from contemporaneous synthesizer-driven pop productions by Giorgio Moroder
Giorgio Moroder
Hansjörg "Giorgio" Moroder is an Italian record producer, songwriter and performer based in Los Angeles. When in Munich in the 1970s, he started his own record label called Oasis Records, which several years later became a subdivision of Casablanca Records...

, like Donna Summer
Donna Summer
LaDonna Adrian Gaines , known by her stage name, Donna Summer, is an American singer/songwriter who gained prominence during the disco era of the 1970s. She has a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Summer is a five-time Grammy winner and was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach...

's The Wanderer and Irene Cara
Irene Cara
Irene Cara is an American singer and actress. Cara won an Academy Award in 1984 in the category of Best Original Song for co-writing "Flashdance... What a Feeling." She is also known for her recording of the song "Fame", and she also starred in the 1980 film Fame.She married Hollywood stuntman...

's "Flashdance... What a Feeling
Flashdance... What a Feeling
"Flashdance... What a Feeling" is a song from the 1983 film Flashdance, written by Giorgio Moroder, Keith Forsey, and Irene Cara, and performed by Cara. Despite the title, the word "Flashdance" is never used in the lyrics; however, the line "In a flash, take a hold of my heart" refers to the...

", and British New Romantic
New Romantic
New Romanticism , was a pop culture movement in the United Kingdom that began around 1979 and peaked around 1981. Developing in London nightclubs such as Billy's and The Blitz and spreading to other major cities in the UK, it was based around flamboyant, eccentric fashion and new wave music...

 bands like the Human League
The Human League
The Human League are an English electronic New Wave band formed in Sheffield in 1977. They achieved popularity after a key change in line-up in the early 1980s and have continued recording and performing with moderate commercial success throughout the 1980s up to the present day.The only constant...

 and their 1981 album Dare
Dare (album)
Dare is the third studio album from British synthpop band The Human League.The album was recorded between March and September 1981 and first released in the UK on 20 October 1981, then subsequently in the U.S...

. The man largely responsible for the before its time technically advanced synth arrangements on "Donnez-Moi" and also "I Don't Think We Could Ever Be Friends" and "Gotta Get Used To You" was Jean-Alain Roussel. Mauritius
Mauritius
Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...

-born Englishman Roussel had previously arranged and played keyboards for among others Donovan
Donovan
Donovan Donovan Donovan (born Donovan Philips Leitch (born 10 May 1946) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music...

, Bob Marley & The Wailers
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Bob Marley & The Wailers were a Jamaican reggae, ska and rocksteady band formed by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in 1963. Additional members were Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso, Cherry Smith and Aston and Carlton Barrett...

, Cat Stevens
Cat Stevens
Yusuf Islam , commonly known by his former stage name Cat Stevens, is an English singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, educator, philanthropist, and prominent convert to Islam....

, Joan Armatrading
Joan Armatrading
Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading, MBE is a British singer, songwriter and guitarist. Armatrading is a three-time Grammy Award-nominee and has been nominated twice for BRIT Awards as Best Female Artist...

 and Julien Clerc
Julien Clerc
Julien Clerc, , born as Paul Alain Leclerc on 4 October 1947 in Paris, Clerc's parents divorced when he was still young. He grew up listening to classical music in his father's home, while his mother introduced him to the music of such singers as Georges Brassens and Edith Piaf...

 and lived in Montreal at the time. Springfield lived part-time in Toronto at this stage in her life, the two met through mutual friends and ended up collaborating on most of White Heat.

Although the album proved to be as commercially unsuccessful as It Begins Again and Living Without Your Love it received very favourable reviews at the time and many critics singled out the closing track, the Berthold Brecht-influenced "Soft Core", as the album's highlight. Written by Canadian New Wave band Rough Trade
Rough Trade (band)
Rough Trade was a Canadian new wave rock band in the 1970s and 1980s, centred on singer Carole Pope and multi-instrumentalist Kevan Staples. The band was noted for their provocative lyrics and stage antics; singer Pope often performed in bondage attire, and their 1981 hit "High School...

's Carole Pope
Carole Pope
Carole Pope is a Canadian rock singer-songwriter, whose provocative blend of hard-edged New Wave rock with explicit homoerotic and BDSM-themed lyrics made her one of the first openly lesbian famous entertainers in the world...

 and Kevan Staples, the song describes the realities of a dysfunctional relationship. The track with its brutally honest lyrics about "drugs and alibis" is notable in Springfield's discography in more ways than one; as many of her collaborators later have witnessed, when the self-confessed perfectionist Springfield laid down her lead-vocals on a track "she would record one word at a time. Sometimes even syllable by syllable." "Soft Core" was by sheer mistake, thanks to an engineer throwing a tape machine into 'record', cut in one single take with composer Kevan Staples playing a grand piano. The sound of footsteps heard at the very beginning of the track is in fact Springfield walking up to the piano for what she thought was just a rehearsal; the song is in other words a live performance on a studio album.

White Heat also featured contributions from a new generation of British fans and showed that Springfield was very much au courant with what was going on in the music scene; "Losing You" (not to be confused with her 60's hit), originally titled "Just A Memory", was written by Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello , born Declan Patrick MacManus, is an English singer-songwriter. He came to prominence as an early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s and later became associated with the punk/New Wave genre. Steeped in word play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader...

. The track was first released as the B-side of his 1980 single "New Amsterdam" and later included on the compilation Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How's Your Fathers
Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How's Your Fathers
Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How's Your Fathers is an Elvis Costello and the Attractions album comprising tracks not previously released on albums. It is mostly made up of b-sides, however it does feature two previously unreleased recordings...

(US version: Taking Liberties
Taking Liberties
Taking Liberties is a US Elvis Costello and the Attractions album, composed of tracks not previously released on US albums. It is mostly made up of b-sides, although it does feature two previously unreleased recordings...

). Jean-Alain Roussel's "I Don't Think We Could Ever Be Friends" was co-written with none other than Sting, the connection being that Roussel previously had appeared on The Police
The Police
The Police were an English rock band formed in London in 1977. For the vast majority of their history, the band consisted of Sting , Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland...

's 1981 album Ghost in the Machine, playing piano on their hit single "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
"Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" is a song by British rock group The Police from their album Ghost in the Machine. It was also a hit single that reached the top of the charts in the United Kingdom in November 1981 and hit number three on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart that same...

" so as Springfield later said: "they banged together a song for me too."

Some five years later two other British fans of hers were to play an important part in finally resurrecting Springfield's recording career; Neil Tennant
Neil Tennant
Neil Francis Tennant is an English musician, singer and songwriter, who, with bandmate Chris Lowe, makes up the successful electronic dance music duo Pet Shop Boys.-Childhood:...

 and Chris Lowe
Chris Lowe
Chris Lowe is an English musician, who, with colleague Neil Tennant, makes up the pop duo Pet Shop Boys.-Childhood:...

, better known as Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys are an English electronic dance music duo, consisting of Neil Tennant, who provides main vocals, keyboards and occasional guitar, and Chris Lowe on keyboards....

.

White Heat in its entirety was first issued in the UK in 2002 when it was released on CD by Mercury
Mercury Records
Mercury Records is a record label operating as a standalone company in the UK and as part of the Island Def Jam Motown Music Group in the US; both are subsidiaries of Universal Music Group. There is also a Mercury Records in Australia, which is a local artist and repertoire division of Universal...

/Universal Music.

Track listing

Side A
  1. "Donnez Moi (Give It to Me)" (Jean-Alain Roussel, Paul Northfield, Luc Plamondon, Christiane Robichaud) - 3:55
  2. "I Don't Think We Could Ever Be Friends" (Jean-Alain Roussel, Sting) - 3:27
  3. "Blind Sheep" (Daniel Ironstone, Tommy Faragher
    Tommy Faragher
    Tommy Faragher is an American producer, composer, songwriter, singer, and arranger. He is originally from Redlands, California.-Performer:Tommy Faragher started his career as a singer and keyboardist with his family, who formed a group called The Faragher Brothers...

    , Dusty Springfield, Mary Unobsky) - 4:30
  4. "Don't Call It Love" (Dean Pitchford
    Dean Pitchford
    Dean Pitchford is an American songwriter, screenwriter, director, actor, and novelist. His work has earned him an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for three additional Oscars, two more Golden Globes, seven Grammy Awards and two Tony Awards.-Early life:Pitchford was born in...

    , Tom Snow) - 3:31
  5. "Time and Time Again" (Paul Buchanan
    Paul Buchanan
    Paul Buchanan is a professional boxer, fighting out of West Denton. He turned pro on 31 January 2001....

    , Jay Gruska) - 3:42


Side B
  1. "I Am Curious" (Carole Pope
    Carole Pope
    Carole Pope is a Canadian rock singer-songwriter, whose provocative blend of hard-edged New Wave rock with explicit homoerotic and BDSM-themed lyrics made her one of the first openly lesbian famous entertainers in the world...

    , Kevan Staples) - 4:09
  2. "Sooner or Later" (Tommy Faragher, Daniel Ironstone) - 4:21
  3. "Losing You (Just a Memory)" (Elvis Costello
    Elvis Costello
    Elvis Costello , born Declan Patrick MacManus, is an English singer-songwriter. He came to prominence as an early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s and later became associated with the punk/New Wave genre. Steeped in word play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader...

    ) - 2:51
  4. "Gotta Get Used to You" (Jean-Alain Roussel) - 3:55
  5. "Soft Core" (Carole Pope, Kevan Staples) - 3:13

Personnel

  • Dusty Springfield
    Dusty Springfield
    Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'BrienSources use both Isabel and Isobel as the spelling of her second name. OBE , known professionally as Dusty Springfield and dubbed The White Queen of Soul, was a British pop singer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s...

     - lead vocals, background vocals
  • Max Gronenthal - background vocals
    Backing vocalist
    A backing vocalist or backing singer is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists...

  • Eddy Keating - background vocals
  • John Townsend - background vocals
  • Danny Ironstone - background vocals
  • Barbara Busa Cilla - background vocals
  • André Fischer - drums
    Drum kit
    A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....

  • Casey Schelierell - drums
  • Steve Zaretsky - percussion
    Percussion instrument
    A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...

  • Nathan East
    Nathan East
    Nathan Harrell East is a jazz, R&B and rock bass player and vocalist. East holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music from the University of California, San Diego...

     - bass guitar
    Bass guitar
    The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

  • Davey Faragher
    Davey Faragher
    Davey Faragher is an American bass guitarist from Redlands, California. Faragher's career took off and received critical notice as a founding member of the nineties band, Cracker, and his following work with The Imposters, the backing band for Elvis Costello since 2001.Faragher is an accomplished...

     - bass
  • Marlo Henderson - bass
  • Mark Leonard
    Mark Leonard
    Mark Leonard is a British foreign policy thinker and the author of the acclaimed books Why Europe Will Run the 21st Centurya 'Foreign Affairs best-seller' which was published in 2005 and has been translated into 19 languages and What Does China Think? which was published in 2008 and has been...

     - bass
  • Kenny Lewis - bass
  • George Nauful - guitar
    Guitar
    The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

  • David Plehn - guitar
  • Jean Roussel - synthesizer
    Synthesizer
    A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...

    , piano
    Piano
    The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

  • Robbie Buchanan
    Robbie Buchanan
    Robbie Buchanan is a Canadian keyboardist, songwriter, arranger, and producer.Buchanan began playing the piano at the age of 6. He acquired his first paying gig as a pianist at the age of 12 playing 6 nights a week in Dawson City, Yukon Territory. While still a teenager, Buchanan joined a band...

     - piano, Fender Rhodes
  • Tommy Faragher
    Tommy Faragher
    Tommy Faragher is an American producer, composer, songwriter, singer, and arranger. He is originally from Redlands, California.-Performer:Tommy Faragher started his career as a singer and keyboardist with his family, who formed a group called The Faragher Brothers...

     - synthesizer, percussion
    Percussion instrument
    A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...

    , background vocals, Wurlitzer, Casio
  • Nicky Hopkins
    Nicky Hopkins
    Nicholas Christian "Nicky" Hopkins was an English pianist and organist.He recorded and performed on noted British and American popular music recordings of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s as a session musician....

     - piano
  • James Newton Howard
    James Newton Howard
    James Newton Howard is an American composer best known for his scores to motion pictures. He is one of the most popular and respected composers for cinema, and has scored over 100 films...

     - Prophet synthesizer, string arrangements
  • Caleb Quaye
    Caleb Quaye
    Caleb Quaye , is an English Afro-European rock guitarist and studio musician best known for his work in the 1960s and 1970s with Elton John, Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend, Paul McCartney and Hall & Oates...

     - synthesizer, bass, guitar, Wurlitzer, Mini Moog
  • Kevin Staples - clarinet
    Clarinet
    The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...

    , guitar, Mini Moog
  • Steve Sykes - guitar, Wurlitzer, Mini Moog

Production

  • Dusty Springfield
    Dusty Springfield
    Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'BrienSources use both Isabel and Isobel as the spelling of her second name. OBE , known professionally as Dusty Springfield and dubbed The White Queen of Soul, was a British pop singer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s...

     - record producer
    Record producer
    A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...

  • Howard Steele - producer, engineer, mixing
  • André Fischer - producer
  • Jackie Krost - executive producer
  • Steve Zaretsky - assistant engineer
  • Lindy Griffin - assistant Engineer
  • Philip Moores - assistant engineer
  • Nick DeCaro - arranger, conductor
  • Karen Chamberlain - assistant engineer
  • Les D. Cooper - assistant engineer
  • Debra Courier - production assistant
  • Glen Christensen - art direction
  • Bret Lopez - photography
  • Mac James - paintings

Sources

  • Howes, Paul (2001). The Complete Dusty Springfield. London: Reynolds & Hearn Ltd. ISBN 1 903111 24 2.
  • O'Brien, Lucy (1988, 2000): Dusty. London: Pan Books Ltd. ISBN 0 330 39343 0.
  • Official site Jean-Alain Roussel
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