Oh, Help Me

Dusty Springfield - 'I Can't Make It Alone' (Dusty In Memphis - 1969)

Dusty Springfield's Dusty In Memphis sold poorly on the original release. Her recommendation during the recording session to bosses at Atlantic Records to sign John Paul Jones' new band, Led Zeppelin, is likely to have made her label more money in 1969 than her own record. It is one of those records that has grown immensely in stature over the last five decades, and Springfield's interpretation of four songs written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King are on the album. Including the final track, 'I Can't Make It Alone'.

Dusty In Memphis was Dusty Springfield's fifth record and didn't manage to scale the modest chart positions of her fourth record, Dusty…. Definitely. Despite the chart success of 'Son of A Preacher Man', a top ten on both sides of the Atlantic. Even if it didn't make much of a dent with the public, it certainly captured the industry's interest with Dionne Warwick, Petula Clark and even Elvis Presley recording "… in Memphis" style albums throughout 1969.

Springfield's performance elevates 'I Can't Make It Alone' above the type of early 60s Brill Building pop that Goffin/King specialised in. PJ Proby's 1966 version, swamped with Jack Nitzsche's production to the degree it sounds like it could feature on one of Scott Walker's first four solo records, showed what could be done with it in a way that a flat version by The Righteous Brothers in 1968 couldn't manage.

The song ranks as one of the least "… in Memphis" songs on the album, lacking the twanging guitars and the touches of the funkiness of the other tracks. Quite rightly, too, the swelling strings do the job of tugging at our heartstrings in a way that congas and horns deployed elsewhere on the album wouldn't. Dusty's devastating performance is elevated into a torch song, a tender, mournful and despairing ballad. You don't need to know anything about Springfield's private life to hear the pain and sorrow that she wrings from the song, especially in that "Oh, help me" towards the end that comes from somewhere deep inside her.

The album starts with 'Just A Little Lovin" and not long down the tracklist 'Breakfast in Bed' but ends in tears, with the aural equivalent of having maybe one too many glasses of red wine. I guess that those spilt drops of red wine and teardrops on the pillow paint a journey that leads from Dusty all the way to other British singers like Adele conquering The USA.

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