A Girl Called Dusty

Philips released it in mono and stereo on 17 April 1964. Springfield had left the Springfields the previous autumn, and the album was mostly covers of songs she loved. It mixes straightforward pop with a few Motown-influenced numbers, among them When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes, Will You Love Me Tomorrow and Mockingbird. It was her first collaboration with the songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and with Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and she kept recording their songs for the rest of her career. Wishin' and Hopin' was the track that became a US hit.

Johnny Franz produced, Ivor Raymonde conducted the orchestra, and the Breakaways sang backing vocals. The album reached number six in Britain in May 1964. It was not issued in the United States, where Philips put out a compilation of singles and album tracks as Stay Awhile/I Only Want to Be with You, and later that year a second version, Dusty, with a different track list. The original multitrack tapes are thought to be lost, so the 1997 Mercury reissue, which added eight bonus tracks, is assembled from mono mixes and newer stereo mixes. Reviewing that reissue, James Oldham of NME called it a pretty great debut album. It appears in Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.