Dusty Springfield

Dusty Springfield, the husky-voiced white soul singer who put her stamp on the 1960s with such hits as "Son of a Preacher Man" and "Wishin' and Hopin'," has died after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 59. Springfield died Tuesday night at her home in Henley-on-Thames, about 30 miles west of London, said her agent, Paul Fenn. "She was one of the icons of the music industry," Fenn said. "She was one of the most talented female singers of this century." Springfield's first hit was "I Only Want To Be With You" in 1964, followed by a string of smashes, including "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself" and "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me." In the 1980s, she teamed up with the Pet Shop Boys pop group for the single "What Have I Done to Deserve This." "Dusty was a tender, exhilarating and soulful singer, incredibly intelligent at phrasing a song, painstakingly building it up to a thrilling climax," Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, who made up the Pet Shop Boys, said in a statement. Her resurgence was sealed in the 1990s with the inclusion of "Preacher Man" on the "Pulp Fiction" soundtrack and the success of a box-set recapping her career. Springfield's breast cancer was diagnosed in 1994 shortly after she recorded her most recent album, "A Very Fine Love." She underwent extensive chemotherapy until 1995, when she was diagnosed as being clear of the disease. But the cancer returned the following year. After the first diagnosis, she told The Mail on Sunday newspaper in January, `I shed about three tears in the hallway and then said, 'Let's have lunch.' My brother came, the neighbors who brought me to town, my secretary, my accountant. I had a really good time _ don't know why. That's the spirit of my family, as if to say, 'Oh, to hell with it.' "It was only when I came home one night and saw my cat lying asleep that I thought, 'Who's going to look after you?' It was as if somebody had run a train through me. I wept and wept and wept because then I realized: It is you. It's you. Yes, it might kill you." Springfield was born Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien in north London on April 16, 1939. She became known for her glitzy gowns, peroxide-blonde beehive hairdo and dark, smudgy eye make-up, but once said she never shook off the feeling of being an "awful fat, ugly middle-class kid." She told The Mail on Sunday that her personal and musical epiphany came at the age of 16 when she looked at her reflection in the mirror and told herself, "Be miserable or become someone else." It worked. Her biographer, Lucy O'Brien, whose book "Dusty" will be published in April, wrote of her subject, "As youth mod culture came to a head in the Sixties _ with its stringent attention to fashion, Motown and television pop programs _ Dusty Springfield, panda-eyed and urbane, emerged as Queen Bee." Professing herself "bored with Britain," Springfield moved to Los Angeles in 1972, where she lived for 15 years, embarking on drink and drug binges and suffering from depression. An intensely private woman, she later disclosed that she had even attempted suicide. Springfield's death came 11 days before she was to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at a ceremony in New York, along with Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen. In December, Queen Elizabeth II included Springfield on her biannual honors list, making her an Officer of the Order of British Empire. Buckingham Palace issued a statement saying the queen was "saddened to hear of her death."