Beyond her unrivalled status as the greatest of the ’60s British pop chanteuses, Dusty was also the most visually arresting. The power and purity of her voice was ever more enhanced by the hair, make-up and hand gestures, as she blazed a broken-hearted trail across the radio airwaves.
People Get Ready is a rich video archive of her finest smallscreen moments, from the upbeat soul of Every Day I Have To Cry and Can I Get A Witness?, to the more sombre balladeering of How Can I Be Sure?. It may frustrate some that there’s no information on the origins of any of these 21 clips (although several of the earliest are clearly from Ready Steady Go!), but it should be enough just to wallow in the splendour of one of the finest female singers of all time.
None of the performances are from her own BBC series – a separate compilation of those is due out soon. But this is no cynical cash-in designed to steal the thunder of that forthcoming DVD. Rather, it’s a far-reaching celebration of a time when pop TV wasn’t an embarrassment, and its regular stars would have discerning folk cancelling plans to make sure they didn’t miss a second.
