The Hit Aretha Franklin Turned Down — Until She Heard Dusty Springfield Sing It
The Hit Aretha Franklin Turned Down — Until She Heard Dusty Springfield Sing It
In the summer of 1968, Dusty Springfield arrived in Memphis carrying something more than a suitcase.
She was stepping into a completely different musical world.
The British singer had already established herself as one of the UK's biggest pop voices, but she wanted something deeper. Atlantic Records — the American label closely associated with soul music — had signed her and sent her to Memphis to record with producer Jerry Wexler.
For Springfield, the opportunity came with enormous pressure.
She knew exactly who had already made Atlantic's soul sound famous.
And she was about to record in the same musical territory.
Then Wexler gave her a song.
It was a song that, unexpectedly, had originally been intended for someone else.
Aretha Franklin.
The songwriters John Hurley and Ronnie Wilkins had written the piece with Franklin in mind. But Franklin initially rejected it, reportedly feeling that its subject matter came too close to blasphemy.
That decision opened a door for Dusty Springfield.
Wexler suggested the song for Springfield's Memphis project.
She recorded it at American Sound Studio in September 1968, working with some of Memphis' finest session musicians. Tommy Cogbill played bass, Gene Chrisman played drums, Reggie Young played guitar, and the Sweet Inspirations provided backing vocals. Wexler, Tom Dowd and Arif Mardin handled production and arrangements.
But Springfield wasn't completely comfortable with what she had recorded.
Her own insecurity became a significant part of the sessions. Although the instrumental track and backing vocals were recorded in Memphis, Springfield ultimately re-recorded her lead vocal in New York. The final recording combined those elements into the version listeners know today.
And then something remarkable happened.
The song that had been passed over by one of America's greatest soul singers became a defining moment for a British pop singer trying to reinvent herself in the American South.
Released as a single in November 1968, it climbed to No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 9 in the UK.
But the story didn't end there.
Aretha Franklin heard Springfield's recording.
And suddenly, the song she had once rejected sounded different.
Franklin eventually recorded her own version, released on her 1970 album This Girl's in Love with You. Springfield later recalled that Franklin's phrasing influenced the way Dusty herself performed the song afterward.
Think about the strange chain of events.
Two songwriters write a song with Aretha Franklin in mind.
Franklin says no.
Jerry Wexler gives it to Dusty Springfield.
Dusty crosses the Atlantic, records it in Memphis, and turns it into a hit.
Then Aretha hears Dusty's version and changes her mind.
The song had effectively travelled in the opposite direction from what everyone originally expected.
There was another twist waiting decades later.
In 1994, Quentin Tarantino placed Springfield's recording prominently in Pulp Fiction. The movie introduced the song to an entirely new generation, and its renewed popularity helped cement the recording as one of Springfield's most recognizable performances. Rhino later noted that the film brought Springfield's catalogue a major new audience.
Suddenly, a recording born from a rejection in 1968 had acquired another life.
And perhaps that's why the story feels so satisfying.
Dusty Springfield wasn't originally supposed to have the song.
She was the unexpected choice.
But sometimes the song finds the voice it was waiting for.
The girl in the story may be drawn to the preacher's son.
But behind the recording itself is another unlikely love story — between a song and the singer who almost wasn't supposed to have it.
Four Dead Students, One Magazine, and a Song That Could Not Wait
The photographs did not allow Neil Young the comfort of distance. In May 1970, Life magazine brought the violence at Kent State University into American homes, including John Filo's harrowing image of 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling beside the body of student Jeffrey Miller. Young saw those pictures and responded with "Ohio," a song written not as historical reflection, but as an alarm sounded while the crisis was still unfolding.
On May 4, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd during a campus demonstration against the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder were killed; nine other people were wounded. Some of the victims had been protesting, while others were passing nearby. The photographs made the event impossible to reduce to an abstract argument about war or campus unrest.
From the Page to the Guitar
David Crosby later recalled giving Young the magazine and watching the images hit him hard. Young withdrew with his guitar and returned with a song. Whatever private process took place in those minutes, the finished work carried the speed of first response: blunt language, a narrow harmonic frame, and a central question that refused to offer comfort.
That immediacy distinguishes "Ohio" from songs written after public wounds have become history. Young did not build an elaborate narrative or explain the politics in detail. He compressed the shock into repeated phrases, accusatory images, and the grim counting of four deaths. His guitar sounds raw and unsettled, more like an exposed nerve than a polished statement.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded the song on May 21, 1970, little more than two weeks after the shootings. Young and Stephen Stills supplied the electric-guitar tension, while bassist Calvin Samuels and drummer Johnny Barbata gave the track its heavy, marching momentum. The group's harmonies, normally associated with careful blend and control, feel strained by grief. Near the end, Crosby's anguished vocal cries push the performance beyond formal protest and toward something almost unbearable.
A Release That Could Not Follow the Schedule
CSNY already had music in the marketplace, including "Teach Your Children," when the group decided "Ohio" had to come out immediately. Rather than save it for a future album campaign, they pressed for a rush release. Atlantic issued it as a single in June 1970, backed with Stills' "Find the Cost of Freedom."
That decision mattered. Popular records usually moved through long cycles of planning, manufacturing, promotion, and radio programming. "Ohio" entered circulation while Kent State remained a living national argument. Its direct reference to President Richard Nixon made the single politically confrontational, but listeners did not need to share every conclusion to recognize its urgency. The record reached No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100.
More than half a century later, "Ohio" still sounds unusually close to the event that created it. There is little sense of hindsight and no attempt to smooth the edges. Young saw photographs of young Americans lying on a college campus, wrote before the shock could settle, and recorded before outrage could become ceremony. Listen again, and the most striking quality is not polish but pressure: four musicians treating delay itself as a failure to respond.
