Gold Dusty woman.

Blessed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Queen Elizabeth, Dusty Springfield is ready for her crown

To pop-music fans of a certain stripe, this year isn't primarily signified as the last of the millennium nor the prelude to Y2K disaster, Rather, it's the Year of Dusty. Like the phoenix, British singer Dusty Springfield has risen yet again. In mid February, Rhino Records is set to rerelease her seminal 1969 album of sexy soul and angst, Dusty in Memphis, as well as a collection of songs from British albums that never reached Americans shores, Dusty in London. Both CDs also contain previously unissued cuts. Later in the year the R&D label will release an all-female tribute album, Forever Dusty.

Meanwhile, the honors pour in. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will induct her on March 15, and the queen of England will bestow upon her the Order of the British Empire, a ranking that was announced December 31. That doesn't mean Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien can be called "Dame," but it's close.

Over the past few years there have been a wealth of greatest-hits and re-release packages of music by both Dusty and the Springfields (the faux folk group in which she and her brother sang "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" way back in 1962). And these days you almost can't miss Dusty's vivid and vaporous vocals in film and TV: Her songs appear everywhere, from Pulp Fiction ("Son of a Preacher Man") to Priest ("Anyone Who Had a Heart") to the opening credits of HBO's Arli$$ ("I Only Want to Be With You").

The sad note amid this celebration of one of our greatest popular-song interpreters--a woman who has sung R&B, traditional pop, big-band jazz, Italian ballads, and even disco with consummate skill and utter emotional honesty--is that Springfield isn't well enough to party in 1999. She went through what seemed to be successful treatment for breast cancer right after recording her last CD, A Very Fine Love (Columbia, 1995), but the disease returned. The tough 59-year-old of Scottish and Irish descent, who successfully overcame the drug and alcohol problems she experienced in the '70s and early '80s, has been undergoing chemotherapy; she is still "seriously ill," The [London] Independent noted in a December 31 article.

Springfield can at least be cheered by the affection shown for her work nearly 40 years after her career began. She's become an icon for gay and lesbian fans in particular, who have long adored her draggish look of the '60s (big blond hair and black eyeliner), her wry humor, her ambisexuality (she famously told a British interviewer in 1970, "I'm as perfectly capable of being swayed by a girl as by a boy"), and her indomitable (if vulnerable) spirit. It's perfect symmetry that those other gay icons, the Pet Shop Boys, would have put her back in the limelight by featuring her in their 1987 smash "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" And if that song title begs for a response, in Dusty's case the answer is easy: plenty.

Kort is writing a biography of singer-songwriter Laura Nyro for St. Martin's Press.