Pop - Richard Cook prefers Lulu to Dusty

When she died earlier this year, it was no great surprise to see Dusty Springfield being fondly remembered as Britain's finest soul singer. Pop chroniclers have written it that way for many years now. But that verdict hardly squares with her patchy and curiously insubstantial discography. The admittedly gorgeous sequence of hit singles for Fontana in the 1960s is her only really important contribution: the celebrated Dusty in Memphis album of 1969 will disappoint many who know it by its huge reputation, and she did so little thereafter that she seemed to be in semi-retirement for the best part of 30 years. Besides, was Dusty really a soul singer? Listen to those breast-beating ballads with their weeping strings, or the cooing, come-hither voice of "The Look of Love". She was more like Peggy Lee than Aretha Franklin, a careful and rather old-fashioned stylist.

It's interesting to wonder what the former Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie thought about Dusty's eminence, when her own records are considered more like the novelty end of British pop. Marie was barely 15 when she and her group, the Glen Eagles, a Glaswegian beat combo, signed to Decca in 1964 and started their career with a fuming cover version of the Isley Brothers' "Shout". After that, Lulu and the Luvvers, as their manager rechristened them, became significant players in the early Beatles era.

The Luvvers didn't last long. But Lulu has been around ever since, the most resilient of survivors. She didn't have a lot of luck with her Decca singles, despite turning in some astonishingly powerful performances: the tremendous "Try to Understand" or the brisk remake of Marvin Gaye's "Can I Get a Witness" ought to be enough to convince sceptics of Lulu's true grit. When she began working at EMI with Mickie Most, she unreeled a string of entertaining hits that seem as characterful of their time as Sergeant Pepper: "Love Loves to Love Love", "Me the Peaceful Heart", "Boy" and the song that won her an American million-seller but which was only ever a B-side here, "To Sir with Love". When she was given her own BBC variety show in 1968 and sang the wretched "Boom-Bang-A-Bang" for Eurovision a year later, she was already, at 20, a showbiz veteran.

Like Dusty, Lulu never cracked it as an albums artist. She was always drifting in and out of television, but the records rarely found their audience. A new compilation, The Man Who Sold the World (Sequel/Chelsea), offers the chance to hear the tracks she made for Chelsea Records in the early to mid-1970s. A lot of it seems like a talented singer casting around for a direction in which she felt comfortable, but the best of it now sounds better than most of the pop of the era. David Bowie and his group backed her on both the title piece and "Watch that Man", and compared with the feckless treatments that Bowie was prone to give his own lyrics, Lulu torches the songs. It's a little reminiscent of the way Solomon Burke once tore apart Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm". The pop-funk of "Take Your Mama for a Ride" is as delicious as the Bond theme "Man with the Golden Gun" is pure kitsch, but perhaps the most surprising piece is her reworking of the old Young Rascals hit, "Groovin' ", a sublime example of how good a singer she could be. "Easy Evil", which follows it here, is as lascivious as Madonna's "Like a Prayer".

The years rolled back for Lulu when she duetted with Take That on "Relight my Fire" and returned to the top ten: not bad form for a wealthy businesswoman, then old enough to be Robbie Williams's mum but still the young side of 50. The next time that soul singer poll comes along, vote Scotland.

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