LONDON -- 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. . . . That's the spirit of my family.
"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-blond 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."