Dusty Springfield "Billboard" 200, and at the time, went platinum (100,000 units) in Canada alone. "Son of a Preacher Man" helped the soundtrack album sell over 2 million copies in the US, and it reached No. 21 on the charts. During September and October 1969 Dusty hosted her third and final BBC musical variety series (her fourth variety series overall), "Decidedly Dusty" (co-hosted by Valentine Dyall). All eight episodes were later wiped from the BBC archives, and to date the only surviving footage consists of domestic audio recordings. By the start of the 1970s Dusty Springfield was a major star, though her
Dusty Springfield Month. Springfield's parents, Catherine and Gerard, lived in Hove, East Sussex from 1962. Catherine died in a nursing home there in 1974 of lung cancer. In 1979, Gerard died of a heart attack in Rottingdean, East Sussex. Some of Springfield's biographers and journalists have speculated that she had two personalities: shy, quiet, Mary O'Brien, and the public face she had created as Dusty Springfield. An editorial review at "Publishers Weekly" of Valentine and Wickham's 2001 biography, "Dancing with Demons", finds that "the confidence [Springfield] exuded on vinyl was a facade masking severe insecurities, addictions to drink and drugs, bouts of