Bobbie Gentry or Dusty Springfield?


... and add if you wish what your answer says about you, your music, and cultural migration in the context of the Special Relationship.   
jamesclarke
love em both grew up listening to that stuff....you may want to checkout delta sweetie by mercury rev fantastic hears some info:
A tribute to Bobbie Gentry's 1968 gem The Delta Sweete that features an amazingly talented group of vocalists: Hope Sandoval, Norah Jones, Lucinda Williams, Beth Orton, Vashti Bunyan, Carice van Houten from Game of Thrones, and more. Bobbie Gentry was an American singer-songwriter and one of the first female artists to compose and produce her own material. 'Ode to Billie Joe' was Bobbie Gentry's 1967 debut as a singer-songwriter and a Number One single for three weeks in the late Summer of Love.

This may be unfair on my part, but for whatever reason I view Bobbie as an entertainer, Dusty an artist. What's the difference, and what is the criteria for making that judgment? I don't possess the skill to put it into words, but, as they say, I know an artist when I hear her.

At the time that "The Look Of Love" was on the radio, I confessed to a close friend that Dusty's vocal on the song felt to me like a soft, slow, sensual kiss. I never heard the end of THAT one ;-) .

@bdp24 : I’ve never been into either one of them but I completely get what you’re saying.

Off topic but I do like Jack White's cover of Dusty Springfield's  "I Don't Know What to Do With Myself" written by Burt Bacharach.
@n80, if you're interested enough, give a listen to Dusty In Memphis, considered her best album. Prior to that, she, like almost all Pop singers, was a "singles" artist, not an album one. Her voice has a subtle, exquisite quality of heartbreak and longing. She's one of my five or so favorite female singers of all time.