West End Star recreates "The Music of Dusty Springfield."

West End leading lady and star of “Mamma Mia! The Musical”, Mazz Murray will be bringing “The Music of Dusty Springfield” to the Birmingham Symphony Hall on November 21, delighting fans of the iconic singer. 

Mazz was “born in a trunk in a dressing room”, well not really, but that is the saying theatre folk have when they know nothing other than show business. Mazz certainly fits the  bill.

“I got into theatre because my mother was in musicals,” said Mazz. “As a really little girl I used to beg my mum to take me to work with her after school.  She would leave home at 5pm to travel to the West End.”

Mazz continued, “ When Mum was in “42nd Street”, she played alongside Georgia Brown who was the original Nancy in “Oliver!” and they became great friends. We used to arrive at the theatre and the ensemble girls would take us to the dressing room and make us up.  We used to pretend we had been in the show” laughed Mazz.

“My dad was a hit pop songwriter in the 60s and 70s, and I just thought that that's how everybody else lived. That they grew up with mad parties and lifestyles and no bedtimes, and I knew that I had to work at night because day times were just out of the question,” she said.

Naturally Mazz went to theatre school and then at the age of 21, she went into her first musical for Bill Kenwright, playing Dusty Springfield, so this full circle for her.

The structure of the current show has been created by Mazz.  She said, “I have just collected my favourite Dusty songs, with the help of other friends who are fans of her too. There are quite a few of her songs I had never heard of before.  The show is really about her song book and her musical relationships.  I found out stories about the songs too.  Why some of them were recorded the way they were, when they were recorded, who didn’t want to record them, but when Dusty sang them, they became hits. The show focuses on the songbook, not her private life.  Yeah, it is a fabulous songbook.”

I wondered how much research Mazz had done for the show. 

She said, “ I've always been interested in Dusty. I've been part of two workshops of a musical for Dusty in the last 20 years, actually. There have been quite a few attempts, some successful, to do a musical version of her life, but I was very keen to just do a 'revuesical', which really focuses on her songs and not her story, because I think that sometimes you have to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“It's really well documented that she had terrible health problems, and obviously breast cancer ended up taking her life, and she had her own tortures and her own problems. I just think that when you listen to her records, they tell those stories, and you kind of know where she was in her life by listening to the songs that she recorded at those times in her life. So that's what we've done, really. We've focused mainly on her songs, her choices, and the songs show her sadness and show her triumphs,” said Mazz.

She continued, “I watched a lot of footage of her performing, but mainly I listened to interviews of people in the industry talking about Dusty.  Then I met the wonderful Madeline Bell, who was part of Dusty’s career all the way through and they were friends up until Dusty’s death. You will have heard Madeline on every record of the sixties and seventies as she worked with everyone from Mick Jagger to Stevie Wonder.”

An outstanding backing singer and later a star in her own right, Madeline has agreed to join Mazz on stage in Birmingham and Mazz said that Madeline has told her some interesting stories about Dusty and given her a superb insight into the woman. 

Mazz’s parents both knew and worked with Dusty and in particular, her dad told her lots of stories about her. 

“She was, in her words, “as blind as a bat”.  My dad, who was a friend of one of Dusty’s best-loved songwriters, Burt Bacharach, used to see her in the studio, or  across the street  and call her and she had to literally come up to his nose to see him.  Then she would go “Ah Mitch” because she couldn’t see him unless he was three inches away from her!”laughed Mazz.

She continued, “My mum was at the Talk of the Town, which is now the London Hippodrome, where Dusty headlined for Bernard Delfont. Mum was one of the girls in the show, and used to see Dusty come on. She was a very big star then. My mum was a headliner as well. They used to have world famous stars come to headline. I've actually got the poster with my mum's name and Dusty’s on. The following week it was Judy Garland. That's the type of stars they had, the biggest in the world.”

Mazz certainly has the experience to play the superstar.  Her West End roles to date include Killer Queen in “We Will Rock You”, a show in which she appeared for a decade, Norma Desmond in a concert version of “Sunset Boulevard, Patsy Cline in “The Music of Roy Orbison” and for the last decade she has been in her words, “looking after a taverna in Greece for Abba and Judy Cramer.”  I’m sure you can guess which show that refers to!

“Queen and Ben Elton, became great friends of mine and are amazing, and with Abba,  I did their second movie for them, in which I had a tiny little part in.  It was so amazing to work on the movie and the stage show,” said Mazz.

“I have been so lucky, I've never done a show or a job that I haven't really wanted to do. So I've just always been privileged to sing the best music in the world,” she said. 

Is there a huge difference between singing Dusty Springfield’s songs and musical theatre tunes?

Mazz told me, “I have never really done pop.  I grew up listening to Elaine Page.  When I heard her singing “Memory”, I thought, “I want to do that. And then you listen to vocalists like Barbra Streisand, who has that amazing crossover. She did a recording of “As if We Never Said Goodbye” as well from “Sunset Boulevard.” That was inspiring for me, because you hear a pop voice, or let's say a contemporary voice singing something that would be considered musical theatre. And yet they make it real, and they make it sound legitimate. So that's what I've always tried to do.”

She continued, “To sing Dusty’s songs, I don't think I've changed my voice, per se. I think you always have to give the best version of yourself rather than try to fit into something. I've always stayed true to what I do.”

And after the Dusty show, what is next for Mazz?

“Well, I hope to do more Queen, I hope to do more Abba, I hope to do loads more Dusty. I just love music, and I love singing,” she said.

“I'm really particular about the music that I do funnily enough, because I feel to do it justice, you have to really love it. I released a song with my sister, Gina Murray who is a really fine songwriter. She wrote a song called 'Dead Inside', which we released as a duet, and I'm hoping to do more of that sort of stuff. Gina writes country songs. In fact, she's in Nashville right now performing. She's cool,” said Mazz.

So there is plenty to look forward to from this uber talented performer but for now, you can catch Mazz in “The Music of Dusty Springfield” at the Birmingham Symphony Hall on November 21, before she heads to the Adelphi Theatre on The Strand in London on November 26. Back in her home, the West End.

For tickets, visit https://bmusic.co.uk/events/mazz-murray-the-music-of-dusty-springfield or call 021 780 3333.