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On this day, 19 November 1964, British singing legend Dusty Springfield played Cardiff’s Capitol Theatre. Also included in the package was, Brian Poole & The Tremeloes, Herman's Hermits, Dave Berry & The Cruisers, The Primitives, The Gobbledegooks, The Echoes with Johnny Ball (compere),
The highest-charting of Springfield's 1964 releases were both Burt Bacharach-Hal David songs: "Wishin' and Hopin'" – a US no. 6 hit which featured on A Girl Called Dusty – and "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself", which in July peaked at no. 3 on the UK singles chart (behind the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night and the Rolling Stones' "It's All Over Now").
The dramatic and emotive "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" set the standard for much of her later material. In the autumn of 1964 Springfield peaked at no. 41 in the States with "All Cried Out", but in her native Britain she hit big with "Losing You", which reached no. 9 in December – the same month in which the singer's tour of South Africa, with her group The Echoes, was terminated following a controversial performance before an integrated audience at a theatre near Cape Town, in defiance of the government's segregation policy. Springfield was deported. Her contract specifically excluded segregated performances, making her one of the first British artists to do so.
In the same year she was voted the year's top British Female Singer in the New Musical Express readers' poll, ahead of Lulu, Sandie Shaw, and Cilla Black. Springfield received the award again for the next three years.
