Inspiration of Dusty Springfield helps land a gig in Vegas

Sam Morris

Katy Setterfield rehearses last week for her role in “Legends in Concert.” She won the three-month run in the show by winning a tribute artist contest on a BBC series.

By Jerry Fink (contact)

Monday, May 19, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Still suffering from jet lag and the heady experience of being named the best tribute artist in Great Britain, Katy Setterfield began rehearsing last week in Las Vegas.

Tonight she begins her three-month engagement with “Legends in Concert” at the Imperial Palace.

The engagement was the grand prize won in February on BBC’s “The One and Only ...” TV series, which starred a cast of performers paying tribute to Elton John, Robin Williams and others. Setterfield’s winning tribute was for Dusty Springfield, the ’60s pop star who died of cancer in 1999.

Setterfield has a long list of tributes in her repertoire. For the TV show, she says, it was a toss-up between doing Springfield or Cher.

“I thought hard,” Setterfield says as she waits to join the cast of dancers in the rehearsal studio. “I have loved Dusty’s music all my life. She inspired me, and means so much to me. The voice is incredible. So I popped for Dusty Springfield, and it was a good decision.”

Setterfield’s timing is perfect. Her appearance coincides with renewed interest in Springfield, one of the top pop stars of the ’60s, whose private life was marked by drug and alcohol abuse and mental problems.

Grammy-winning singer Shelby Lynne released a Springfield tribute, “Just a Little Lovin’,” this year. Nicole Kidman announced she is producing and starring in a film for Fox based on Springfield’s life. All of this has sparked music fans to rediscover Springfield’s catalog and caused a spike in her record sales.

In the “Legends in Concert” production, Setterfield will sing four of Springfield’s most popular songs — “Son of a Preacher Man,” “Wishin’ and Hopin’,” “I Only Want To Be With You” and “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me.”

Her few minutes in the spotlight each night will be like a vacation for Setterfield, who for eight years starred in a touring tribute show called “That’ll be the Day” that involved 16 costume changes and a couple of hours onstage. The cast performed more than 200 one-night engagements across England and Scotland every year.

This isn’t Setterfield’s first trip to Vegas. She was here in 1992 when she won a trip for selling the most Casio keyboards at the music store where she worked in London.

She didn’t see “Legends in Concert” that time around.

“I didn’t know anything about the scene then,” Setterfield says.

When the allotted time for her trip was over, she stayed in the United States and spent nine months touring with a rock band in Florida.

Setterfield began singing and playing keyboards in English pubs when she was 14. “My father took me around,” she says. “He was my roadie.”

After her experience in Florida, she began performing summer shows in England.

“The coastal towns have theaters on piers that have variety shows during the summer season,” Setterfield says. “I did that for several years.”

Then in 2000 she joined the cast of “That’ll be the Day,” a ’50s-through-’70s nostalgia show in which she paid tribute to such artists as Springfield, Cher, Lulu and Tina Turner.

Winning the recent competition has changed Setterfield’s life.

“It turned it upside down,” she says. “After eight years in the nostalgia show it was all I knew. But I have left the show now and have been receiving offers of much better work for much better pay. And there have been a lot of other opportunities.”

The only downside to Setterfield’s victory is that there will be a prolonged separation from her husband, bass player Andy Hodge, with whom she toured in England.

Down the road she hopes to do more recording — she has done three albums to date. And she would like to spend more time touring in the United States, singing her own songs as well as Springfield’s.

“I really love the United States,” she says.