Finding a Safe Place in Music
Her safe place was listening to music, especially artists like Carmen Miranda, Doris Day, and Billie Holiday, who were known to have turned pain and a troubled life into art. The nuns at the convent wanted her to be a librarian. But Dusty was determined to rebel against her father, the nuns, and anyone who thought they knew what she should be better than her.
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In an effort to rebel, she bleached her hair and basically turned herself into someone else. “I just suddenly decided, in one afternoon, to be this other person who was going to make it.” She immersed herself in jazz and the blues music, listening to artists like Cole Porter, Duke Ellington and Glenn Miller, and singers Peggy Lee and Jo Stafford.