BEVERLEY Knight, the queen of British soul and now the doyenne of West End musical theatre too, has done a Dusty for her new album.

Soulsville, her first for East West/Warner Music, will be released on June 10 as the eighth studio set of her 21-year career after recording sessions that took the Wolverhampton singer to Memphis, Tennessee.

Tomorrow, you can hear Memphis material from the new record, alongside hits from Beverley's four gold-certified albums and songs from her West End runs in such shows as The Bodyguard, Cats and Memphis The Musical when she plays the York Barbican on her first tour in four years.

When What's On spoke with Beverley, she was still in the throes of making the record. "It's been a while but it's been worth the wait," she said, looking forward to bringing out her first new recordings since 2011's Soul UK. "It's a proper soul album, where you go in and all the musicians are in the room, and the engineer and producer are there, and we're all fired up," she says.

In fact it is a very proper soul record, recorded in a week-long session in February at Willie Mitchell’s legendary Royal Studios in Memphis, where Al Green cut the deepest and creamiest of his grooves, as Beverley returned to the city where she prepared for her 2015 Oliver Award-nominated role as club singer Felicia Farrell in Memphis The Musical.

Whereas Dusty Springfield was notoriously diffident at the outset of her Memphis recordings, Beverley took it all in her stride as she she recorded original songs, such as the single Middle Of Love, and covers of William Bell and Judy Clay’s Private Number and Big Momma Thornton’s Hound Dog.

York Press:

Beverley Knight: "It's just the greatest feeling"

Singing into Al Green's microphone; duetting with Sam and Dave's Sam Moore on Hold On, I'm Comin'; working with Willie Mitchell’s son, engineer Boo Mitchell; sharing the studio with Hi Records and Al Green players such as brothers Leroy and Charles Hodges on bass and Hammond respectively, she loved it all.

"To me, it's no different to what I've done all my life, standing on stage or in a studio, doing it there and then, though it's easier in the studio because you can always re-do it, whereas on stage you either plough on or you stop, apologise and start again," says 43-year-old Beverley.

"For me, being on stage is as natural as breathing, and I love it when things are live and you don't know what things will happen. I'm a creature who's made for the live environment and the performing experience. That, for me, is the absolute zenith of everything I do.

"It's just the greatest feeling, though I can't explain it, so it's difficult for me to empathise with singers who suffer from terrible stage fright, though I have huge amounts of sympathy for them. But it's the complete opposite for me: the stage is where I get my joy."

Beverley wrote or co-wrote her material for Soulsville when appearing in Memphis The Musical and Cats. "The daytime was when I could work on songs; a lot of creativity came from morning to late afternoon, then I'd go into my dressing room and get into performance mode," she says.

From July 15 at the Dominion Theatre, Beverley is to return to the West End as Rachel Marron in The Bodyguard, the part in which she made her London stage debut in 2013. First, however, she is playing on tour with the band she put together specifically for the Soulsville album. "I'll be as energetic on stage as I always am," she promises.

Beverley Knight plays York Barbican tomorrow night; doors open at 7pm. Box office: 0844 854 2757 or yorkbarbican.co.uk