407 Goodbye The Dooleys - And I Wish

Chart  entered :  10  October  1981

Chart  peak : 52

This  is  another  one  I  missed  at  the  time  as  The  Dooleys  make  their  barely-noticed  exit  from  this  story.

The  band  hit  their  peak  shortly  after  youngest  sister  Helen  Dooley  joined  on  keyboards  when  the  shrill  synth-pop  of  "Wanted"   ( still  worth  a  listen  ) got  to  number  3  in  the  summer  of  1979.  The  follow-up  "The  Chosen  Few"  made  the  Top  10  but  thereafter  their  decline  was  very  swift. The  two  singles  immediately  preceding  this  one  hadn't  charted  so  I  expect  they  had  an  inkling  their  days  were  numbered.

"And  I  Wish  "  was  written  by  Barry  Blue  and  Robin  Smith  who  also  produced  and  arranged  respectively. It's  very  much   later  period  Abba-lite  with  the  vocodored  repetition  of   the  title  used  to  build  up  a  rhythm  in  the  same  way  as  Take  A  Chance  On  Me   and  the  whole  song  sounds  like  an  out-take  from  Voulez-Vous. The  production  is  a  bit  cheap    and  the  girls'  voices  sound  thin  and  uncomfortable  with  the  key. With  a  bit  more  work  it  might  have  squeezed  them  back  into  the  Top  40.

The  group  had  never  sold  many  albums; middle  of  the  road  pop  acts  never  did  in  the  seventies  and  eighties  and  the  parent  album  "Secrets"  didn't  chart. It  wasn't  helped  by  GTO  being  taken  over  by  Epic  at  the  time.

The  group  started  to  fragment  even  before  the  second  single  was  released. Ann  Dooley  and  bassist  Bob  Walsh   had  got  married  and  decided  to  emigrate  to  South  Africa. Helen  decided  to  go  with  them ; I'm  not  sure  if  that's  ever  really  been  explained.  The  trio  formed  a   band  called  Shiraz  over  there  to  play  wedding  gigs  and  write  musicals  for  the  local  theatre  and  are  still  going.

 Fortunately  Kathy  Dooley  was  the  main  vocalist  on  "The  Dancer"  so  the  departures  did  not  seriously  impede  them  from  promoting  it.  It's  the  sort  of  light  disco  pop  that  The  Nolans  were  still  having  hits  with  but  it  failed  to  do  the  business  for  them. Vicki  Roe  , a  former  Irish  Miss  Universe  was  brought  in  to  replace  Ann . Their  musical  director  John Taggart filled  in  if  extra  keyboard  parts  were  required.

They  re-emerged  in  July  1982  with  "Will  You  Or  Won't  You" , another  Abba-soundalike  song  written  by  producer  Mike  Myers. It  got  them  onto  Seaside  Special  but  it  wasn't  a  hit. Epic  had  kept  them  on  after  the  takeover  but  now  they  parted  company.

The  band  found  a  new  home  on  RnR  Records  and  released  "Flavour  of  the  Month " a  Bugatti  Musker  song  that  sounds  like  recent  records  by  Bucks  Fizz, Toto  Coelo   and  Toni  Basil  have  been  placed  in  the  blender  to  produce  an  identikit  Europop  number  . It  came  initially  as  a  double  pack  single  and  all  four  tracks  were  on  their  next  album  "In  Car  Stereo"  which   the  record  company  decided  was  only  worth  releasing  in  Japan  where  they  retained  some  support.

The  following  year  Mike  Myers  persuaded  them  to  record  his  song  "New  Beginning "  under  the  assumed  name  of  Force  8. I  haven't  heard  that  version  but  it  was  a  much-praised  hit  for  Bucks  Fizz  a  couple  of  years  later. That  was  the  end  of  the  band  as  a  recording  act  as  they  split  into  two  factions. John  Dooley, Frank  Dooley  and  Al  Bogan  quit  and  after  a  short  interval  set  themselves  up  as  The  New  Dooleys  while  Kathy  and  Jim  Dooley  soldiered  on   with  replacements.

By  the  early  nineties  both  groups  had  packed  it  in, exhausted  from  constant  touring  and  nothing  more  was  heard  of  them  as  a  musical  concern  until  a  one-off  reunion  gig  in  South  Africa  in  2006,  followed  by  a  CD  from  the  three  Dooley  brothers  a  year  later. I  haven't  heard  it.

They  all   went  on  to  run  The  Mobility  Bureau  supplying  scooters  for  disabled  people. Kathy  got  married  to  The  Bill- actor  Andrew  Mackintosh   and  has  appeared  in  pantomime  with  him. He  too  is  involved  in  the  charity . Jim   was  in  the  news  in  2012  when  his  nine  year  campaign  to  organise  a  memorial  to  Bomber  Command  ended  in  success   and  then  again  earlier  this  year  concerning  a  tax  dispute.