THE CD SINGLE LUCKY DIP (38) : One Dove – Why Don’t You Take Me

I’ve pulled this one off the shelf partly to add my own very belated tribute to the late Dolly Parton.

There were countless words across all forms of media in the days and weeks after the country superstar passed away on 25 August, but I don’t think I read anything better than that pulled together by Jez over at A History of Dubious Taste.

I can’t claim to be an expert on the songs written and/or performed by Dolly Parton, and I certainly don’t own any of her singles or albums.  I do have a couple of covers of Jolene, one being on vinyl courtesy of the 7″ cover version back in 1985 by Strawberry Switchblade, while the other is an additional track on the very last single released by One Dove in the final week of 1993.

mp3 : One Dove – Jolene

One Dove are one of those bands whose reputation and legacy seems to grow with the passing of time, with many looking back with huge fondness to 1993.  There was just the one album, Morning White Dove, containing eleven tracks, but just eight different songs as three of the tracks were remixes.  Five of the songs were released as singles.  The most revered, and timeless, has proved to be White Love, and such is the way it is written and talked about more than 30 years on that it is kind of hard to equate it with the fact that it spent just three weeks in the singles chart, peaking at #43 in August 1993, with the parent album reaching #30 during at two-week stay the following month.

A lot of the end of the year write-ups praised the album, so it was no real surprise that, between Christmas and New Year, Why Don’t You Take Me was released as a single ,and it made its way into the charts in January 1994, reaching #30.

mp3: One Dove – Why Don’t You Take Me

There was one slight difference with this release in that the original trio in the band – Dot Allison, Ian Carmichael and Jim McKinven – were joined by two new members, Colin McIlroy and Ed Higgins, both of whom played on Jolene and the other tracks on the single:-

mp3: One Dove – Skanga
mp3: One Dove – Why Don’t You Take Me (Rank Outsiders Mix)
mp3: One Dove – Untitled

The five musicians did, later in 1994, go back into the studio to begin work on a proposed second album, but nothing came of it and One Dove split up.

JC