Dana - All Kinds Of Dana (1971)

Rosemary Brown was born on 30 August 1951, and was one of seven children. Her father Robert Brown had moved to London to seek employment opportunities after World War II, but when Rosemary was five, the family moved back to Derry, where she grew up in the Creggan housing estate and Bogside, and at age six, she won her first talent contest. She attended Thornhill College, a girls' Catholic school in Derry, and other children in her community nicknamed her 'Dana' (Irish for bold or mischievous) because she would practice her judo moves. Shortly before turning 16, and with the help of teacher and music promoter Tony Johnston, Brown signed with the Decca Records subsidiary label Rex Records, and recording as Dana, she debuted with the single 'Sixteen', written by Tony Johnston, while the b-side 'Little Girl Blue' was her own composition. While still studying A-level music and English, she became popular in Dublin's cabaret and folk clubs at weekends, and was crowned Queen of Cabaret at Clontarf Castle in 1968. Rex Records' secretary Phil Mitton suggested she audition for the Irish National Song Contest, due to take place in February 1969, where the winner would represent Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest. With mixed feelings due to nerves she made it through to the final in Dublin where she sang 'Look Around' by Michael Reade, later released as her fourth single, but she ended up coming second to Muriel Day singing 'Wages Of Love', also written by Reade. 

In December 1969 Tom McGrath invited her to try again the next year, feeling that one of the entered songs, the ballad 'All Kinds of Everything', would suit her. Her second attempt to win the Irish contest was a success, and on Saturday 21 March 1970, the eighteen-year-old schoolgirl performed the song at the Eurovision finals held in the Amsterdam RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre, before an estimated viewing audience of two hundred million. Perched on a stool while wearing an embroidered white mini-dress, she was the last of twelve contestants to perform that night, and after the voting had finished she was declared the winner with 32 points, beating the favourite, UK's Mary Hopkin. The winning song was released as a single on 14 March, and it shot to #1 in the Irish singles chart before the contest had even begun and stayed there for nine weeks. It also spent two weeks at the top of the UK singles chart, and was a success in Australia, Austria, Germany, Israel, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. Her debut album 'All Kinds Of Everything' was recorded at Decca Studios in West Hampstead, London, on the weekend of 25 April 1970, being released in June, and it included four tracks co-written by the singer, as well as a new recording of the album's title track. Her follow-up single was issued in September, but Jerry Lordan's 'I Will Follow You' failed to chart, and it took her next single to break the one-hit wonder tag which threatened to define her career, with a cover of Paul Ryan's 'Who Put The Lights Out', written for his brother Barry's third album, reaching number 5 in Ireland, and number 14 in the UK. It was, however, to be her last successful single for three years, broken only by the Irish chart showing of 'Sunday Monday Tuesday' in 1973. This lack of success caused her agent to recommend she join the former head of Bell Records Dick Leahy on his new label, GTO Records, and her first single for the label was 'Please Tell Him That I Said Hello'. Within a month of its release in October 1974 it was number 7 in Ireland, and after a slow start it eventually climbed to number 8 in the UK chart. Further singles for GTO followed, with mixed success, but 'It's Gonna Be A Cold Cold Christmas' did give her a Christmas number 4 in 1975. 

In September 1976, while promoting her new single 'Fairytale', she lost her voice, and her left vocal cord, which had been cauterized the year before, required urgent surgery to remove what turned out to be a non-malignant growth, as well as a small part of the cord itself. This caused some newspapers to report on the possibility that she might never sing again, but having failed to regain her singing voice after the operation, she contacted Florence Wiese Norberg, a respected singing teacher, and with her help she resumed live performances with a week-long engagement at Caesar's Palace in Luton in December 1977. Her career has taken many unusual turns along the way, playing the part of a tinker girl in the 1971 film 'Flight Of The Doves', a children's adventure film starring Ron Moody and Jack Wild, and presenting two shows on BBC Television: a series of 'A Day With Dana' in 1974 and four series of 'Wake Up Sunday' in 1979. In 1978 she married Damien Scallon, and in 1999, as Rosemary Scallon, she stood as an independent candidate in the European elections, winning a seat in the European Parliament, representing Connacht–Ulster. Considering that her career has encompassed singer/songwriter, actress, television presenter, cabaret star, and even member of Parliament, she will forever be remembered for singing one song, and so this collection will go some way to showing how she reached that point in her career, and then how it progressed after she'd achieved world-wide stardom in 1970.   

   
Track listing

01 Sixteen ‎(single 1967)
02 Little Girl Blue (b-side of 'Sixteen')
03 Come Along, Murphy (single 1968)
04 Patrick O'Donnell (b-side of 'Come Along, Murphy')
05 Heidschi Bumbeidschi (single 1968)
06 Ten Second Girl (b-side of 'Heidschi Bumbeidschi')
07 Look Around (single 1969)
08 No Road Back (b-side of 'Look Around')
09 All Kinds Of Everything (single 1970)
10 Channel Breeze (b-side of 'All Kinds Of Everything')
11 I Will Follow You (single 1970)
12 With A Little Love (b-side of 'I Will Follow You')
13 Who Put The Lights Out (single 1971)
14 Always A Few Things (b-side of 'Who Put The Lights Out')
15 The Far Away Place (Canadian single, from the film 'Flight Of The Doves' 1971)
16 Today (single 1971)
17 Don't Cry My Love (b-side of 'Today')
18 Isn't It A Pity (single 1971)
19 Swallow Fly Away (b-side of 'Isn't It A Pity')