"Dooley"

Generations have grown up watching television’s “Andy Griffith Show,” either the original broadcasts that aired from 1960 to 1968 or the infinite number of reruns that still are being broadcast around the world every day.

And for many of us, the best episodes are those in which the bluegrass-picking Darling family comes down from the hills to Mayberry to visit with Andy, Barney, Opie and Aunt Bee.

Most diehard fans know the boys playing and singing as the Darling brood actually were a real-life Ozark-bred band called The Dillards.

Built by brothers Doug and Rodney Dillard on banjo and guitar with Mitch Jayne on bass and Dean Webb on mandolin, the group hailed from Salem, MO, in the early ‘60s.

After some initial success in Missouri, the quartet moved to Los Angeles in 1962, quickly signing with Elektra Records. More importantly, the guys also became clients of the William Morris Agency, whose high-powered connections landed that lucrative Andy Griffith gig starting in 1963.

About the Song

That same year, Rodney Dillard and Mitch Jayne wrote the band’s best-known song. “Dooley” has become an undisputed standard in the string band world after it first appeared on the band’s debut album, Back Porch Bluegrass, release in May 1963.

But before that, the song was introduced nationally a few weeks earlier on the April 29, 1963, broadcast of "The Andy Griffith Show" in a scene showing it performed by the Dillards alongside Andy on guitar.

Recently, Rodney — today at 83, the only surviving member of the original four Dillards — took to Facebook to tell the story of how the song came to be.

“It’s about an old boy from Salem who made moonshine whiskey for 25 consecutive years,” Dillard wrote in his post.

“He would come into town in his pickup truck every Saturday and load five 100-pound sacks of sugar in the back of his truck. He never got caught, never went to jail, but everybody in town knew he was making whiskey. They knew he wasn’t making fudge up there on that ridge.”

“‘Dooley’ has been very, very good to us over the years,” Rodney added.

Following The Dilliards’ initial performance, “Dooley” right away got other high-profiled coverage, starting with The Kingston Trio and by Porter Wagoner, both in 1965.

Exploring Our Eclecticity

Meanwhile, as The Flood begins to think about going back into the studio later this year to record a new album, the guys are doing a lot of genre-hopping, blues one week, banjo the next, an old rock classic followed by some jazz standard from the rich pages of the Great American Songbook.

If you’d like to sample just how eclectic it has been lately, use the free Radio Floodango music streaming service to randomly stream tunes from the past seven months.

Or you can just visit the Podcast pages of The Flood website to scroll and check out recent podcasts from January forward.

And as you browse, if you come upon a tune you’d especially like to see on the new album, please drop us a line and let us know!