Charlie Dore

English singer songwriter, actress (b. 1956)

Charlie Dore (born 1956) is an English singer songwriter, composer, multi instrumentalist, and actress. Although best known as a singer songwriter, Dore has a multi faceted career that includes acting in film, TV and radio, comedy improvisation, and composition for film and TV. She studied drama at the Arts Educational School, Tring and London.

Dore worked for two years in repertory in Newcastle at the Tyneside Theatre Company, starting in the touring company, Stagecoach, where she performed in theatres, schools, streets, a psychiatric hospital, Oxford University, and the Swan Hunter shipyard canteen. She later appeared in several shows directed by Michael Bogdanov, including a rock musical version of the Bacchae, Orgy by Cecil Taylor, Oh, What a Lovely War!, and Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw. Moving back to London, Dore worked in fringe theatre, then joined Thames TV's long running series Rainbow for 18 months, writing and performing songs with Julian Littman, whom she had met at drama school, and Karl Johnson, an actor musician from the Tyneside Theatre Company before being replaced by the more familiar ensemble of Rod Burton, Matthew Corbett and Jane Tucker which evolved into Rod, Jane and Freddy. After this, Dore, Littman and Johnson composed and recorded the original theme from the BBC pre school series You and Me. A friend, blues guitarist Sam Mitchell, asked Dore to deputise for him at Obelisk, a Westbourne Grove pancake house where he played on Monday nights. Dore co opted Julian Littman and Karl Johnson to help pad out the long sets required and the band grew, eventually including Karl's brother Stuart Johnson on banjo and dobro, and various guests on fiddle, mandolin, and guitar. It was the basis of her first band, Hula Valley. The band played a selection of bluegrass, western swing, and hillbilly music, as Dore was yet to start her own songwriting. As the band grew and changed shape and name, from Prairie Oyster to Fresh Oyster to Charlie Dore's Back Pocket, original material started to flow and the band played the London pub and club circuit, regularly appearing at The Hope & Anchor, The Half Moon, Dingwalls, and the Rock Garden. During this period the band personnel was still changing and included, among others, Charlie Gaisford, Ian McCann, Keith Nelson, Gus York, Garrick Dewar, Paul Atkinson and Pick Withers on drums, who was also playing with the early Dire Straits.

She was spotted by Island Records and signed to a solo recording and publishing deal by Chris Blackwell in 1978, later that year being flown to Nashville, Tennessee to work with producer Audie Ashworth at his Crazy Mama's studio. and Dore left Island for a deal with Chrysalis Records.