Don't Give Up b/w My Place, Your Place

Barbara Dixon was seven when she first worked the stage of Dublin's Gate Theatre. Born in Dublin on April 4, 1952, she came up through the St. Louis school in Rathmines and its choir, which grew into the Young Dublin Singers, who appeared in shows such as Gaels of Laughter. While the group was performing at Dublin's Gaiety Theatre, producer Fred O'Donovan approached them looking for backing vocalists for recording sessions. He selected Dixon, Irene McCoubrey and Adele King, and before the public knew their names the three were singing on records such as 'Old Man Trouble' by The Royal Blues, 'Nora' by Johnny McEvoy and 'Joys of Love' by The Dixies.

Launched in 1967 as Maxi, Dick and Twink, with Dixon as Dick, they became Ireland's first real girl group, managed by T.J. Byrne of Royal Showband fame. They appeared on Opportunity Knocks in Britain and became stars of the RTÉ series Steady As She Go-Goes, playing a folksy set with Twink on guitar and turning up with numbers from Calamity Jane. In October 1969 they made the cover of Spotlight. Dixon, the youngest at 17, told the magazine, "I study in the mornings trying to get my Leaving Cert," with photo modelling after that and a show at night.

On March 1, 1970, the trio sang 'Things You Hear About Me' at the Irish National Song Contest and finished second with 14 points. The winner, on 23, was a schoolgirl from Derry named Dana, whose 'All Kinds of Everything' went on to win Eurovision for Ireland. The trio's single reached number 17 on the Irish chart, and 'Tangerine, Tangerine' followed that summer. In December they left for North America with the Dublin beat group The Bye-Laws, billed together as Toybox because the full name, Twink said, sounded like a circus coming to town.

The tour dragged through a brutal Canadian winter and tempers went with it. Twink remembered the William Pitt Hotel in Chatham as sitting in "a one horse town which even the horses had left." By May 1971 the group was finished. Twink went home with The Bye-Laws, while Maxi and Dick stayed in Canada, and by January 1972 they were singing backup behind Stuart Smith in an outfit called The Smilin' Faces.

Dixon returned to Ireland around May 1972 to front the new Royal Showband, the once mighty Waterford band that had just lost Brendan Bowyer and Tom Dunphy. She shared the front line first with Carl Phillips, then with Derek Mehaffey, and within a year she was gone. She had married Peter Law, born Peter Lawlor, of Naas, the singer with The Pacific Showband, who had moved to Toronto in 1971 under the new name Dublin Corporation. By June 1973 Peter and Barbara Law were singing together as co-vocalists in a band called Sweet Chariot.

On March 29, 1978, Law and Grant Smith opened the Juno Awards on national television with a dance routine set to 'Step Out' from the film Outrageous! That November she was in Bananas, a musical revue directed by Jack Creley at the Bayview Theatre, alongside Taborah Johnson and Louis Negin. In 1979 she worked in Allan Guttman's cabaret Tonight at 8:30...9 O'Clock and appeared in the CBC television film The Popcorn Man.

John Luongo, the Boston DJ whose remixes of 'Relight My Fire' and 'This Time Baby' had just topped the American disco charts, struck a deal with CBS for a label of his own and spelled it Pavillion, the extra L standing for Luongo. Barbara Law was its first artist. Producer Harry Hinde, whose first hit was The Raes' 'A Little Lovin' (Keeps the Doctor Away)', cut the album at Manta Sound in Toronto and in New York with a serious band: Motown bassist Bob Babbitt, drummer Charles Collins, keyboard players Eric Robertson and Kenny Landrum, guitarists Paul Sabu and Steve Love, and percussionist Jimmy Maelen, with David Van DePitte, another Motown veteran, writing the arrangements. Cissy Houston, Hilda Harris and Yvonne Lewis sang backup. Art Kane shot the cover, with Law dressed by Walter Albini.

'Take All of Me' ran seven minutes and twenty seconds on the 12-inch, a swaying mid-tempo groove with a twangy, flamenco-tinged opening and a phased guitar that climbs through the mix, finished off by Luongo and Michael Barbiero with a break heavy on bass and cowbell. Law's voice, smoky with a rasp at the edge of it, suited it perfectly. Brian Chin of Record World thought the song a little simple and the production impeccable. It reached number 31 on Billboard's disco chart. The flip, 'Can You Read My Mind', is a lighter, prettier piece of pop disco. The LP also had a ballad, 'On My Own Again', two Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris songs in 'I Just Live' and 'Love Shot', and a run of tough disco rock at the end of side two, where Law growls her way through 'Somethin's Burnin'' and the six-minute 'Shake Your Bait'. It came out across Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia and South Africa. She never made another album. 'Do It All Night' and 'Shake Your Bait' turned up in the tennis comedy Spring Fever, released in Canada in 1982 and the United States in 1983.

Law also recorded for Toronto's Axe Records. 'Don't Give Up' backed with 'My Place, Your Place' came out as AXE 78, produced by Harry Hinde and engineered by Nick Blagona. 'My Place, Your Place' was written by Canadian songwriter Doug Wass and had earlier been recorded by Avril Chown for Cindril Records.

In April 1982 she reunited with Maxi and Twink on Twink's RTÉ series, the only time the trio ever came back together. In 1984 alone she played Katharine Hepburn opposite Ross Petty's Howard Hughes in Cliff Jones's stage musical For the Love of Howard, then Maggie Simpson in Don Carmody's The Surrogate, with Art Hindle and Shannon Tweed and a score by Daniel Lanois, and Jobeth in Bedroom Eyes, William Fruet's erotic thriller about a jogging stockbroker whose window peeping lands him in a murder case. That last role brought a Genie nomination for Best Supporting Actress in March 1985, in a field won by Linda Sorenson for Draw!

Canadian television kept her busy for another decade, with guest parts on Night Heat, Adderly, Diamonds, Katts and Dog, Counterstrike and Due South, and in the TV movies The Return of Ben Casey and Spenser: Ceremony. Barbara Law's last known screen credit is a small part as a rich girl in Clement Virgo's The Planet of Junior Brown, in 1997.

-Robert Williston