like, whoa, do the doobie brothers belong in the hall of fame?

“THE DOOBIES IN THE HALL OF FAME?” That’s a question that’s been asked a bit in the wake of their recent induction into said Hall. There was a version of that question (“Are the Doobie Brothers Hall of Fame Worthy”) on Quora this morning. I answered it there and wanted to share my answer here.

But first, I am not that big a fan of the Doobies. In fact, I kinda hated the original band fronted by Tom Johnston. One of the reasons I may have kinda hated them was that their watered-down version of Jesus Is Just Alright was a bigger hit in 1972 than my faverave band the Byrds’ vastly superior version had been in 1970. ¹

But I always liked Michael McDonald’s somewhat strained soul singing. My take on the group has mellowed with age—perhaps yet another sign of incipient Alzheimers on my behalf—and I like a good deal of what made the charts way back in the 1970s and ’80s.

Back to the Quora question. There were already three positive answers to the question, including, “Not only are they worthy, they should have been in twenty years ago!” and “They should have been in the Hall looooong ago!!!!!!!!” ²

The BEST OF THE DOOBIES album was certified by the RIAA for a Diamond Record award signifying 10,000,000 units sold. As the award was made way back in 1996, we can probably assume that all of the units included in the award were actual records and tapes sold in stores. That is, they were not virtual albums made up of accumulated files downloaded or streamed via computer.

The answer to your question

I thought I would echo these sentiments while including a little bit of data, so here is what I contributed:

The Doobies had sixteen Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, two of which were #1.

They have eleven albums that have been certified by the RIAA for Gold or Platinum Record Awards.

If there was an actual set of basic criteria for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Doobies would have passed it a looooong time ago.

Alas, the only criteria for induction are the opinions and, apparently, the moods of the Hall nominators and voters.

PS: The answer to your question is “Duh …”

FEATURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page is of the Doobie Brothers on the Dutch television show Toppop in January 1974. At the time, they were riding high on the back of two big hit singles, Long Train Runnin’ and China Grove, and a pair of albums that had been certified Gold by the RIAA in 1973, TOULOUSE STREET and THE CAPTAIN AND ME. (Photo by Hans Peters and courtesy of Wikipedia.)

FOOTNOTES:

1   Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.

2   Comments courtesy of Anthony Casebeer and Edmund S Villnave, respectively.