Kelly Family

The Kelly Family
Left to right: Jimmy, Patricia, Paddy, Kathy and Johnny in 1988.
Background information
Also known as	The Kellys
Origin	United States
Genres	Pop, pop rock, folklore
Years active	1974–2008, 2017-
Labels	Kel-Life, EMI, BMG, Ariola, Polydor, Universal
Website	KellyFamily.nl
Members	Kathy Kelly Patricia Kelly John Kelly Joey Kelly Jimmy Kelly Angelo Kelly
Past members	Papa Dan Kelly Mama Barbara-Ann Kelly Joanne Kelly Daniel Kelly Caroline Kelly Paul Kelly Paddy Kelly Barby Kelly Maite Kelly

The Kelly Family is an Irish-American-European music group consisting of a multi-generational family, usually consisting of nine siblings joined occasionally on stage in their earlier years by their father and mother. They played a repertoire of rock, pop, and folk music. They had chart and concert success around the world, especially in Germany, the Benelux countries, Scandinavia, Poland, Spain and Portugal. They have sold over 20 million albums since the early 1980s. The Kelly Family was ranked as the 6th most popular music act in Germany in the 1990s. Despite its American origins, the group is virtually unknown in the United States. They sang in English, Spanish, German and Basque.

For many years, the group presented a ragamuffin image and a vagabonding lifestyle, travelling around Europe in a double-decker bus and houseboat. Their image was enhanced by their eclectic and often homemade clothing, and the very long hair worn by both male and female members of the band. The Kelly Family began to break up in 2000 and afterwards they performed mostly as individuals or sub-sets of the full group and took on a more mainstream look.

The patriarch of the family, Daniel Kelly Sr., has been described as a "grizzled, ageing druid aesthetic", but according to his daughter Kathy he was in earlier days "a clean-cut, intense conservative Catholic" who studied for the priesthood. He married his first wife, Joanne, in 1957, and the couple left their native United States in 1965 with their children Daniel Jr., Caroline, Kathleen and Paul, and settled in Spain, where Daniel opened an antiques shop.