Tommy Makem
Irish folk musician who with the Clancys took the US by storm
Thomas James Makem, singer, musician and broadcaster: born Keady, Co Armagh 4 November 1932; married 1964 Mary Shanahan (died 2001; three sons, one daughter); died Dover, New Hampshire 1 August 2007.
Tommy Makem was adored by Bob Dylan, revered by the Pogues and lionised by a generation of folk music fans, and his influence stretched across Irish music for 50 years. The son of the traditional singer Sarah Makem, he had direct access to a rich fund of folk songs and, after emigrating to the United States and teaming up with the Clancy Brothers, popularised them all over the world.
Although Makem had initially been intent on gaining fame as an actor, his partnership with the three Clancys unexpectedly achieved massive success in the US in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Their emotive ballads and booming choruses not only gave Irish music unprecedented exposure and popularity, but they came to define the music for the legions of bands who emerged in their wake.
Yet while the group became synonymous with the sentimental, carousing, rabble-rousing stage Irish cliché - their first two recordings in 1956 were LPs of rebel songs (Irish Songs of Rebellion) and drinking songs (Come Fill Your Glass With Us) - Tommy Makem never conformed to the public image. A lifelong teetotaller, he was a fiercely moral man of great integrity, a nationalist who believed passionately in "the old song tradition."
He was an accomplished whistle and banjo player and a tender, emotive baritone singer, but his real strength was as a masterful communicator with a supreme gift for captivating audiences, whether in poetry, storytelling or song.
Born in Keady, across the Northern Ireland border in Co Armagh, he was raised on the fiddle tunes of his father, Peter, and the traditional ballads of his mother, Sarah, and became used to collectors visiting the family home in the early 1950s to record his mother's folk songs. In 1953 one of her songs, "As I Roved Out", recorded by Peter Kennedy, inspired the landmark BBC radio series of the same name which helped fuel the British folk revival.
When an American collector, Diane Hamilton - a member of the wealthy Guggenheim family - arrived in Keady to record Sarah, she brought with her Liam Clancy, a young would-be actor and singer from Co Tipperary. They hit it off instantly and Liam watched in wonder when, a few days later, attending a rowdy dance together in Newry, Tommy was called up on stage and swiftly silenced the noisy crowd by singing and acting out the song "The Cobbler".
Tommy went to the US for the first time in December 1955, staying with members of his mother's family in the old cotton town of Dover, New Hampshire. To raise funds to further his ambition to be an actor in New York, he worked at a printing works until his left hand was crushed in a printing press. With his hand still bandaged, he went to New York and met up again with Liam Clancy and his two elder brothers Paddy and Tom, who were running the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village.
The theatre was losing money and to supplement income they hit on the idea of promoting late-night concerts there. These became a favourite haunt for the bohemian characters populating the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk scene, Bob Dylan among them, and the act they all came to see was the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem performing what were to become classic chorus songs like "Finnegan's Wake", "Jug of Punch" and "The Leaving of Liverpool".
With one microphone to share between them they developed the roaring vocal style which became their trademark while, back in Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, Mrs Clancy sent them all knitted aran jumpers to keep out the New York cold night air. Little did they know those jumpers were to symbolise ballad singing for the next couple of decades.
Partly financed by Diane Hamilton, they helped found Tradition Records to promote Irish music and release their own records, but their big break came in 1961 when - on the back of a three-week season at the upmarket Blue Angel club - they were invited to play two songs on the networked Ed Sullivan Show. When one of the other acts pulled out at the last minute, they were asked to sing three extra songs.
The Kingston Trio and the Weavers had been having hits and American folk groups were in vogue, but they were much more sedate than the colourful and seemingly more authentic Makem and the Clancys, who became an overnight sensation after the Sullivan appearance. One day they were eking out a living playing small clubs in New York and the next they were famous all over America.
They were signed to Columbia, starred at the 1961 Newport Folk Festival, appeared on The Tonight Show, sold out the Carnegie Hall, sang at the White House in front of John F. Kennedy and become heroes back home in Ireland.
Until that point most people's perception of Irish music was moulded by the polite parlour music of tenors like John McCormack, but Makem and the Clancys changed all that and opened the door for other Irish bands like the Dubliners. Some grouched about their commercialism, but they gave Ireland a new pride in its own music and culture. Makem even mastered the bagpipes but was dissuaded from playing them on stage because he drowned out the other band members. "Tommy Makem was a gentleman," said Liam Clancy. "By his own definition a gentleman is a fellow who can play the bagpipes . . . but won't."
With the advent of the Beatles and the rock revolution, their popularity faded and Tommy Makem left the Clancys in 1969 to embark on a solo career. He continued to beguile audiences, mixing songs from his mother's repertoire including "As I Roved Out" and "The Month of January" with his own songs, such as the heartbreaking "Four Green Fields" and the evocative "Gentle Annie", which passed into the folk tradition. Makem became known as the bard of Armagh.
In 1975 he was reunited with Liam Clancy when they were both booked at a festival in Cleveland, Ohio and they subsequently spent a decade working together, recording a series of duet albums. There was a reunion with the original Clancy Brothers line-up in 1984 with a tour of the United States, Britain and Ireland and a live album from their sell-out show at Lincoln Center, New York, demonstrating once again Makem's extraordinary charisma and stage presence.
By the time Makem resumed his solo career, Irish music had moved on, with the emergence of younger musicians with a far more modern, complex style like Planxty, the Bothy Band, Moving Hearts and De Dannan. Makem's music was derided in many circles for being old-fashioned and simplistic. Yet he still had a devoted following and his role in Irish music was reassessed when the Pogues emerged, unashamedly updating the Clancy Brothers rip-roaring style and indirectly introducing their music to a whole new generation.
Makem also became a respected broadcaster and TV presenter and in 2000 he launched his own Festival of Song in South Armagh. He was never happier, though, than when on stage and though stricken with lung cancer he continued to perform until recently, and recorded over 100 albums throughout his career. Long domiciled in New Hampshire, he made regular trips home to Ireland but wasn't always impressed with what he found there. "We're so obsessed with modernity we don't know what we're losing," he said. "They're making gazillions of dollars in Ireland but they're losing their culture."
Colin Irwin
Published: 04 August 2007
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
Irish folk musician who with the Clancys took the US by storm
Thomas James Makem, singer, musician and broadcaster: born Keady, Co Armagh 4 November 1932; married 1964 Mary Shanahan (died 2001; three sons, one daughter); died Dover, New Hampshire 1 August 2007.
Tommy Makem was adored by Bob Dylan, revered by the Pogues and lionised by a generation of folk music fans, and his influence stretched across Irish music for 50 years. The son of the traditional singer Sarah Makem, he had direct access to a rich fund of folk songs and, after emigrating to the United States and teaming up with the Clancy Brothers, popularised them all over the world.
Although Makem had initially been intent on gaining fame as an actor, his partnership with the three Clancys unexpectedly achieved massive success in the US in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Their emotive ballads and booming choruses not only gave Irish music unprecedented exposure and popularity, but they came to define the music for the legions of bands who emerged in their wake.
Yet while the group became synonymous with the sentimental, carousing, rabble-rousing stage Irish cliché - their first two recordings in 1956 were LPs of rebel songs (Irish Songs of Rebellion) and drinking songs (Come Fill Your Glass With Us) - Tommy Makem never conformed to the public image. A lifelong teetotaller, he was a fiercely moral man of great integrity, a nationalist who believed passionately in "the old song tradition."
He was an accomplished whistle and banjo player and a tender, emotive baritone singer, but his real strength was as a masterful communicator with a supreme gift for captivating audiences, whether in poetry, storytelling or song.
Born in Keady, across the Northern Ireland border in Co Armagh, he was raised on the fiddle tunes of his father, Peter, and the traditional ballads of his mother, Sarah, and became used to collectors visiting the family home in the early 1950s to record his mother's folk songs. In 1953 one of her songs, "As I Roved Out", recorded by Peter Kennedy, inspired the landmark BBC radio series of the same name which helped fuel the British folk revival.
When an American collector, Diane Hamilton - a member of the wealthy Guggenheim family - arrived in Keady to record Sarah, she brought with her Liam Clancy, a young would-be actor and singer from Co Tipperary. They hit it off instantly and Liam watched in wonder when, a few days later, attending a rowdy dance together in Newry, Tommy was called up on stage and swiftly silenced the noisy crowd by singing and acting out the song "The Cobbler".
Tommy went to the US for the first time in December 1955, staying with members of his mother's family in the old cotton town of Dover, New Hampshire. To raise funds to further his ambition to be an actor in New York, he worked at a printing works until his left hand was crushed in a printing press. With his hand still bandaged, he went to New York and met up again with Liam Clancy and his two elder brothers Paddy and Tom, who were running the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village.
The theatre was losing money and to supplement income they hit on the idea of promoting late-night concerts there. These became a favourite haunt for the bohemian characters populating the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk scene, Bob Dylan among them, and the act they all came to see was the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem performing what were to become classic chorus songs like "Finnegan's Wake", "Jug of Punch" and "The Leaving of Liverpool".
With one microphone to share between them they developed the roaring vocal style which became their trademark while, back in Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, Mrs Clancy sent them all knitted aran jumpers to keep out the New York cold night air. Little did they know those jumpers were to symbolise ballad singing for the next couple of decades.
Partly financed by Diane Hamilton, they helped found Tradition Records to promote Irish music and release their own records, but their big break came in 1961 when - on the back of a three-week season at the upmarket Blue Angel club - they were invited to play two songs on the networked Ed Sullivan Show. When one of the other acts pulled out at the last minute, they were asked to sing three extra songs.
The Kingston Trio and the Weavers had been having hits and American folk groups were in vogue, but they were much more sedate than the colourful and seemingly more authentic Makem and the Clancys, who became an overnight sensation after the Sullivan appearance. One day they were eking out a living playing small clubs in New York and the next they were famous all over America.
They were signed to Columbia, starred at the 1961 Newport Folk Festival, appeared on The Tonight Show, sold out the Carnegie Hall, sang at the White House in front of John F. Kennedy and become heroes back home in Ireland.
Until that point most people's perception of Irish music was moulded by the polite parlour music of tenors like John McCormack, but Makem and the Clancys changed all that and opened the door for other Irish bands like the Dubliners. Some grouched about their commercialism, but they gave Ireland a new pride in its own music and culture. Makem even mastered the bagpipes but was dissuaded from playing them on stage because he drowned out the other band members. "Tommy Makem was a gentleman," said Liam Clancy. "By his own definition a gentleman is a fellow who can play the bagpipes . . . but won't."
With the advent of the Beatles and the rock revolution, their popularity faded and Tommy Makem left the Clancys in 1969 to embark on a solo career. He continued to beguile audiences, mixing songs from his mother's repertoire including "As I Roved Out" and "The Month of January" with his own songs, such as the heartbreaking "Four Green Fields" and the evocative "Gentle Annie", which passed into the folk tradition. Makem became known as the bard of Armagh.
In 1975 he was reunited with Liam Clancy when they were both booked at a festival in Cleveland, Ohio and they subsequently spent a decade working together, recording a series of duet albums. There was a reunion with the original Clancy Brothers line-up in 1984 with a tour of the United States, Britain and Ireland and a live album from their sell-out show at Lincoln Center, New York, demonstrating once again Makem's extraordinary charisma and stage presence.
By the time Makem resumed his solo career, Irish music had moved on, with the emergence of younger musicians with a far more modern, complex style like Planxty, the Bothy Band, Moving Hearts and De Dannan. Makem's music was derided in many circles for being old-fashioned and simplistic. Yet he still had a devoted following and his role in Irish music was reassessed when the Pogues emerged, unashamedly updating the Clancy Brothers rip-roaring style and indirectly introducing their music to a whole new generation.
Makem also became a respected broadcaster and TV presenter and in 2000 he launched his own Festival of Song in South Armagh. He was never happier, though, than when on stage and though stricken with lung cancer he continued to perform until recently, and recorded over 100 albums throughout his career. Long domiciled in New Hampshire, he made regular trips home to Ireland but wasn't always impressed with what he found there. "We're so obsessed with modernity we don't know what we're losing," he said. "They're making gazillions of dollars in Ireland but they're losing their culture."
Colin Irwin
Published: 04 August 2007
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
