Makem and Clancy

Tommy Makem had married an American woman and settled in Dover New Hampshire...  He left the Clancy brothers in the late 1960s for a solo career but a few years later he did a gig with Liam Clancy, the youngest of the brothers and they formed a partnership…  They had a good chemistry on stage and worked together for many years.  Their concerts were full of jokes and a few nonsense songs but also traditional folk songs…

Liam - like Tommy had been born to a struggling family, who were far from well off.  He too worked in clerical jobs as a young man.  He was the youngest son of  a large family and was born in Carrick on Suir, County Tipperary.. He was initially called by the English version of his name, William.  However he was strongly nationalistic and chose to be called Liam… later on.  

He worked in Dublin in an office job, and struggled with ill health as he was not well off enough to go for medical help. He did not realise what was wrong with him but later found he had an ulcer...  While working, Liam  tried to continue his education part time.  He wanted to be an actor, and was involved in Amateur drama and took art classes. 

He had met Diane Guggenheim, the American heiress, when she was travelling in Ireland, collecting folk songs.. 

 She was the one who was in love with him... She was an older woman who was divorced and pursued him, while he was unsure about his feelings for her.   But he decided to try his luck in the US and moved to America to be with her…He was a naive young man at the time....

 He and his brothers and Tommy Makem tried to get a start in stage acting and lived in Greenwich Village, which was a haven for young people from small towns in the US and also young Irish people who had been reared in narrow puritanical cultures.  Liam enjoyed drinking and also loved the free Bohemian culture which was very unlike the sexually repressed narrowly Catholic atmosphere of 1950s Ireland.  He had several relationships with women.  

Later on, he had financial problems and relocated for some years to Canada…

The Clancy brothers and Makem had split ups but they continued to perform together on and off for the rest of their lives.  Makem and Clancy were sometimes accused of “stage Irishness”….. but their work popularized and revitalized Irish traditional and folk music and made it fun…Tommy died in 2007 and Liam, who lived in Ireland, died in 2009.