I love country music, which developed in America from a
mixture of the folk music of England, Scotland Wales and Ireland. And one of my favorite folk musicians is the group Tommy Makem
and the Clancy brothers.
They began to sing in the USA in the late 50s and early 60s,
when there was a folk music revival.
Tommy was born in 1932, in Keady, in Northern Ireland... His father was a fiddler and he learned to sing
in church choirs but did not learn to read music. However his mother Sarah Makem was a collector
of Irish traditional music. Due to
this, he met with rich Americans including the heiress Diane Guggenheim, who
were interested in collecting and reviving folk music in America and who travelled
in Europe meeting with folk singers...
Tommy left school at 14 and went to work as a clerk, but in
1955, he decided like many Irish people to move to the US as times were hard in Ireland.
He went to New
Hampshire and got a job but hurt his hand in a press and then decided to try
his luck in New York, as an actor. He
met up with the Clancy brothers who came from Southern Ireland and who dreamed
of becoming actors also. They were never all that successful as actor but they began to
sing in bars and then in 1961 got a record deal with Columbia records. They performed at the Newport Folk Festival
and mingled with newcomers to the folk scene like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. As the 1960s progressed
and folk music became more popular, Tommy with the Clancy brothers performed at
Carnegie Hall and in the White house for John F Kennedy... and on the Ed Sullivan
Show. They also worked in Ireland and
in Canada.
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