Bob Dylan once called him “the best ballad singer I’d ever heard in my life.” Anyone who once hears Liam Clancy sing Waltzing Matilda or The Green Fields of France will have trouble disputing the assessment.
Irish folk balladeer Liam Clancy, together with his two brothers, Tom and Paddy, and another Irishman named Tommy Makem, first became internationally famous in the early 1960’s when the American folk revival was in full swing. Liam’s emotionally expressive tenor together with the deeply poetic phrasings of Makem’s baritone, were well suited to the time. (Later Makem and Clancy became famous all over again as a duo.) Tom and Paddy died in 1990 and 1998, respectively. Tommy Makem died two years ago. Liam Clancy died Friday in County Cork of pulmonary fibrosis.
But we are left with their music and for that, like many, I am grateful.
(I am never without Makem and Clancy on my iPod. Why in the world would one want to be?)
Here is a nice tribute to Clancy on NPR.
Yes. Indeed. What a spirit. Saw him and his brothers and Tommy Makem once. Wodnerful.
Wonderful – of course.
Hey, Rebel Girl, nice to see your name again. I hope life is treating you well.
I never saw them all together.
But once, when a woman’s magazine sent me on a cruise to write about it. (I wrote a very strange piece. Not as strange and brilliant as David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing That I’ll Never Do Again, but strange.) Anyway, there was this group of about 15 Irish Americans on the boat and—Tommy Makem.
I discovered the group on my last night, and sort of hung with them at bit. At the end of the night I stood on a dark deck with the group as Makem gave a half-hour impromptu concert with his guitar. He ended it by holding the guitar down beside him, as a soldier might hold his gun, stock on the ground, when at parade attention, Makem himself stood straight as an old soldier. And he sang Four Green Fields without accompaniment on that dark, wet deck. It was impossible not to cry.
This was about nineteen years ago and I didn’t know who Makem and Clancy were, but I knew I was witnessing something astonishing.
(I ran out and found their music the minute I got back.)
I can still hear that rich, emotion-raked baritone in my minds ear.
Yes, I know what you mean about how the some music brings the tears…and “Four Green Fields” sung by Tommy Makem on a cold wet deck of a ship – well – makes me tear up just to think of it. And yes, that proud posture of his… thanks for your story – so lovely.
My fella and I saw them all years and years ago at El Camino College (we were kids then – in the 80s) – we wore our thrift store Irish sweaters and they wore the real thing -and I cried (as i still do) when they sang “Roddy McCorley” – love those old Irish rebel songs best of all.
*sigh*
Have you seen the David Foster Wallace story in new New Yorker?
*sigh*
I am doing well – thanks for asking. Sabbatical coming to an end too soon but it’s been lovely. Back in the class in Jaunary. Still lots to write before then though…