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MERCIER PRESS
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Blackrock, Cork, Ireland.
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© Kevin Martin, 2018
ISBN: 978 1 78117 582 8
Epub ISBN: 978 1 78117 583 5
Mobi ISBN: 978 1 78117 584 2
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
For Caitlin and Joey
For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.
From The Ballad of the White Horse
by G. K. Chesterton
I wish to thank the following people for taking the time to speak and correspond with me: Keelan Arbuckle, Charlie Arkins, Steve Bloor, Johnny Brady, Denise Browne, Sarah Burke, Gerard Butler, Maria Carroll, Willie Carty, Paul Claffey, Michael Commins, Kathy Crinnion, dancers at the McWilliam Park Hotel, dancers at social-dancing classes in the Westport Woods, Roly Daniels, John Farry, Mick Flavin, Denise Fogarty, Rita Gill, Tom Gilmore, Gerry Glennon, Brendan Grace, Cliona Hagan, Dennis Heaney, John Hogan, John Marion Hutchinson, Sean Joyce, George Kaye, Dympna Kelly, Michael Kelly, Sandy Kelly, Sharon Kelly, Tom Kelly, William Kelly, James Kilbane, Uri Kohen, Niamh Lynn, Mary from Mullingar, Jim Martin, Lee Matthews, Frank McCaffrey, Susan McCann, Hubie McEvilly, Sarah McEvilly, Charlie McGettigan, Willie McHugh, Philip McLaughlin, Fiona McMahon, Henry McMahon, Karen McMahon, Shauna McStravock, Robert Mizzell, Eunice Moran, John Morrison, Louise Morrissey, Howard Myers, Tom Nallen, Máire Ní Chonláin, Hugh O’Brien, Carmel O’Donoghue, Gerald O’Donoghue, Robert Padden, Aidan Quinn, Declan Quinn, James Reddiough, Marc Roberts, Tim Rogers, Kay Ryan, Roger Ryan, Lisa Stanley, Colin Stewart, Niall Toner and Emmet Wynne. Apologies to anyone I forgot to mention; you know who you are.
Writing a book of this nature is challenging and time-consuming; it is easy to run down blind alleys and lose focus, finding it difficult to see the wood from the trees. In this regard I would particularly like to thank Wendy Logue, my editor at Mercier Press, from whom I have learned so much during the process of bringing this book to fruition. Her attention to detail and professionalism were remarkable and the finished product has benefited enormously from her commitment to the project. Thanks Wendy.
I would also like to thank Patrick O’Donoghue, commissioning editor at Mercier, for his unceasing encouragement, diplomacy skills and good cheer. The lines of communication were always open through Patrick, which is a critical factor in the completion of a project of this nature.
The ballrooms in this country are living proof today,
Of a man who is now a legend from Wicklow to Galway.
We love our country music, to us it’s everything,
It don’t matter what they tell you, Big Tom is still the King.
From ‘Big Tom Is Still The King’1
On Friday 23 October 2015 The Late Late Show, Ireland’s most popular television chat show, dedicated the entire night to a celebration of Irish country music for the first time. It attracted an astonishing fifty-two per cent of the national audience.2 An average of 740,000 people tuned in for the show, while the total viewership over the course of the programme reached 1.3 million. Programme host Ryan Tubridy – a country music fan – was not surprised at the viewing figures when he discussed them on his radio show on RTÉ Radio 1 the following Monday: ‘We knew that country is huge when we decided to have this special so it’s no surprise to us that so many people tuned in on Friday night. It was truly one of the most enjoyable Late Late Shows I’ve ever presented.’3 He was particularly moved by his interview with singer ‘Big Tom’ McBride, as were many of the viewing public. McBride looked a little frail and his voice sounded a little faded and shaky as he sang his most famous country song, ‘Four Country Roads’, but the audience were entranced. They could not dance because they were confined to their seats, but as the camera panned through the crowd the entire mass of people swayed and sang along together. It could have been a cult worshipping an all-powerful leader, such was the devotion on their faces. Here was an old but still physically imposing man, singing about a small village in County Galway, surrounded by a large group of worshippers gazing at him as if he was revealing the secret to everlasting existence. Faces shone and eyes glistened as the big man sang about the four country byways to his heart. There was nothing less than love in the eyes of the audience. Nothing else mattered; this was the man. They had come to worship at the feet of their king.
DJ and highly regarded country music historian and journalist Michael Commins wrote about the show in his column in the Irish Farmers Journal:
The Late Late Show country music special last October cemented Tom’s special place as the iconic star of the country scene in Ireland. It was as if the entire show was building up to that magic moment when Tom came into the room. The standing ovations and crescendo of emotions that spread out from the RTÉ studio in Dublin was a massive endorsement of the place this man from Monaghan commands in the hearts of so many Irish people.4
In the world of Irish country music ‘Big Tom’ was the king.
When I was a teenager my house had many American country records that my mother had brought home from visits to her sister in the United States, and I would often play Tammy Wynette, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Don Williams and Freddy Fender on the record player. What always amazed me about these songs was how great they were at telling a story in a few short verses. This was often a sharp counterpoint to the lyrics of much of the contemporary pop and rock music at the time, where the narrative was frequently lost in a smokescreen of sound effects and synthesizers. The foregrounding of the voice and the elemental nature of the lyrics in country songs had an appeal that a lot of contemporary fare did not have. Although I had no musical ability myself – I had to carry the flag in the school band – even I could see that in country music there was no hiding place for the singer. To get the message across you had to be able not only to sing, but also to emote.
Since then I have listened to all types of American country music and know the subject well. But while I had a wide knowledge and love of American country music, when I noticed the proliferation of home-grown country music programmes on Irish television, particularly on TG4, over the last number of years, I realised I did not know nearly as much about how country music had developed in Ireland. I decided it was time I learned more, and that interest culminated in what you are now reading.
This book is not intended to be a complete guide to Irish country music. It is a mixture of research, interviews and attendance at all sorts of happenings and events, which allowed me to take a journey through the world of Irish country music and along the way to meet and talk to some of the hard-working and talented people who have chosen to make their mark in that world. This is their story. I want to thank all the people who took the time to help me, talk to me on the phone or at various venues and guide me in the right direction when I was researching the book. To all of them, and to all the fans out there who support them, I say, ‘Keep it country.’
Adios amigo. Adios my friend,
The road we have travelled has come to an end.
I ride to The Rio where my life I must spend,
Adios Amigo. Adios my friend.
From ‘Adios Amigo’ sung by Jim Reeves1
On Friday 7 June 1963 the internationally acclaimed American country music star ‘Gentleman’ Jim Reeves placed a white towel over his right shoulder and walked unhappily from the stage of the Orchid Ballroom in Lifford, County Donegal, shortly after he had commenced the third song of his set. The towel was a prearranged signal to his band and entourage. Reeves had had enough. He was not going to have his talents compromised by poor standards and, if his Irish fans were going to hear him, the conditions would have to be as he had requested. The American star was not going to stand there and listen to people booing him. Jim Reeves left the hall, got onto his tour bus, put his head down and told the driver to go to Derry city.
Reeves’ smooth baritone voice and crooning style was distinctive in the world of country music in the 1960s. It had none of the nasal twang – the ‘hillbilly’ sound – which had dominated country music for so long. He simply stood close to the microphone, played his guitar and sang his melodic ballads. His was the original velvet voice of country music, closer in sound to middle-of-the-road crooners like Bing Crosby than to classic hillbilly singers like Hank Williams or Jimmie Rodgers. When he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1967, a bronze plaque put it simply: ‘The velvet voice of Gentleman Jim Reeves was an international influence. His rich voice brought millions of new fans to country music from every corner of the world.’
In the late 1950s country music in the United States – still called hillbilly by some – had been badly shaken by the arrival of rockabilly and of rock and roll. In the minds of some industry insiders it would need to adapt if it was to keep a foothold in the commercial market. Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and their new rockabilly sounds had changed the playing field forever. Music executives worried that if country music did not change, it would be perceived as backwards and old-fashioned, with its moaning steel guitar, yodelling cowboys and country-cousin stage acts. Legendary Nashville music producer Chet Atkins heard Jim Reeves singing and made a plan. He signed the singer to RCA recording company and set about overhauling Reeves’ voice and image. Reeves’ earliest material had been sung with a high-pitched, nasal twang in classic hillbilly style; Atkins got him to lower his voice, added a vibraphone and bass to the music mix, and included a female choir to heighten the pop sound. It was country music with the rough edges rounded off and polished smooth – a style which became known as the ‘Nashville Sound’ and was to change American country music forever.
Urban music lovers warmed to Jim’s crooning purr, as did those beyond the borders of the United States. Horn arrangements and full string sections replaced fiddles and steel guitars in more and more elaborate productions as the Nashville Sound developed. Reeves’ mellow, romantic, smooth delivery proved a perfect marketing strategy. With the ‘twang’ of the steel guitar and fiddles removed, the songs appealed to both the country and pop markets. For some it was the death of real country music, but for many in the business it was manna from heaven.
Later in his life, when asked to define the Nashville Sound, Atkins famously put his hand in his pocket and rattled the change. By the time of his death in 1968 Atkins was referred to as ‘The King of Music Row’ and was worth a fortune.
Jim Reeves had lived an interesting life before he got to Ireland. Born James Travis Reeves in 1920 in Galloway, Texas, he had a promising career as a baseball player and had won an athletic scholarship to university to study drama, but left after six weeks. He worked in Houston shipyards and played semi-professional baseball for three years until he picked up a career-ending injury to a sciatic nerve. Determined to make his career in broadcasting, Reeves worked for a number of small radio stations in Texas. With his mellow voice and slow, drawled delivery, he proved to be a natural presenter. He had clear diction and a rhythmic style, which – combined with his naturally deep voice – would later help to make him a singing star.
In December 1952 Reeves got a job as an announcer on KWKH radio in Shreveport, Louisiana. Soon he was introducing acts on the station’s famous live-music show Louisiana Hayride, a programme which had started broadcasting in 1948 and proved a launching pad for many music stars. One was Elvis Presley, who announced himself to the world when he sang ‘That’s All Right’ on the show on 16 October 1954. Occasionally Reeves would sing a song, substituting for absent artists. The listeners liked what they heard and requested more.
In 1953 Jim Reeves signed with Abbott Records and released singles ‘Red Eyed and Rowdy’ and ‘Beatin’ on the Ding Dong’ – novelty songs at a vast remove from his later work. ‘Mexican Joe’, also released in 1953, was his first song to get into the American Billboard music charts, and lasted twenty-six weeks in the country music top forty, including nine at number one. The song’s Joe was a lovable rogue who spent his time and other people’s money ‘romancin’, dancin’, always on the go’ with the ‘lovely señoritas’ down in Mexico. Despite his wicked ways, he was a popular soul and was welcomed wherever he went with the cry ‘viva la Mexican Joe’. The song was still nothing like the songs of heartache and loss for which Reeves would later become famous; it would eventually be seen as another novelty song in his repertoire – albeit a very popular one.
By the end of 1955, with an RCA recording contract, Reeves had further success with ‘Bimbo’ and ‘Yonder Comes a Sucker’. ‘Bimbo’, another novelty song, was about a young boy with ‘two big bright blue eyes that light up like a star’ and a dog on a rope; it sounded almost like a nursery rhyme but proved to be a huge success. ‘Yonder Comes a Sucker’ dealt with a familiar country music theme – a lover scorned – and achieved moderate success. It was a pointer to the type of song which would soon come to dominate his work.
The song ‘Four Walls’, which in 1957 remained at number one for eight weeks in the American country music charts, marked a major upturn in the singer’s career. Chet Atkins infamously considered it ‘a girl’s song’ and did not rate it as a commercial prospect, but Reeves persisted in recording it. It had the sadness and heartbreak of traditional hard-core country but was delivered in his new, smoother style developed by Atkins – the definition of the Nashville Sound. The singer pines for his lover but is alone with the walls in his house. The song was simple but devastating, establishing a style for his future music and proving to be a crucial stepping stone to his worldwide success.
Jim Reeves became popular in countries where there was little previous tradition of country music; fans in Ireland, Great Britain, Europe, South Africa, Scandinavia, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and India all took to his slick sound. When Reeves toured South Africa he was treated like a rock star and needed police protection; such was his popularity there he recorded an album in Afrikaans – Jy Is My Liefling (You Are My Darling) – and starred in Kimberley Jim, a musical comedy set in the South African gold mines.2
By travelling to countries that had no familiarity with his music, Reeves created new markets; he is the still biggest-selling artist of all time in Sri Lanka. The clarity of his diction and his simple lyrics were central to his international success: speakers of English as a second language could understand the story of his songs more readily than they could follow much of the rock and pop music coming from the United States and Great Britain. The stories were straightforward, heart-wrenching and personal – country songs at their best. The worldwide reach of Reeves’ music is poignantly evidenced on the many tribute websites dedicated to the American singer. A tribute by ‘Leo’ from India is indicative of the feelings many of the contributors express:
I live in India in the city of Madras. Ever since I was seven years old I started listening to the greatest singer who ever lived in this world. His voice is pure as a crystal and soft as velvet. I almost live in him. My day starts with Jim and so do the beautiful starlight nights. I feel so close to him as one of his guitarists was also named Leo. In this modern evil world if there is something that will bring love and peace, it could be only the songs of Jim Reeves. Adios my friends … keep in touch. Leo J. Fernando – Madras, India.3
When Reeves announced a short tour of Ireland and Britain in 1963 there was huge excitement. It was cause for national pride – a reflection of an Ireland coming up in the world after the horrors of the emigration-ravaged 1950s. The year 1963 was mixed for Ireland. On the one hand, there were warnings that the country was heading for bankruptcy, and worries were frequently expressed about the future of the Catholic Church as the number of vocations continued to fall. On the other, the United States president, John F. Kennedy, visited the country to a rapturous welcome. However, despite the power brokers in Irish society viewing Kennedy’s coming as a new dawn, many Irish homes still did not have running water or electricity.
Reeves and his Blue Boys toured Ireland from 30 May to 19 June, except for a short detour to Britain from 10 to 15 June. Their time in Britain was limited because the British Musicians’ Union did not permit them to perform in concert as no reciprocal agreement existed for British bands to travel to the United States. Instead Reeves had a number of engagements with British radio and television stations, and made appearances at American military bases.
The Irish leg of his tour, arranged by Belfast-based promoter Phil Solomon, began well, with a press reception in the Shannon Shamrock Hotel in Limerick on 29 May at which Irish singers Maisie McDaniel and Dermot O’Brien performed. However, as Reeves’ journey proceeded, problems began to develop. The now-defunct Irish music magazine Spotlight interviewed Reeves halfway through his tour, and his answers to journalist Peter Clarke, published on 6 June 1963, were revealing:
In reply to my first query as to whether he was enjoying his tour he said simply and politely ‘Yes’. Too simply and politely, I thought, so I decided to prompt him further and I asked him if there had been any hitches, anything he didn’t like about the tour. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the pianos in many of the ballrooms I’ve sung in have been in a terrible condition. In some places they had to borrow the instrument from a private house. My act depends on a piano as the Blue Boys are only a quartet, and I cannot put on a really good show without one. The audience here are the best I’ve ever come across but the pianos are the worst.’4
It was not just the pianos that bothered the American and his entourage. The venues were often draughty, breeze-block ballrooms with basic facilities both for the public and backstage, and there were too many engagements for the band’s liking. Sometimes Reeves had to play twice a night in different venues separated by poor roads, the condition of which shocked the Americans. The shows were usually timed for 10.30 p.m. and 12.30 a.m., leaving little time to get between venues and consistently impatient audiences.
Having played a show in the Atlantic Ballroom in Tramore, County Waterford, the band had to make a journey to Kiltimagh in County Mayo for the following night’s performance – more than 320 kilometres across the Irish midlands, where many of the roads were still little more than potholed lanes. It is unclear exactly what happened on the evening of 6 June 1963, but one thing is certain: Reeves never made it onto the stage of the Diamond Ballroom in Kiltimagh. Leo Diamond junior, son of the owner, later recounted his father’s version of events:
He threw a tantrum when he found out he was down to perform at another show 40 miles away in Sligo. He came in the back door of the hall and didn’t stay long. He refused to do the two shows.5
Other reports mention the quality of the piano. Whatever the truth, the punters left disappointed. Walt Disney had been to Kiltimagh at the invitation of a local businessman a few years previously, but it is the non-appearance of Reeves on the stage of the local dance hall, rather than the visit of Disney, that has remained in the folk memory of the people.
Having lasted all of six songs in the Majestic Ballroom in Mallow, County Cork, in an earlier show, Reeves addressed the audience:
My goodness I’ve been in Ireland for the past week but never have I seen so many faces under one roof. Unfortunately my performance tonight will not be on a par with other performances. You might well ask ‘Why?’ It’s because of the goddamn piano over there. Totally out of tune.6
The punters were unimpressed; some booed while a few at the front even threw orange and apple skins. Reeves quickly left the hall and retreated to his waiting bus. Hall owner Jack O’Rourke spoke to Vincent Power about the night Reeves came to town:
His performance was a disaster. It would have been a wonderful occasion if the guy had just cooperated. I don’t want to be ungracious to Jim Reeves, now that the poor man is dead, but he was the most uncooperative performer I’ve ever met. I think it had something to do with the fact that he was the top artist in the world at the time. He was such a superstar in his own mind that he literally did what he liked. I saw the other side of Gentleman Jim – the nasty side.7
The reality is that Reeves was a superstar – it was not just a figment of his imagination – and he was used to facilities and arrangements vastly better than those available in Ireland at the time, particularly at home in the United States.
Marie Barnes (now Wynne; she later married Emmet Wynne of the Airchords) was the lead vocalist with The Diamonds showband, who supported Jim Reeves when he played in the Crystal Ballroom in South Anne Street, Dublin, on his Irish tour. In a telephone interview she spoke about the night:
I remember him walking through the audience with a big black cape with a red collar. He looked a bit like Batman. My impression was that he didn’t have much time for people. He seemed very sharp, even with his own band. I didn’t think much of the way he spoke to them. He checked the piano and clicked his fingers and that was it. He got on the stage, did his thing and got off again. His show was about an hour or so. He was a wonderful singer, with great emotion in his songs. I do wish I’d had a picture taken with him but I was very young then and we were in awe of him.8
The tour was not all negative. Local newspapers of the time contain glowing reviews of shows where Reeves’ standards were met. Reeves was ecstatically received in the Mayfair Ballroom in Kilkenny, the Las Vegas Ballroom in Sligo and the Pavesi Ballroom in Donegal town, amongst others. When he sang ‘Danny Boy’ in recognition of his Irish ancestry, the crowds were thrilled that this American superstar of country music actually knew an Irish song.
Reeves found more appropriate facilities in Northern Ireland, where the economy was more advanced and the political turmoil of subsequent years had not yet impinged on civil life. On 7 and 8 June he performed at St Columb’s Hall in Derry city, which was then managed by a young priest called Edward Daly, later to become head of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Daly spoke to Joe Cushnan of the Belfast Telegraph about the performances:
Both nights were sell-outs and Jim was relieved that he was finally playing in a proper theatre with decent dressing rooms. His style of singing suited theatres more than dance halls … Jim played for about an hour each night giving very good, relaxed performances. I have nothing but positive reactions to the Derry leg of his tour and to the man himself.9
Albert Reynolds, who later became taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland, was involved in the music business and had booked Reeves to perform in Mullingar and Portlaoise on 4 June. However, the shows were cancelled as Pope John XXIII died the day before and Catholic Ireland was plunged into compulsory mourning. Reynolds went to see Reeves in his Dublin hotel to tell him he would still be paid, but the singer would not take the money because, he said, while he was not a Catholic, he still respected the pope. Reynolds, used to the murky waters and wheeling-and-dealing of the live-music industry, was surprised but delighted that he would not make a loss for the night.10
After his return to the United States, Reeves had intended to record an album of Irish songs but, sadly, fate intervened. A little over a year later he was killed in an aeroplane crash, along with his manager Dean Manuel, when their single-engine plane met a violent thunderstorm over Brentwood, Tennessee, on a flight from Batesville, Arkansas, to Nashville. Reeves had learned to fly only a year earlier and made a crucial error by turning directly into the rainstorm. He was forty years old and his death caused reverberations and mourning around the world.
When Reeves was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame the introduction was simple:
His rich voice brought millions of new fans to country music from every corner of the world. Although the crash of his private airplane in 1964 took his life … posterity will keep his name alive … because they will remember him as one of country music’s most important performers.
Jim Reeves’ continued popularity after his death was enormous. The British charts contained nine of his songs in the top twenty in the week following the crash. He had left behind over eighty unreleased singles, which were gradually put on the market along with older material – between 1970 and 1984 he continually had a hit in the charts. In the United States thirty-three of Reeves’ singles charted after he died, including thirteen top ten and five number one hits. In 1982 technology allowed Reeves and Patsy Cline to reach number five with the duet ‘Have You Ever Been Lonely’. Of Reeves’ thirty-three hit albums, only three entered the charts during his lifetime. In 2009 a re-released album of his greatest hits reached the top ten in Great Britain.
In 1998 Jim Reeves was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in Carthage. The inscription on the memorial statue erected describes Reeves’ musical vision: ‘If I, a lowly singer, dry one tear or soothe one humble human heart in pain, then my homely verse to God is dear and not one stanza has been sung in vain.’ It was a humble and dignified epitaph for a singer who, in his short life, achieved worldwide popularity.
***
On the night Jim Reeves left the stage of the Orchid Ballroom in Lifford in disgust in 1963, Larry Cunningham and his band the Mighty Avons from Granard, County Longford, were playing support.
Cunningham had taken his band in the direction of country music and was familiar with Reeves’ catalogue; some said he was dependent on it. The story goes that, amid the confusion, Larry stepped forward and spent the remainder of the night singing covers of Reeves’ songs. The audience were happy – he could hit the deep notes equally as well as Reeves – and his career continued on an upward curve. Cunningham recalled the night for Vincent Power:
We were privileged to be doing relief for him [Reeves] in Lifford. He only sang a medley of five or six songs but the sound he got, with poor amplification and not the best of acoustics in the hall, was as good as you’d hear on a stereo today. There was uproar after he finished. They’d have burned the place down only we went out and I tore into a few of his songs and settled the crowd. He didn’t give them value for money because he didn’t stay on long enough. He went on to Donegal town [sic] the same night and did a powerful show.11
Reeves later claimed that the piano in Lifford had had broken strings, had spiders crawling out from underneath it and was out of tune.
The story circulated in the Irish media suggested that Larry Cunningham averted disaster by playing the music of Jim Reeves after the American left the stage in annoyance, a view later disputed by Larry Jordan, author of Jim Reeves: His Untold Story:
I’ve been getting emails from people in the UK and Ireland alerting me to the fact that a man named Larry Cunningham, an Irish singer, recently passed away. Mr. Cunningham was much admired, and my condolences go out to his family. But I have noticed that in the press coverage of his passing this gentleman is given credit for having supposedly ‘rescued the situation by singing a medley’ of Jim’s hits, after Reeves cut short his performance at the Orchid Ballroom in Lifford, Co. Donegal, in June 1963. This notion has been repeated many times over the years and has taken on the mantle of truth.12
The reality, according to Jordan, was different:
Mr. Cunningham warmed up the audience by singing Jim’s songs before Reeves himself appeared! When Jim took the stage, and started singing some of his hits, the audience became unruly because they had already heard Cunningham do them. This, combined with an out-of-tune piano, compelled Reeves to cut his show short.13
Jordan quoted ‘one of the audience members’, who said the decision to do a warm-up using Reeves’ hits just prior to Reeves’ own appearance was ‘a gross professional misjudgement’ which was bound to upset both audience and artist. In the press coverage that followed the debacle in Lifford, Cunningham was credited as having ‘saved the day’ after Reeves walked off stage, and the out-of-tune piano had mistakenly gone into popular folklore as the sole reason for his quitting the show, according to Jordan. He wished to set the record straight:
Jim was very much the victim of an unscrupulous promoter, logistical difficulties that were not his fault, the failure by ballroom owners to supply pianos despite their contractual commitments to do so, and some local press coverage that sought to shift the blame to Reeves instead of where it belonged. Whatever Larry Cunningham did to defuse a tense situation after Jim left the stage, it also should be noted that he created a problem for Reeves prior to the star’s appearance. The fact that this has been lost through history just shows you that once untruths take root, they grow and flourish. This is one of them.14
Cunningham knew the piano was poor before Reeves and his band took to the stage. When the Avons were rehearsing earlier in the day they did not require the piano and when they went to move it the back fell off. Leo Jackson, one of the Blue Boys, mentioned the ill-fated piano to Michael Streissguth, author of Like a Moth to a Flame: the Jim Reeves Story: ‘Half the keys were missing. The white keys were black because the ivory had gone from them. The strings were broken and wrapped around other strings.’15 He later discussed the point with Paschal Mooney on RTÉ Radio:
We were a small group with only four pieces. In Jim’s contract with the Solomon guy, the promoter, it was agreed that a piano would be there, tuned to A. Jim asked Dean Manuel to check the piano and while Dean could get music out of almost anything he could get nothing out of that piano. It was an old upright piano with the back falling off it.16
Larry Cunningham had mixed feelings about the night, as he told Tom Gilmore, author of Larry Cunningham: A Showband Legend:
What hurt me more afterwards was that he played for an hour and a half at another venue during the tour. He then stood on the running board of his car for ages afterwards signing autographs for the fans. But in my opinion he did not even recognise us as a support band.17
Cunningham claimed he had never thought of making a record up to that point in his career. However, shortly after Jim Reeves died, Eddie Masterson, a Sligo solicitor, gave the singer a written tribute to the music of Reeves, which he had scribbled on the back of a cigarette pack. Masterson, a colourful character known as ‘the showband solicitor’, famously lived in a room in Barry’s Hotel in Dublin for seventeen years. Cunningham put the words to slow-waltz music and added some of the most famous choruses and melodies from Reeves’ songs. His ‘Tribute to Jim Reeves’ was the first Irish single to break into the British charts, and it brought Cunningham an appearance on the BBC music show Top of the Pops in 1964 – its first year on television. It was a remarkably unlikely hit from a very unlikely source, but the song struck a chord with both British and Irish audiences and received extensive radio play; listeners were enthralled by the deep tones in Cunningham’s American-accented voice, remarkably similar to that of the great Jim Reeves.
Six years later Cunningham travelled to Nashville to make a tribute album to his idol; it was called Larry Cunningham Remembers Jim Reeves and on it the Irish singer had the privilege of working with members of Elvis Presley’s backing band. When speaking about his work with the Reeves catalogue, Cunningham pointed out that he did not consider himself a singer of the same calibre as the American: ‘There is no night I go on-stage without doing a small tribute featuring some Jim Reeves’ songs that he recorded because no one else can ever sing them the way that he did. He was the original and the best.’18
In 2006 Cunningham spoke about his appearance on the BBC:
I wasn’t intimidated by Top of The Pops, because I didn’t know any better. It was all happening so fast. Before Top of The Pops meself and the band were only playing in four counties, Longford, Leitrim, Cavan and Monaghan, and we couldn’t get a booking outside of them. After Top of The Pops we got bookings all over Ireland.19
The song ‘Tribute to Jim Reeves’ cemented Larry Cunningham’s place as the first great success of Irish country music; it even had the distinction of being translated into Dutch. Some 40,000 copies of the single were sold in Britain in the first two weeks, and in early 1965 Cunningham was awarded a silver disc for worldwide sales of 250,000 copies. Cunningham’s repertoire – a mixture of Jim Reeves covers, traditional country songs and Irish traditional songs – was the musical stew that was to form the template for the rest of his career and the basis of Irish country music.
***
Larry Cunningham, one of seven siblings, had grown up in Cloneen near Granard, on a farm run by his parents, Michael and Julia. Like so many Irish country performers, he was on the stage from a young age and learned many of his tunes by listening to traditional musicians such as Vincent Lowe and Jackie Hearst on Raidió Éireann, the national broadcaster. By the age of twelve he could play the fiddle and tin whistle and was a regular at the local town hall. Cunningham recounted his first introduction to show business to Tom Gilmore. A few months after the local football team won the county Gaelic football championship, Pat Murphy, one of the teachers in Cunningham’s Cloneen primary school, wrote a song in the team’s honour and Larry was prevailed upon to sing it at a celebration in the town hall. Cunningham remembered the table with the cup on top as being taller than himself.20
Before settling down in Ireland, Cunningham worked as a carpenter in Derby in England, where he played the fiddle with a céilí band several nights a week:
We got union wages at that time, which was three pounds ten shillings Sterling per night, three nights a week. That was more than any bank manager was earning per week at home and I was getting it for three nights’ work.21
Over the years Cunningham had developed an interest in ‘cowboy songs’, a term once frequently used in Ireland to describe country and western music. He had first encountered the music when he saw McCairtains’ Road Show in a local hall and, eager to learn similar songs, wrote to his sister in Australia to see if she could come up with anything. For the price of a half-crown he received an album with ‘every Hank in the business on it’ – songs by American stars Hank Williams, Hank Locklin and Hank Thompson.22 Cunningham committed two Hank Locklin songs to memory – ‘Geisha Girl’ and ‘Fraulein’ – which were later to feature in his stage repertoire.
Having returned to Ireland, Cunningham played part-time in the Grafton Showband before joining the Mighty Avons in 1961. Peter Smith, one of three brothers in the founding line-up of the Avons, spoke to The Anglo-Celt newspaper about the origins of the band:
We needed a good country singer at the time. We had been doing all sorts of Rock and Roll and Pop. It was going well for us, then Larry joined and he had a great voice and was a great country singer.23
Cunningham was the star of the Mighty Avons until his departure in 1969 for ‘health and business reasons’.
The highlights of Cunningham’s early shows were his renditions of the Reeves catalogue, but as his career advanced he brought more country songs with Irish themes, images and instrumentation into his performances. It was this mixture of the themes and sounds of American country and western music and Irish traditional céilí and ballad music which formed the basis of the unique mixture that became ‘country and Irish’ music and made Larry Cunningham and his band one of the first big stars of the genre.
In 1965 Cunningham had a huge hit with ‘Lovely Leitrim’, a song he had learned from his mother and with which he was to become synonymous for the rest of his life, despite his Longford birth. A story goes that Liam Devally, the presenter of a popular show on RTÉ Radio 1, played ‘Lovely Leitrim’ – originally the B-side of single ‘There’s That Smile Again’ – for a patient. At that time only singles under two minutes and fifty seconds in length were played; this required Larry to cut out two verses of the song. That one outing of the single generated huge sales, and Cunningham never looked back.
‘Lovely Leitrim’ is a classic example of a type of song which has remained central to Irish country music: a dream of the singer’s native Ireland, a description of the beautiful places there, and a wish to return home because there is nowhere else as desirable. In ‘Lovely Leitrim’ the narrator travelled to the east and to the west and to islands all over the world, but nothing compared with his native Ireland. It stayed at number one in the Irish charts for four weeks. ‘Up to then,’ Cunningham famously observed, the crowd would ‘throw pennies at you if you were a band playing a ballad. But “Lovely Leitrim” changed all that.’24
The song was written by Phil Fitzpatrick from Aughavas, County Leitrim, who later emigrated to the United States, where he became a policeman in New York. He was tragically shot dead in the line of duty in 1947, never getting to hear his own composition sung by the man who made it famous. Cunningham once performed it five times in a row at a concert to a teary-eyed emigrant audience in New York, such was the song’s popularity among exiled Irish communities.
The demand for country ballads pronouncing love of home and place was huge, and Cunningham duly obliged: ‘Among the Wicklow Hills’ (1966) was particularly successful, reaching number two in the Irish charts. The theme was familiar: the story of an emigrant and his tortured connections to his native country. His mother wishes he could come home, and there is also a girl waiting for him. All his mother can do is pray for her son to come back to the hills, find the girl and once again run free. The emigrants who listened to the song could identify. They might wish to return to their home place, but the reality for most was there was nothing to go home to. The state did not have the means to support them, so until things got better they had to stay where they were. Although not everyone wanted to return to Ireland, most emigrants could empathise with Cunningham and his band’s songs of loneliness and heartbreak.
Cunningham had further hits with ‘I Guess I’m Crazy’ (1965), ‘Snowflake’ (1966), ‘Fool’s Paradise’ (1967), ‘Three Steps to the Phone’ (1967) and ‘The Old Bog Road’ (1973). The last of these was originally a poem by Irish nationalist Teresa Brayton set to music by Madeleine King O’Farrelly from Rochfortbridge, County Westmeath, and once again appealed to the heartstrings of the lonely emigrant. This time the narrator is working in New York but longs to be back in a field of Irish wheat, swinging a scythe. His mother died the previous spring, but he could not get home. In the end he realises that he must live with the grief, it being the ‘bitter load’ of the emigrant. All he can do is wish his country and the bog road the best.
Cunningham went on to perform with American country singers Loretta Lynn, Hank Williams Junior and Johnny Cash; to play at New York’s Carnegie Hall (the first Irish person to do so); and to perform for Princess Grace of Monaco, who was of Irish extraction. He holds the record for the largest crowd (over 6,850) at the (now closed) Galtymore Ballroom in Cricklewood, London, on St Patrick’s night 1966. In 2008 he spoke to Irish Times journalist Ronan McGreevy about his memories of that night:
I remember being above in a small little band room and I looked out the door. As far up Cricklewood Broadway as I could see, there was four in a row for the guts of two miles trying to get in. I looked out and I remember the fear that went through me because I was a builder and not a singer and I was only doing it for a laugh. The bouncers were trying to shove the crowds out of the way to get us on stage. I was brought down with one bouncer in front and another behind as if you were leading a cow to a bull.26
In 1969 Cunningham formed the Country Blueboys, and in October 1971 appeared at the highly regarded Country Music Convention Center in Nashville. Pat Campbell of the BBC later contributed sleeve notes to Cunningham’s album Songs Fresh from Nashville and wrote of the response the Irish artist got on his appearance there: ‘How they acclaimed him, a standing cheering ovation, which gave my Irish heart a lift it hadn’t had in years.’27
While in Nashville, Cunningham recorded the single ‘Good Old Country Music’, which gained some radio play in the United States. Larry’s manager at the time, Mick Clerkin, spoke to Tom Gilmore about the experience:
Many radio stations in the US felt that the song had a very good chance of being a hit there for Larry. It was a good up-tempo type of song which got a good response from the listeners there. People would phone in when we were on the various radio programmes and there was a buzz about it. I think that if Larry was in a position to live there it could have worked for him.28
The production values were excellent, with backing vocals by members of The Jordanaires, but Larry Cunningham was not interested in moving to the United States:
I wouldn’t leave Ireland at that time for all the tea in China so unfortunately that is as far as success in the US went … I can’t really say that I know well, but I imagine that if I moved out there it could have happened.29
Following his marriage to Beatrice Nannery in 1972, Cunningham scaled back his touring but appeared in occasional concerts and made a couple of recordings. He had a top-ten hit in Ireland that year with ‘Slaney Valley’, another song about the love of an idyllic home place.
In 1974 ‘Lovely Leitrim’ was re-released, but only made it to number nineteen in the charts. In 1975 ‘My Kathleen’ spent fourteen weeks in the Irish charts, reaching number three. In 1976 Cunningham had a hit with Margo when they performed a duet called ‘Yes Mr Peters’, a song popularised by Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty in the United States. Larry had his final domestic hits with ‘The Story of My Life’ and ‘Galway and You’, both in 1983, and ‘Walk on By’ in 1984, which, fittingly, was an old Jim Reeves song.
Cunningham appeared at the highly regarded International Festival of Country Music at Wembley on numerous occasions from its inception in 1969, right up to 1988, when he sang a sublime version of the Hoyt Axton song ‘Water for My Horses’. Larry’s appearances at Wembley were a testament to his tenacity and endurance. On his first appearance, Bob Powell, editor of the influential British magazine Country Music People, had not been kind in a review of his performance: ‘Larry Cunningham and the seven piece Mighty Avons are one of Ireland’s most popular showbands. But in spite of the fact that they feature country songs in their act they are a showband, and seemed out of place at Wembley.’30 Following Cunningham’s performance in 1971, Powell revised his opinion: ‘Two years ago, Larry Cunningham impressed me not at all, but this year he was much, much better.’31
In later life Cunningham became a town councillor, ran a supermarket and dry cleaner’s, and kept up his carpentry skills. Like many of his fellow country music artists, he had an immense pride in his local place and was thrilled to be elected Longford Person of the Year in 2004.
On 28 September 2012 the ‘Father of Country and Irish Music’ passed away. The RTÉ journalist Derek Davis was asked to speak about Cunningham on a tribute show organised by presenter and performer Frankie Kilbride of Shannonside Northern Sound radio; as a singer himself, Davis was eloquent in his response:
He effectively invented country and Irish … people overlooked the fact that Larry had a timbre and range in his voice that could be very classy indeed. Larry had a quality in his voice and a breadth of tone that was very appealing and he could handle it … you see he was associated with that Jim Reeves baritone and he was very good at it but there was a lovely quality in it … he could put great tenderness and emotion into it.32
Kilbride asked Davis about meeting Cunningham. Davis responded:
Larry was never the type of man to talk down to you … Larry would talk to any man … he had the gift of not forgetting who his friends were, not forgetting who his neighbours were … Larry was a decent man … he never got the big star syndrome.33
Davis had a further interesting take on Cunningham’s voice: ‘It was the voice of a real man. It wasn’t the whining bleat of a pubescent schoolboy … which has its place in popular music. This was the voice of a real man … and a real man who could read a crowd.’34
Larry Cunningham did much to establish a music with its own unique themes, rhythms and sound, which would come to establish itself in the centre of Irish culture. Father Brian D’Arcy, long-time friend of the Irish show-business community, paid an eloquent tribute to the singer:
Larry was not a celebrity, he was a star and there is a difference. A star is a real human being who wins respect, a celebrity is a lot less than that. You will not be forgotten as we will always dance to your music and sing your songs and tell your stories.35
This was in keeping with the ‘star comment’ Cunningham provided to Brian Carthy in his book The A–Z of Country and Irish Stars in 1991: ‘To be successful you must be yourself, don’t pretend to be something you’re not. Respect those who support and believe in what you do. After all it takes people like them to make people like me.’36