Tommy Makem

Aug 6 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

SOME pale young men stalking the cellar clubs of suburban England, wearing cotton-pickin’ denims from the Deep South of the USA, had the brazen cheek to mock the wonderful Irish balladeer for wearing an Aran sweater, which suggested to them that he was drifting towards commercial folk-singing – a great sin to those purists.

But Tommy Makem sang anyway, his voice soaring over the injustices suffered by his people. It was one of the loveliest voices you will hear – a tenor at root, but capable of reaching all sorts of places in the full flush of its throaty passion.

And he was usually quite still when he sang the songs of sorrow, often unaccompanied. But he also had a grand sense of humour which he poured into the drinking songs.

Makem sang with the Clancy Brothers, Liam, Tommy and Paddy, in the vanguard of the folk revival which spread through Britain and America in the late 1950s.

But to him this music was a profound part of his being, not a fad,

He was born in Keady and, inevitably, as he matured into songwriting, was called the Bard of Armagh.

And he was a patriot and republican, though never associated with the extremists. In fact, he gave Irish rebel songs a certain respectability in the lounges of English liberals.

His father, Peter, worked in a mill, his mother, Sarah was a singer of beauty, who had learned countless songs.

Tommy was the youngest of five children, all cultured and highly literate, having inherited the tradition of storytelling and music playing as part of growing up. He learned to play the bagpipes, banjo drums, piccolo and guitar.

With the roving spirit and a sense that he might become an actor, Makem moved to New York in 1955, later teaming up with the Clancy boys, who were there for much the same reason. They won a recording contract with Columbia, performed at Carnegie Hall and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Despite their commercial success, the group remained part of the Greenwich Village scene in New York, where Bob Dylan heard them performing Dominic Behan’s Patriot Game, later “borrowing” the melody for his own With God On Our Side.

Makem, who had three sons, and the brothers made numerous albums. He left them in 1969, but later sang with Liam.

Tommy Makem, singer; born November 4, 1932, died August 1, 2007.