Tommy Makem

Tommy Makem was an Irish folk musician, artist, poet and storyteller. He was best known as a member of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. He played the long-necked 5-string banjo, tin whistle, low whistle, guitar, bodhrán and bagpipes, and sang in a distinctive baritone. He was sometimes known as "The Bard of Armagh" (taken from a traditional song of the same name) and "The Godfather of Irish Music". Makem was born and raised in Keady, County Armagh, in Northern Ireland. His mother, Sarah Makem, was an important source of traditional Irish music, who was visited and recorded by, among others, Diane Guggenheim Hamilton, Jean Ritchie, Peter Kennedy and Sean O'Boyle. His father, Peter Makem, was a fiddler who also played the bass drum in a local pipe band named "Oliver Plunkett", after a Roman Catholic martyr of the reign of Charles II of England. His brother and sister were folk musicians also. Young Tommy Makem, from the age of 8, was a member of the St. Patrick's church choir for 15 years where he sang Gregorian chant and motets. He did not learn to read music but he made it in his "own way". Makem started to work at 14 as a clerk in a garage and later he worked for a while as a barman at Mone's Bar, a local pub, and as a local correspondent for The Armagh Observer. He emigrated to the United States in 1955, carrying his few possessions and a set of bagpipes (from his time in a pipe band). Arriving in Dover, New Hampshire, Makem worked at Kidder Press, where in 1956 his hand was accidentally crushed by a press. With his arm in a sling, he left Dover for New York to pursue an acting career. The Clancys and Makem were signed to Columbia Records in 1961. The same year, at the Newport Folk Festival, Makem and Joan Baez were named the most promising newcomers on the American folk scene. During the 1960s, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem performed sellout concerts at such venues as Carnegie Hall, and made television appearances on shows like The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show. The group performed for President John F. Kennedy. They also played in smaller venues such as the Gate of Horn in Chicago. They appeared jointly in the UK Albums Chart in April 1966, when Isn't It Grand Boys reached number 22. Makem left the group in 1969 to pursue a solo career. In 1975, he and Liam Clancy were both booked to play a folk festival in Cleveland, Ohio, and were persuaded to do a set together. Thereafter they often performed as Makem and Clancy, recording several albums together. Makem also continued to perform as a solo artist, making several albums under his own name and for the Shanachie Records label. He also resumed acting in 1973, when he starred in a play called The Hostage, by Brendan Behan. He also appeared in several films, such as The Molly Maguires (1970), Flight of the Doves (1971), and The Last Winter (1984). Makem was a prolific songwriter, writing over 400 songs. Some of his best-known songs include "Four Green Fields", "Gentle Annie", "The Rambles of Spring", "The Winds Are Singing Freedom", "The Town of Ballybay", "Winds of the Morning", "Mary Mack", and "Farewell to Carlingford". He also wrote poems and stories, some of which were published in a collection called Tommy Makem's Secret Ireland in 1987. He received several awards and honors for his contributions to Irish culture, such as the World Folk Music Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999, and the American Ireland Fund's Arts and Humanities Award in 2007. Makem died of lung cancer on 1 August 2007, at his home in Dover, New Hampshire. He was 74 years old. He was survived by his four children, two sisters, and ten grandchildren. He was buried at the New Hampshire State Veterans Cemetery in Boscawen. His epitaph reads: "Tommy Makem - Musician, Poet, Storyteller - He loved and was loved by the world".