a wee tune for ya....

[YOKEL 2,384]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWJPjNfVg3I

[YOKEL 2,384]

and one more...

lukes last performance...

[skinthegoat 26]

Heres a few

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0F6Wy6w3_4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jakfq_6TVGw

Starting to reminisce now of fonder times

 

Heres a bit of reading also if youre interested

 

Luke Kelly was born on November 17, 1940, into a working class family in Sheriff Street, a quarter of a mile from Dublin’s O’Connell Street. Luke left school at 13 and after four years of odd-jobbing went to England in 1958. The first folk club he came across was in Newcastle in early 1960. Having already acquired the use of a banjo, he started memorising songs. In Leeds he brought his banjo to sessions in McReady’s pub and was often to be seen at Communist Party headquarters. The folk revival was under way in England: at the centre of it was Ewan McColl.

 

Luke started busking. As he sought out the musician in himself, he also developed his political convictions which, as Ronnie Drew pointed out after his death, he stuck to throughout his life.

 

As Ronnie also pointed out, he was unique in that he sang with perfect diction.Luke bought his first banjo, a five-string, started a lifelong habit of consummate reading and even took up golf - on one of Birmingham’s municipal courses. He got involved in the Jug O’Punch folk club run by Ian Campbell (father of the 2 brothers who formed UB40). He befriended Dominic Behan and they performed folk clubs and Irish pubs from London to Glasgow.Luke developed a strong Communist conviction at the turn of the 1960s. He was by now active in the Connolly Association, a left-wing grouping strongest among the exiles in England. His political development was significant. It gave edge and conviction to his performance and lent weight to ‘The Dubliners’ repertoire and this ideology was apparent in Luke’s songs right until the end. He was also to start frequenting Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger’s Singer Club in London.In 1961 the ballad boom was rising in Ireland. The Abbey Tavern sessions in Howth were the forerunners to gigs in the Hollybrook, Clontarf, the International Bar and the Grafton cinema. Luke Kelly returned to Dublin in 1962. O’Donoghues on Merrion Row was already established as a session house and soon Luke was singing with among others Ronnie Drew and Barney McKenna.

 

The success trail led to the Abbey Tavern and the Royal Marine and then to jam-packed sessions in the Embankment, Tallaght. Ciaran Bourke joined the group, followed later by John Sheahan. It was in response to Luke’s suggestion that the ‘Ronnie Drew Group’ changed their name to ‘The Dubliners’ after reading James Joyce’s novel “Dubliners”.

 

Being the free spirit that he was, Luke Kelly left the group for nearly two years in 1964. With Deirdre O’Connell, founder of the Focus Theatre, whom he was to marry the following year, he went back to London and became involved in Ewan McColl’s “gathering.” The Critics, as it was called, was formed to explore folk traditions and help young singers. Luke Kelly greatly admired McColl and saw his time with The Critics as an apprenticeship. “It functioned as a kind of self-help group to develop each other’s potential,” said Peggy Seeger. Folk was the kind of music that most appealed to Luke Kelly, because it was tightly connected with social awareness and the hippie ideology. Towards the end of the 1960s, when The Dubliners won international acclaim, he seized the opportunity to attack the injustice he saw in the world.

 

Luke Kelly was not just a profound artist, but also a strong-willed and politically influential person who spoke his mind on issues such as apartheid and nuclear rearmament.

 

Eventually Luke took to the stage, surprising many with his performance as King Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar. In 1972 The Dubliners themselves performed in Richard’s Cork Leg, based on the “incomplete works” of Brendan Behan.

 

An unlikely alliance with Derry composer Phil Counter produced two of Luke’s greatest performances: The Town I Loved So Well and the deeply moving Scorn Not His Simplicity. The latter was about Phil’s handicapped son and showed Luke as passionate in caring for the individual’s plight as he was about the good of society. He had such respect for the song that he only performed it once for a television recording and rarely, if ever, sang it at The Dubliners’ often boisterous concerts.

 

The years of touring and living life to the full were taking their toll on Luke. He began to have bouts of forgetfulness on stage. He would forget words from songs he had sung all his life. On June 30, 1980, during a concert at the Cork Opera House, Luke Kelly collapsed on stage. He was rushed to hospital and a brain tumour was diagnosed. Following a lengthy operation there was every hope of a full recovery. The following years were a struggle for Luke. Still, after he became ill, he joined the Dubliners as much as he possibly could. If he could not be on stage for the whole concert, he could still do some songs. Luke managed to join the band on stage again in 1983, just nine days after undergoing surgery for a second tumour. He managed to play five more shows with the band before his condition worsened on a tour of Switzerland and was forced to stop for good.

 

This time there was to be no recovery.

On January 30, 1984, Luke Kelly died in his place of birth, Dublin. It wasn’t just an end of an era; it was the end of the life of one of Ireland’s greatest singers, performers and characters. His friend and band mate John Sheahan paid an apt tribute to Luke when he said: ‘Ronnie was the daddy of the band, but Luke was the soul.’

 

Luke united Dubliners in their appreciation of their own music and street songs. Years later, when the City Council was divided along Civil War lines over the naming of a new Tolka River bridge at Ballybough, the councillors quickly united as Tony Gregory proposed that it be named after Luke Kelly. .

 

After his death, “The Luke Kelly Memorial Fund” for brain research was launched, and The Dubliners and guests have had concerts in support of this fund.

 

Few others can match the contribution Luke made to music’s development in Ireland. 20 years after his death, his influence is still heard in singers of all ages. His life ended too soon, but it shows that his belief and determination were as much a part of his success as was his voice.

 

TO ME HE WAS DUBLINS FINEST SON. LUKE KELLY R.I.P

Edited March 20, 2010 by skinthegoat

[Wild_and_Irish 11]

My favourite Luke Kelly song :