Farewell to a music legend People and Places Michael Commins TIPPERARY country singer Louise Morrissey said it all in four simple words: “He was always there.” For our generation, Joe Dolan was, indeed, always there.
Since I can recall my first interest in music, the name of Joe Dolan has been embedded in my mind. I was in national school in Cuiltybo back then but the seeds of interest that would eventually pave the way for me to get on first name terms with many of the big names of the era were already being sown. There was Big Tom, Joe Dolan, Brendan Bowyer, Doc Carroll and the Royal Blues, Brendan O’Brien, Joe Mac and the Dixies, Larry Cunningham, and so many more.
I had to wait until the next decade before I was old enough to venture out to the dance halls and the country music era was well and truly in full flight with Big Tom and the Mainliners well on their way to becoming the legends they still are today.
When news came through on St Stephen’s Day that Joe Dolan had died in a Dublin hospital, my reaction was the same as, I’m sure, everyone else’s who identified with Joe’s unique status in Irish society. There are a few seconds when words fail you, emotion runs high and you choke to hold back the tears.
As Tom Allen (TR Dallas) rang me with the news, our brief silences said it all. A true legend had passed on. In Tom’s case, you could sense the loss of a county man of his own, that special bonding that is such a part of our Irish connection to the borders of the place of our birth.
Joe Dolan and the Drifters were synonymous with Mullingar. While Brendan Bowyer and The Royal Showband were the pace-setters in the deep south of Waterford, Dolan stirred the midlands. ‘The Answer to Everything’ was his first Irish Top 10 entry in 1964. He was to have four more Top 10 entries with ‘I Love You More and More Every Day’, ‘My Own Peculiar Way’, ‘Aching Breaking Heart’ and ‘Two of a Kind’, before he hit the number one spot for the first time in 1966 with the country flavoured ‘Pretty Brown Eyes’.
His follow-up single, ‘House with the Whitewashed Gable’, also hit the top spot, while ‘Tar and Cement’ made it to number three. Other number one hits included ‘Teresa’, ‘More and More’, and ‘I Need You’, while ‘Make Me an Island’, ‘Sister Mary’, ‘My Love’ and ‘Silent Night’ went all the way to number two for the man from Mullingar.
For a time, Joe acquired international recognition when Make Me an Island became a major hit in a number of countries. He played shows in the USSR, Israel and other places. But he was always happiest when back home in his native country.
One of my favourite Joe Dolan songs is ‘Love of the Common People’ and perhaps it is the song that best sums up the special place he has always had in the hearts of the ‘common people’. His greatest appeal was to the ordinary folks out there who went along and enjoyed the atmosphere that he could always generate at his famous ‘Joe’ shows.
Mullingar was the hometown that he was so proud of all his life. No fear of him ever shedding the Mullingar accent. It was his badge of identity. As the editorial writer wrote in the Westmeath Examiner: “It is said that a prophet is never recognised in his own land, but as it happened, Joe was; and people were happy to say they knew him, and they were proud of him.”
The last time I saw Joe was when he and the band performed at the official opening of the McWilliam Park Hotel in Claremorris at the back-end of 2006. His third last gig was in his hometown of Mullingar last August. His last full show was in Ballinasloe while the Abbeyleix Manor Hotel in Co Laois had the distinction of hosting Joe’s last ever show. He was unable to continue after four numbers and had to leave the stage that night.
Like so many more, I headed to Mullingar to join the many who had travelled from all parts of the country to pay their respects. I went up to Westmeath on the Friday evening and joined the queue. Big Tom, another icon of the era, was there in the long line of mourners. Ben Dolan and the family appreciated his presence enormously. These men were the giants of the music circuit and the respect among friends was immense.
Here were the plain people of Ireland coming to bid farewell to the man who really had been ‘always there’.
The round of applause as Joe’s coffin was carried from the funeral home and the rolling round of applause as it entered the beautiful Cathedral of Christ the King was a spontaneous outpouring of emotion from the ‘common people’.
The following day, before an overflow congregation, Fr Brian D’Arcy delivered the homily. He spoke of Joe’s innate sense of goodness and his compassion for the less well-off in society. Joe made no distinctions between people. He finished with a quote that Joe had asked him to write out for him in recent weeks. “Death leaves a heartache that no one can heal, but love leaves a memory that no one can steal.”
How can you possibly convey the joy and contentment that Joe Dolan and his music brought to the lives of so many thousands during more than 40 years on the music circuit? Perhaps the philosophical observation of Sydney Smith in days of yore comes closest to the mark. “Mankind are always happier for having been happy, so that if you make them happy now, you make them happy 20 years hence by the memory of it.”
Goodbye, Venice Goodbye and farewell Joe Dolan. You truly were an Irish legend.
