Luke Kelly Born: November 17, 1940 Died: January 30 1984 Dubliners member: 1962-1964 & 1965-1984 Luke Kelly was an Irish singer and folk musician from Dublin in Ireland, he was a founding member of the band The Dubliners. This favourite son of Dublin will never be forgotten by the people of Ireland and indeed worldwide. Luke was born in Dublin on either the 16 November or 16 December 1940. The confusion arises because his mother says November and his birth certificate December. In the main Luke has always taken his mothers word for it, for he reasons that she was there at the time. The family was a large close one. Lukes father, another Luke, worked for Jacobs the biscuit people and had a great love of soccer - a love he passed on to his son. Luke was educated at St. Lawrence OTooles (the patron saint of Dublin) School in the North Strand area. He left school when he was thirteen and did a variety of jobs before coming, via the Isle of Man, to work in England. His hobbies include golf and anything to do with the arts. Hes a voracious reader and is rarely found without at least two books and as many newspapers about his person. Luke is married to Deirdre OConnell, the Irish-American method actress who owns and runs Dublins Focus Theatre. Luke a great singer/songwriter and a fabulous voice of Ireland - Luke Kelly - 1939-1984 The Song of & Bird Alone. Giusseppe Ungaretti, the great Italian poet who died a few years ago, lived for a while in Paris — there one of his friends was an exiled Arab. He wrote a little poem in his memory. It ends: E non sapeva sciogliere il canto del suo abbandono — he wasnt able to express the song of his loneliness. Luke Kelly lived much of his life among his own — and yet he too knew a kind of exile: it was the spiritual exile of one who wished for a better world. Luke was luckier than Ungarettis friend: he found expression for his loneliness. For him singing was as essential as it was for the American blues singers who found themselves lonely and afraid in a world they never made. Luke brought home to you that singing had been mans primal mode of expression. When language was rudimentary, the musical notes expanded it: man sang before he spoke. And it is fair to say that Luke was a primitive, in the sense of the term as it is applied to such painters as Douanier Rousseau. The Douanier was a sophisticate, intimate with the history of art and acutely aware of contemporary movements — and yet he seemed to have come out of nowhere. Better than most, Luke Kelly knew what was happening in his own field — and indeed in the fields around it — but he was his own man. Ewan MacColl may have inspired him — but only to go his own way. It may seem paradoxical that such a bird alone should gain fame with a group — but The Dubliners were less a group than a meitheal. In the old peasant pattern the meitheal came together to do a job — and that was it. The Dubliners were all individualists — Luke and Ronnie and Ciaran and John and Barney were leaves from different trees blown together by the wind that changed the world of music a generation ago. What they had most in common was artistic honesty. Lukes ambition was to express the song of his loneliness1. He succeeded as much as a mortal can -and in doing so he became an immortal. Luke Kelly - image DUBLIN — Ballad singer Luke Kelly, a member of the internationally acclaimed Dubliners died in a Dublin hospital on Jan. 30. The bearded balladeer, who was 44, had been in a critical condition following a brain tumor operation. Four years ago, Kelly had the first of several major operations after collapsing in Cork. In April, 1981 he collapsed again during a performance at the Embankment in Tallaght, Dublin. Ronnie Drew and Barney McKenna, two other members of the Dubliners, were with Luke Kelly when he died. Ronnie said early today: We will all miss him terribly. I think he was the best we ever had. God rest him. You cannot measure how much we will miss him. We were all very close. Kellys craggy face, framed by a shock of red curls and a goatee beard, was a much-loved feature of the Irish and international music scene. Born 44 years ago in the North Wall area of Dublin Luke Kelly never had it easy. Educated at Laurence OTooles in Seville Place, he left school at 13 to ride a messenger boys bicycle. And in the footsteps of his father, his mother and the rest of the family he went to work in Jacobs when he was 14. He then worked for a while as a docker, a builder, a drain digger and a furniture remover before leaving for England in 1957. At that time he had no thoughts of becoming a folk singer, but while selling vacuum cleaners in Newcastle he soon developed an interest in music. In London, he met Domnic Behan who introduced Luke to the folk music of Northern England and Scotland. Soon, he became a name around the ballad clubs, singing and strumming a banjo. After two-and-a-half years he shouldered his banjo and went to Paris where he sang in the streets. Arriving back in Dublin in 1962, he frequented ODonoghues pub on Merrion Row, which was known as a good outlet for a folk singer. There he met Barney McKenna and other musicians, who shared in the growing interest in folk music. After he had appeared on a show with other individual members of the Dubliners, the suggestion was made by Ronnie Drew, who was already well-known at the time, that they should form a group. Among the numbers Lukes fans loved to hear were his gutsy versions of The Town I Loved So Well, Dirty Old Town and The Molly Maguires. After they established a secure base in Dublin in places like the Abbey Tavern in Howth, Luke and the Dubliners made a record, which was released in England, boosting their popularity and creating a demand for them elsewhere in the world. Very shortly they were touring the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. The heady mixture of instrumentals from John Sheehan on fiddle, banjoists Luke and Barney McKenna, whistle player Ciaran Bourke, along with Ronnie Drews nasal poetry and Lukes gravel-voiced singing, soon put the Dubliners to the forefront of the international folk and ballad circuit. Since the mid-60s, the group has made many bestselling records and toured extensively. Throughout this time Luke diversified his interests and found time to act and write poetry. One of his best-known performances was in Brendan Behans play, Richards Cork Leg. Luke Kelly leaves his widow Deirdre OConnell And he also leaves countless thousands of friends — many of whom only know him through concert or record — who have followed his career with the Dubliners for over 20 years. source: Irish Echo - February 11, 1984 This was the last song that Luke recorded before his death, its an amazing Song . https://youtube/watch?v=PlJVWV0MfIw LUKE KELLY SINGS ‘ON RAGLAN ROAD rte. rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/1323-patrick-kavanagh/1331-on-raglan-road/336055-luke-kelly-sings-on-raglan-road/
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 13:48:31 +0000
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