Tommy Makem
By Mitch Berg
My dad never had all that many records when I was a kid – but the ones he did have, I remember pretty clearly.
Common weekend listening was his Clancy Brothers record, with Tommy Makem. I can still hum/sing most of the stuff; “The Rising Of The Moon”, “Dirty Old Town”, and a bunch whose names I can’t remember but whose tunes I can’t forget.
Makem died Wednesday after a long battle with cancer.
Red? Sure she remembers him:
Dear Tommy Makem: Your voice basically WAS my childhood. I still listen to those old Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem albums, and it’s always the oddest feeling, a mixture of present/past. Am I a child? Are these records playing on a battered turntable as I dribble a popsicle down my T-shirt? Or is it now? These songs are woven into my life, they’re just a part of who I am. I will leave it to others to talk about how the Clancy Brothers influenced an entire generation of singer/song-writers (Dylan is eloquent on this) … For now, I mourn the loss. A fragile thread of connection to my childhood, the continuum.
Very, very true.
Kevin Cullen has a wonderful obit (what, you thought it’d be by Lars Tostengaard?) at the BoGlo:
Tommy Makem was an Irish soul singer, and souls don’t die. His music is preserved, on the old vinyl LPs he made with his pals, the Clancy brothers, more recently on CDs, more intimately in memory, in the hard drive of any brain that heard his basso profundo voice.
To hear Tommy Makem sing “Four Green Fields” was to hear Enrico Caruso sing “Vesti la giubba,” or James Brown sing “I Feel Good.” He was for Irish traditional music a great ambassador, and a consummate performer.
Sigh.
