Tommy Makem:Tommy Makem, who has died aged 74, achieved fame as a member of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem and later enjoyed a successful solo career.
A singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, his songs include Gentle Annie, Red is the Roseand Four Green Fields. He played bagpipes, guitar, tin whistle and piccolo, and his style of playing the long-necked five-string banjo has been likened to that of Pete Seeger.
Through his mother, he inherited an English-speaking Ulster song tradition of mixed Irish, Scottish and English elements - a tradition celebrated in the Tommy Makem International Festival of Song which he launched in South Armagh in 2000.
With the Clancys he created a new style of performance in Irish traditional music, introducing new material and moving the singing tradition towards musical accompaniment. As a singer-songwriter he created a body of popular songs, traditional in idiom, which seems likely to become a permanent part of the popular singing canon.
Born in Keady, Co Armagh, in 1932, he was from a musical background. His mother Sarah was a renowned source singer, and in the 1950s her rendition of As I Roved Outbecame the signature tune of the BBC radio series of the same name. Her husband, Peter, played fiddle, while Tommy's brother, Jack, was also a musician.
The American song collector Jean Ritchie visited the family home in the early 1950s to record Sarah Makem. "It became a party that just grew; by evening the whole community was there," she later recalled.
Her visit inspired Tommy to become a collector, and he travelled the locality collecting old songs. He also played with a local showband.
It was in 1955, when another collector, Diane Hamilton, visited Keady, that Makem first met Liam Clancy, who was assisting Hamilton. He subsequently joined members of his extended family in the United States, and found employment in a printing works in Dover, New Hampshire.
While on sick leave from work, he availed of the opportunity to meet Clancy, along with his brothers, Pat and Tom, in New York. He took up stage acting, and with the Clancys in 1959 recorded The Rising of the Moon, an album of republican ballads.
They built up a following through live performances in Chicago and New York, and in 1961 they were signed to Columbia Records.
An appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show brought them to national attention.
Also in 1961, when Makem appeared at the Newport Folk Festival, he and Joan Baez were named the most promising newcomers on the American folk scene.
Under the astute management of Marty Erlichman, the Clancys went from strength to strength. Dressed in their trademark Aran sweaters, and belting out songs with great gusto, they broke from the standard Irish-American repertoire, and introduced songs such as Jug of Punch, Shoals of Herringand Leaving of Liverpoolto young folk audiences in the US and Ireland.
They brought a new consciousness to Irish music and, in the words of Liam Clancy, made it "respectable again for so-called respectable people to sing working-class songs".
As a singer, raconteur and instrumentalist, Makem played a pivotal role in the group's success, and their lively style and presentation were imitated by numerous groups in subsequent years. They can be credited with introducing many of today's leading performers to traditional music.
In the 1960s, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem sold out major venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall, as well as appearing on every major television network in the US. They recorded extensively and albums include Hearty and Hellish(1962), The Boys Won't Leave the Girls Alone(1962) and Freedom's Sons(1966).
Makem left the group in 1969 and embarked on a solo career. A sell-out concert at Madison Square Garden was followed by tours of Australia, Ireland and Britain. He became well-known for his television work on both sides of the Atlantic. Solo albums include Songs for a Better Tomorrow(1963), Bard of Armagh(1970) and In the Dark Green Woods(1974).
In 1974 both he and Liam Clancy were booked to perform separately at a folk festival in Cleveland, Ohio. Persuaded to do one set together, they soon afterwards became Makem and Clancy, recording and touring as a duo until 1988. They made Eric Bogle's song And the Band played Waltzing Matildatheir own. In the mid-1980s they teamed up with the other Clancys for a reunion tour.
Resuming his solo career, Makem became a mainstay of Irish music and folk festivals in the US. He made many programmes for American, Canadian and British television, featuring guests such as Judy Collins, Cherish the Ladies and Odetta.
A regular visitor to Ireland, in 2006 he expressed concern about "cultural amnesia" among young people. "We're so obsessed with modernity, we don't realize what we're losing," he told the Boston Globe. "They're making gazillions of dollars in Ireland, but they're losing their culture." Nevertheless, he was convinced that the innate strength of Irish traditional music would guarantee its survival.
His book, Tommy Makem's Secret Ireland, was published in 1997; Publishers Weeklydescribed it as "a great light-hearted complement to Tom Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilisation". He devised and performed in the one-man show Invasions and Legaciesat the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York in 1999.
The World Folk Music Association awarded him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999. The recipient of honorary degrees from the University of New Hampshire and the University of Limerick, and an honorary DLitt was conferred on him by the University of Ulster in July 2001.
His sons and nephew continue the family folk music tradition performing as The Makem Brothers.
Predeceased by his wife Mary, he is survived by his daughter, Kate, and sons Shane, Conor and Rory.
Tommy Makem: born November 4th, 1932; died August 1st, 2007