Ronnie Drew once admitted that he was not the best singer in the world, but out of the folk boom of the 1960s, no voice was as distinctive as his. The raspy growl that was his trademark became one of the most instantly recognisable from that era, giving pleasure to fans at home and abroad, and earning him a place among the greats of the folk revival.
Starting with those early sessions in the back of O'Donoghue's pub in Merrion Row, and along with Luke Kelly and his fellow Dubliners, he went on to attain what in their case could genuinely be described as legendary status. He entered the realm of public affection and remained there, and through the five decades of his musical career his appeal continued to cross the generations.
Drew's renditions of Finnegans Wake, The Irish Roverand McAlpine's Fusiliers, held audiences spellbound and made him a master of the ballad form. As much as Kelly revelled in the bawdiness of Take Me Up To Monto(written by a music critic with this newspaper in those years, George Hodnett), Drew seemed always to take delight in snarling out the risque phrases of Seven Drunken Nights, a song at one time banned from the airwaves.
In spirit and voice, he was a true Dubliner and, like Joyce and O'Casey, was synonymous with his native city. The rousing ballads were not his only forte, perhaps no other singer has succeeded better than Drew in catching the tender romantic lilt of the O'Casey love song Nora. Long before the much later appearances of iconoclastic crooners like Tom Waits and Shane McGowan, he set the mould for how to win over an audience with nothing more than the raw but natural expressiveness of his own voice.
But Ronnie Drew's gifts were not confined to his unique singing style; he had a brand of Dublin humour that drew him to the hearts of his audiences with whom he had extraordinary rapport. His legions of fans loved him and so, too, did fellow artists eager to work with him.
A measure of the esteem and regard in which he was held is evident in the roll-call of those who contributed to the tribute to the singer, organised by Bono, and recorded earlier this year. The first lines of The Ballad of Ronnie Drewsay all that needs to be said about the troubadour from Glasthule.
Here's to the Ronnie, the voice we adore;
Like coals from a coal bucket scraping the floor.