I DONT GENERALLY LISTEN to lots of anybody I dont ...
There was a time when I could have sung you the complete lyrics of every song on their first four or five albums. Now, alas, I can't do more than 70 to 80 percent, usually in the car along our wondrous back roads, where nobody can hear or object.
Make that the first four or five Columbia albums, the ones that brought them their American audience in the 60s. Previously, they had co-founded the Tradition label, the first to actively salvage and resurrect Irish traditional music. For those who love the Chieftains and their successors, it's sobering to think that without the Clancys and Makem there would probably have been no Chieftains or Boys of the Lough?no Pogues or Cranberries.
That said, I prefer the Columbia Clancys to the more restrained Clancys on Tradition. They perfectly trod the knife edge between popularization and roots-reverence. They drew rabid, boisterous audiences because they were ideal live performers. They'd leap on a song as if it were an untamed bronco and ride it, barebacked, into submission. Makem especially. With his thin, skewed face, you'd never imagine the volume of sound that could come out of him. He'd slam out the first note of a line like it was something he'd kept holed up in his gut. Liam Clancy ("the young fellah") had a tenor as sweet as anything Ireland ever produced, but not sugary in the "Danny Boy" tradition.
There was a lovely balance to the group, both in singers and in the selection of material. Liam and Makem shared the majority of the solos, but the others (Tom and Pat Clancy) took theirs with equal force. And they could turn on a dime from the hilarious anti-British hoot, "Mr. Moses Ri-Tooral-I-Ay," to the dead seriousness of the anti-war "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye." Listening to "Roddy McCorley" you get an inkling of how it must have sounded to the childish ears of Frank McCourt when his father loosed his drunken lament in Angela's Ashes. And the Clancys took their material from every level of society. There's never been a funnier song recorded than the Dublin children's chant, "Weela Wallia" ("The moral of this story is? Don't stick knives in babies heads?")
In later years, Liam and Tommy Makem broke off to become Ireland's most popular duo, producing achingly beautiful work as they slowly revolved around each other, Makem becoming milder, gentler, Liam taking on a rougher edge. The rest of the Clancys continued, with Bob Clancy taking Liam's place and, sometimes, with the addition of Robbie O'Connell, whose sound never quite fit in. But last I heard, at a time when they should be tottering into old age, the Clancys were still going strong.
What's most amazed me about the Irish is their perseverance. It took them 800 years to kick out the English, to overcome an unceasing attempt to exterminate their culture and identity. But in the end, they won (except in Northern Ireland, where the damned fools?for the Irish can be that more than anyone?war over something as stupid as religion).
Eight hundred years. That may not sound very encouraging to some in this country, in this age of instant gratification. But where there's will and determination, there's hope, and times have speeded up.
What's Out There: Quite a lot. Choose the live albums, and their wonderful Christmas collection, which includes "Jingle Bells" in Gaelic.