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19
Aug 2008
Ronnie Drew, Founding Member of The Dubliners, 1934-2008
Posted in Home Page, Celtic Corner by Michael Kornfeld at 11:33 pm |

One of the most recognizable voices in Irish folk music has been quieted.  Ronnie Drew, a founding member of The Dubliners, died in a Dublin hospital on August 16, just one month shy of his 74th birthday.  The gravelly-voiced folk singer had suffered a long bout with throat cancer.

Drew was a pioneering and much revered and loved figure in Irish folk music since helping to form The Dubliners, in 1962.  “Ronnie Drew was an iconic figure in Irish music over the last five decades,” said Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen in a prepared statement. “Whether as part of The Dubliners or during his solo career, Ronnie will also be remembered for his promotion of Irish music both at home and around the world.”

Initially known as The Ronnie Drew Group, The Dubliners – whose original members also included Luke Kelly, Ciarin Bourke and Barney McKenna – got its start playing informal sessions on a regular basis at O’Donoghue’s Pub in Dublin’s Merrion Row.  Drew and The Dubliners were, perhaps, best known for the 1967 Irish hit single “Seven Drunken Nights,” as well as his renditions of such rousing folk songs as “Finnegan’s Wake” and “McAlpine’s Fusiliers.”  Based on Child Ballad #273, “Seven Drunken Nights” contained risqué lyrics that initially caused it to be banned from radio play in Ireland.

Drew, who grew up in his grandmother’s house in Dun Lenoghaire, County Dublin, had emigrated to Spain in the 1950s, where he taught English and learned Spanish & flamenco guitar, before returning to Ireland.  After 12 years with The Dubliners, Drew left the band in 1974 to spend more time with his family.  He rejoined The Dubliners in 1979 and remained until 1995, when he left to pursue a solo career and was replaced by Paddy Reilly.  Drew performed solo from 1995 to 2006 and also recorded with such artists as Christy Moore and The Pogues.  His handprints were added to the “wall of fame” outside Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre in August 2006.

In May, RTE, the Irish Television network, broadcast a documentary entitled “September Song” that painted an intimate and affectionate picture of the man who was such a seminal figure in Irish folk music circles.  “No person alive or dead embodies this city as he does.  For many, Ronnie Drew is quite simply the voice of Dublin,” the RTE noted in promoting the program on its website earlier this year. 

 As a singer-songwriter and guitarist, Drew was much admired by his fellow musicians – a number of whom released a song entitled “The Ballad of Ronnie Drew” earlier this year.  Although it was originally hoped that Drew himself would be involved in the project, the song and a video of its making that can be viewed on the website of Irish rock band U2 became a tribute to him amid his declining health, with proceeds from the single going to the Irish Cancer Society at Drew’s request.   

In a statement posted on U2’s website, frontman Bono, who helped to write and organize the tribute, writes: “Weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs… that’s what I loved about Ronnie Drew’s voice and spirit.  Music to inspire, to console… an optimism that was contagious… that’s what U2 took from The Dubliners.  Ronnie has left his earthly tour for one of the heavens… they need him up there… it’s a little too quiet and pious.  God is lonely for a voice louder than his own.”

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