I just heard on the death notices on Clare FM Gussie Russell of Doolin has died.
Gussie was the last surviving of the Russell brothers, he was pre deceased by his brothers Packie and Micho.
His death means in many ways the end of an era, he was one of the last survivors of his generation. In the Doolin area there’s still John Killoughery playing the whistle, hale and hearty as ever .
Gussie was a quiet man, shy to the point of being reclusive. Yet he could be very talkative if you gave him time. One time he filled my ears with stories of Johnny Doran and the travelling musicians that came to Doolin while I was playing the pipes, it was easier for him to talk that way.
He wasn’t the best known musician of his family, yet I rarely saw a tune come by he didn’t have. He had a remarkably wide interest in music. During Willie Clancy weeks he’d come down from Doonagore on his motorbike and stand in the street, observing and listening to musicians from as far afield as Nepal and Japan, mesmerized and intrigued by their strange music.
Bill Ochs visited me last March, he had spent some time with Gussie earlier that day and he told me Gussie had been in hospital to receive treatment for liver cancer, that he was on the way out.
Last time I came across him was a few months ago on a lonely beach under the Cliffs of Moher on the Liscannor side. There had been a storm and he drove the bike down the coastroad to see, like myself, what had washed up. He looked old and not well, we greeted briefly and awkwardly as usual. Shy people on a lonely road.
Sad news, Peter.
The Russell Family album is one of my favourites too.
Strangely enough,just the other night,I was thinking about Gussie,going down on his motorbike to Doolin at Willie weeks,as you had described.
Don’t know what triggered that train of thought,but it’s an awefully sad co-incidence.
Peter, I appreciate your post. The bicycling, the storm, and “shy people on a lonely road,” really evoked, for me, the essence of real people who make real music.
They just a had a special on Gussie Russell on ClareFM, nicely done although there wasn’t much news in it, beside perhaps some words about the father who died when the brothers were still young. I was a bit surprised that they spent a lot of time on Micho (and Packie). Sure Micho was the one who went out into the world, played for the Bicentennial in Washington, DC and toured in Europe for years, but I would have expected them to make a bit more of an effort to portray Gussie in his own right.
I couldn’t make it to the removal in Ennistymon last night, I had piping to teach. I had missed the exact funeral arrangement but assumed the usual ‘after 11.30 or 12 O clock mass’ and so I set out just before eleven to go to Roadford church in Doolin, only to find the funeral would be at two which left me hardly any time before I had to go collect my youngfella from school. I returned home so and on arrival I wrote a long piece on my thoughts about the trip to Doolin but never mind it, I have now deleted it.
his music will live on in many hearts