CNN) – Imagine the following: You’re a working-class boy in small-town Ireland, with some talent as a singer and actor but most likely the dead-end life of an office worker (or worse) ahead of you.
One day, an American heiress with an interest in folk music comes to town. She becomes infatuated with you. Eventually, after you start an acting career in Ireland, you head to New York, courtesy of her.
Once in Gotham, you meet the heiress’ friends, a group of actors, folk singers, artists and wealthy folks living the bohemian life in Greenwich Village. Eventually, you team up with your brothers – who are already in New York – and form a singing group while trying to establish yourself as an actor. Although you work with people like Walter Matthau and Hume Cronyn, it’s the singing that earns you a following, and you start becoming famous.
The day you’re booked on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the headlining act can’t make it and you’re asked to perform for 16 minutes of the one-hour program. From there – with a couple dips along the way – you and your brothers become so popular that you’re known as “the Beatles of Irish music.”
It’s an almost unbelievable story. And it’s the story of Liam Clancy’s life.
Clancy, part of the famed Irish singing group The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, knows he’s a lucky guy. He pauses during a phone interview from his home in County Waterford, Ireland, and quotes his pal Makem’s wife.
“Liam Clancy is the luckiest man I know,” she said. “If he fell off the Empire State Building, there would be a truckload of mattresses going by.”
A name and a life
Lucky Clancy: “If he fell off the Empire State Building, there would be a truckload of mattresses going by.”
His luck still holding. A 66, Clancy is undergoing a bit of a resurgence in his later years. He’s just written a memoir, “The Mountain of the Women” (Doubleday),…
http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/03/14/liam.clancy/index.html
(edit) hey, does anyone know how to edit the topic header to correctly spell the Clancy name?
Tyghress
…And I go on, pursuing through the hours,
Another tiger, the one not found in verse.
Jorge Luis Borges
[ This Message was edited by: tyghress on 2002-03-15 09:04 ]
[Topic fixed; you can do that by editing the post, for what it’s worth --rich]
[ This Message was edited by: rich on 2002-03-15 13:33 ]