Perhaps it had something to do with
Christmas. It was the end of a long
Christmas holiday and I’d given my older one a Yamaha acoustic guitar of her
own this year. We have others around the place but
she’s expressed in interested in having one and though we’ve tried before I
figured she’d probably make more progress if she had one of her own.
We spent some time
going back over a bunch of the open chords, that feel so thick and resonant on
an acoustic guitar. Bar chords are fine
for an electric guitar but will be too demanding for uncalloused hands, just
beginning to learn on an acoustic. I thought to show
her a few woman guitarists who could command a room with nothing but an
acoustic guitar: Here’s Bobbie Gentry
singing "Billie Joe Macalister," there’s Joni singing Big Yellow Taxi, Joan
Baez singing, “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill.”
Then I had it in my mind to find something Irish. We've been to Ireland after all. One search lead to another and I was soon on
to the Dubliners and Luke Kelly.
I didn’t make her
sit through “Whiskey In the Jar” but I think I left the window open there on
old Luke Kelly singing “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill.” She went off to practice and we vowed to play
again soon. But later that night, when I
was back in front of my computer and should have been doing some work, I
suppose, I reacquainted myself with Luke Kelly and his big smile and curly red
mane of hair. “Luke – A Documentary on
Luke Kelly.”
I’d remembered
hearing “Alabama 58’” for the first time when I was in Ireland a few years back
and being immediately struck by the voice, the cutting message, the reference
to Diggers and Finians. Heading over to Liverpool
the same years the Beatles were coming up.
Learning from Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger and returning to Ireland as
a folk singer, as a socialist. With a bit of time I realized then that most of the songs I’d long
enjoyed by the Dubliners were his voice.
It was his baritone that had been behind “The Town I’d Loved So Well”
and “Scorn Not His Simplicity” and yes, “Whiskey in the Jar” as well. What a handsome man and a handsome voice he
was to consider, filling up the room with his utterly plausible tone and then dying way too soon from brain tumors at the age of 43.
Tuesday, 12/26/17
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