WHAT HE MEANT TO EMIGRANTS

IF YOU are young and urban then there’s a very good chance that, before yesterday, you’d never heard of the singer Tom McBride, who died yesterday at the age of 81. Certainly in the Today FM offices – among the younger ones – there were a few questions being asked.

If you are middle-aged or older, and even if you’re from a city, then you almost certainly know who Big Tom was, from his regular appearances on The Late Late Show and other RTÉ programmes over decades.

But if you are from rural Ireland – or your parents are – then it is most likely that you knew him well. If you didn’t go to his many concerts yourself, it is very likely your relatives did. And you may well have been a fan.

He was a star, much loved by his fans, even if disdained by the allegedly more sophisticated, or rather those with a different taste in music to the relatively simple fare offered by Big Tom and his ilk. That the reaction to his death was the top trending item on Twitter yesterday testified that he was a significant figure in this country’s cultural and social history. Or, at least, in the rural parts.

Comfort

And beyond Ireland too. It was notable that many of the tributes paid yesterday came from the emigrant community in places including London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow.

Big Tom – it would seem incorrect to call him McBride – played venues in those cities regularly, his music appealing to those who left rural Ireland to live in those somewhat alien foreign places.

In those pre-Ryanair days when flights were expensive and therefore unaffordable – and the long trip via ferry put many people off spending their money to come home – Big Tom provided a musical comfort blanket, with lyrics that reminded everyone of what they missed and wished they could still have.

It would be easy to write off Big Tom as a phenomenon from the Sixties that did not endure. But that would be wrong.

While his popularity was at its height in the Sixties and Seventies, as he first surfed the crest of the showband wave (some of you might have to ask your mother, but that was the incredible music of the era before disco arrived), and then as a country music star, Big Tom (with or without his band The Mainliners) was a staple, travelling up and down the country, filling venues.

I checked with my mother-in-law, a woman of a similar vintage to Big Tom, in Millstreet yesterday, and Mary remembered how she and her late husband Andrew joined the throngs many times at the Star Ballroom in the small Co. Cork town. And they often travelled further, to Killarney in Co. Kerry, for his dances.

It was many, many years ago, she agreed, but she can still remember how much they enjoyed those nights.

Those were the big events in rural Ireland of the time.

There aren’t as many such nights now – and venues have closed – but Big Tom still left a legacy, a love for the simple music and the desire to dance to it.

Nathan Carter would not be a star in Ireland if the likes of Big Tom hadn’t blazed a trial for country music.

Nathan’s brother Jake may be commendably light on his feet, but would he have won the most recent Dancing With The Stars had he not enjoyed the support of his sibling’s legion of fans?

Nostalgic

The controversy over the abandoned five nights of Garth Brooks gigs at Croke Park is still raw for some; the crowd that Brooks would have wowed was a mix of those who would have been part of the Sixties and Seventies Big Tom fan club, and their children and grandchildren.

It has been interesting how well this type of music has flourished in the past decade, particularly as the recession bit deep, seemingly affecting rural Ireland more than urban areas, leading to a fresh wave of emigration. Dressing in ‘Stetsons and Stilettos’ and going to the weekend dance has been the joy for a new generation… and a nostalgic outing for many of the older set.

No matter how much Ireland changes, some things remain firmly rooted in the past. And what harm when it is fun?

I would not pretend to be a fan of this type of music and I thought Declan Nerney was a bit over the top yesterday when he compared Big Tom’s influence on country and Irish to Bob Marley’s on reggae. But I’m not going to be so condescending as to dismiss it as being without merit. Like all types of music, there’s the good and the bad. And sometimes what’s good goes out of fashion.

I remember, many years ago, as a child, perhaps in the Seventies, but possibly in the Eighties, enduring an RTÉ TV show (when we had nothing else to watch, not even the BBC) featuring a somewhat uncomfortable and washed-up (as I perceived it) Johnny Cash performing somewhere in a Dublin studio. Even as a child, I thought it was sad for him.

International

Two decades later, as a series of Rick Rubin-produced albums brought Cash roaring back into mainstream fashion, as we appreciated that wonderfully gravelly voice, and as a movie told his remarkable story, my own children and I enjoyed constant repetition of his many songs. And we sang together and laughed and had fun in our kitchen. Cash was cool.

They may be Dublin 6 kids – and they, as teenagers now, love going to the 3Arena and other venues to see the international rap and pop stars that visit the country – but on their trips to Millstreet, they, at least, understand some of the music their grandparents danced to, even if they don’t like it. And their mother can tell them stories of the rural dance halls in which her parents met and courted, like so many others.

Because to that generation – long before mobile phones and Netflix and everything else that makes social gathering in the 21st century very different to what it was – those days were fresh, free and fun. You may consider that overly nostalgic, but I was struck yesterday by how many people texted into my radio show, telling stories of how their late or elderly parents loved the music of Big Tom and attended concerts in their latter years, even when sick or infirm. It brought back their joys of youth.

There will be many people who’ll turn their attention to RTÉ One this Friday for the latest Late Late Show country music special. It may even get a bigger audience now as it pays tribute to the man they call ‘the king’, the first person to be inducted to the Irish Country Music Hall of Fame.

It won’t be my thing – I plan to go out – but I don’t begrudge it to anyone.

And as for anyone wishing to condescend, well, there are many people outside the Pale (and within) who have no idea who Damien Dempsey is.