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Sleeve Notes
"He is one of that rare and cherished group of Irish singers whose voices are instantly recognizable. Doyle is an international treasure." — Irish Echo, New York
"Doyle is indeed Ireland's finest balladeer. His voice is beautiful, his guitar playing never overshadows the lyrics and his stage patter is warm, engaging and often hilarious." — The Irish Times
In an impressive concert career that has spanned more than three decades, Danny Doyle has been bringing the ballads, history and stories of Ireland to audiences around the world. He has a way of conjuring up the Irish island with songs and vivid tales. Somehow, after you've heard this quintessential Irishman you can nearly taste the salt aroma of a west Clare gale, you can faintly hear the distant call of a Kerry shepherd to his dog, and you can almost feel the mist falling on Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge. If Danny (in the words of the 19th century Belfast poet Samuel Ferguson) is a folksinger who aspires "to link his present to his country's past and live anew in knowledge of his sires," then his songs and deep affection for Ireland's dramatic history offer profound evidence that he indeed sings with the blood and defiance of the Irish flowing through his veins.
The music on which Danny was raised came from Dublin's street singers, his mother and great-grandmother, and poets Brendan Behan and Patrick Kavanagh, both of whom were neighbours. Behan and Kavanagh encouraged his singing, giving him pocket change in return for a tune or two. After leaving school at fourteen, Danny started doing odd jobs in Dublin's Pike Theatre, where he began to pick up from the traveling players ballads from the Irish countryside.
After living for two years in England and playing in the folk clubs there, Danny returned in 1966 to a Dublin squarely in the midst of a folk music revival. He soon had three hit singles and an album that sold over 100,000 copies. The next year his ballad "Whiskey On a Sunday" was No. 1 in Ireland for three months and stayed on the charts for over a year. Shortly thereafter, Oscar-winning composer Elmer Bernstein brought Danny to Hollywood to sing the sound track songs on one of his movies, an event which allowed Danny to undertake his first American tour. After several more years as the toast of Irish folk music, with a number of hit records and television series to his credit, Danny had won every major Irish music industry award. Further tours in the U.S. had inspired in him a deep affection for America, and eventually he decided to emigrate.
Always a passionate student of Irish history, Danny continued to choose material which was reflective of the rich Irish ballad tradition through which much of the country's history has been preserved, while adding to his repertoire the best works of a new generation of songwriters. The sense of showmanship and the infectious joy in his singing that made him a star in Ireland has stayed with him. Wherever he goes, he's really singing of himself each time he sings "I'm a part of what was Dublin in the rare auld times."
