News from the darkest corners...

Liam Clancy, the man Bob Dylan described as the “greatest ballad singer” he had ever heard has died. He was 74.

Clancy died at Bon Secours Hospital in Cork after a long battle with pulmonary fibrosis – scarring of the lungs. In an interview with The Irish Times in September to promote The Yellow Bittern, a film about his life, he admitted that he was on his “last legs” from the disease.

Liam was the youngest of the four Clancy brothers and Paddy, Bobby and Tom all predeceased him. Tommy Makem died two years ago.

Born in Carrick-on-Suir, Co Tipperary, Liam Clancy emigrated to the United States to join his brothers in 1956. They began their singing careers around the pubs of Greenwich Village where they met a young Bob Dylan who has claimed them as one of his biggest influences.

Together the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem began a transatlantic phenomenon after a break on the coast-to-coast Ed Sullivan Show in 1961 where they filled in for a guest who could not turn up.

They were then offered a record deal with Columbia and were hugely successful on both sides of the Atlantic resurrecting Irish songs such as Roddy McCorley, Brennan on the Moor and The Jug of Punch.

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