seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Castlebar Song Contest


by Leave a comment

Birth of Linda Martin, Singer & Television Presenter

Linda Martin, Northern Irish singer and television presenter, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on March 27, 1952. She is best known as the winner of the 1992 Eurovision Song Contest during which she represents Ireland with the song “Why Me?,” the first of a record three consecutive wins by Ireland. She is also known within Ireland as a member of the band Chips.

Martin is of Irish, Scottish and Italian ancestry. Her father’s family’s surname is originally Martini. Her paternal great-grandfather, Francis Martini, is born in Dublin to immigrants from Saronno, north of Milan, Italy. Two of her maternal great-grandparents, William Green and Elizabeth Nangle, have a coal-mining background and transferred to Belfast from Larkhall, Scotland.

Martin begins her musical career when she joins the band Chips in Omagh in 1969. They quickly become one of the top bands in Ireland on the live circuit, and release hit singles “Love Matters,” “Twice a Week” and “Goodbye Goodbye” during the mid-to-late 1970s. In 1972, she leaves Chips to be a vocalist with the new group Lyttle People but rejoins her former bandmates the following year.

The group appears on Opportunity Knocks in 1974 and appears a number of times on British television promoting their singles, but never scores a UK hit. With multiple entries to the Irish National finals of the Eurovision Song Contest, the band carries on into the 1980s. They score a final Irish hit in 1982 with “David’s Song (Who’ll Come With Me),” after which Martin leaves when she wins the Castlebar Song Contest with “Edge of the Universe” in 1983. From this point, she concentrates on a solo career as well as occasional live appearances with Chips until they recruit a new lead singer, Valerie Roe, in the late 1980s.

Martin participates in the National Song Contest four times as a member of Chips; however, they do not score successfully. She participates another four times in the contest as a soloist and once more as part of the group “Linda Martin and Friends.” With nine participations, she has been the most frequent entrant in the National Song Contest’s history. She wins the contest twice, going on to represent Ireland twice at the Eurovision Song Contest.

The first of these victories is in 1984 with the song “Terminal 3,” written by Johnny Logan. The song comes in second in the final, being beaten by eight points. “Terminal 3” reaches No. 7 in the Irish charts. The second victory is in 1992 when her song “Why Me?,” also written by Logan, goes on to win the final in Sweden. This becomes Ireland’s fourth victory in the Eurovision Song Contest, and the song reaches No. 1 in the Irish chart as well as becoming a hit in many European countries.

Martin is, at the time, one of only three artists to finish both first and second at Eurovision, behind Lys Assia and Gigliola Cinquetti. Since then, only Elisabeth Andreassen and Dima Bilan have achieved this, raising the number to five.

Martin is one of the hosts on the RTÉ quiz show The Lyrics Board and also serves as one of Louis Walsh‘s behind-the-scenes team on the first series of ITV‘s The X Factor. She also serves as a judge on the first, second and fourth seasons of RTÉ’s You’re a Star and on Charity You’re a Star in 2005 and 2006. While she is dismissed from later seasons, speaking on Saturday Night with Miriam on RTÉ television on July 28, 2007, she says that she is “open” to being invited back to the show. She does not rule out a return to Eurovision following Ireland’s dismal performance in the 2007 contest, finishing last with only five points.

Martin is a guest performer at Congratulations: 50 Years of the Eurovision Song Contest concert in Copenhagen, Denmark, in October 2005. She is also the Irish spokesperson for Eurovision Song Contest 2007 and is one of the five judges for Eurosong 2009. In 2012, she is the mentor for Jedward in the Irish Eurovision final Eurosong 2012.

During the interval of Eurovision 2013, the host Petra Mede presents a light-hearted history of the contest, during which she explains to viewers that Johnny Logan had won the competition three times, in 1980, 1987 and 1992. Appearing alongside Linda Martin in some vintage footage she jokes that he had won the third time disguised as a woman, saying, “I recognise a drag queen when I see one.” The joke proves controversial, particularly in the Irish media. However, on June 1, 2013, during an appearance on RTÉ’s The Saturday Night Show Martin says that she has actually benefited from all the publicity. On the same show she performs a cover of the song “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk.

Martin also appears in pantomime, in Dublin. She stars in Cinderella as the Wicked Stepmother, Snow White as the Evil Queen and Robin Hood as herself, at the Olympia Theatre. She tours Menopause The Musical with Irish entertainer Twink. While on tour, Twink describes Martin as a “cunt” during a tirade in May 2010. The two had been friends for 30 years but both say afterwards that they have no plans to speak to each other again.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Jimmy Kennedy, Songwriter & Lyricist

jimmy-kennedy-1

James Kennedy, songwriter and lyricist, is born on July 20, 1902, near Omagh, County Tyrone in what is now Northern Ireland. He puts words to existing music such as “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” and “My Prayer” and co-writes with composers Michael Carr, Wilhelm Grosz and Nat Simon, among others. In a career spanning more than fifty years, he writes some 2,000 songs, of which over 200 become worldwide hits and about 50 are all-time popular music classics.

Kennedy’s father, Joseph Hamilton Kennedy, is a policeman in the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). While growing up in the village of Coagh, Kennedy writes several songs and poems. He is inspired by local surroundings — the view of the Ballinderry River, the local Springhill House and the plentiful chestnut trees on his family’s property, as evidenced in his poem Chestnut Trees. He later moves to Portstewart, a seaside resort in County Londonderry.

Kennedy graduates from Trinity College, Dublin, before teaching in England. He is accepted into the Colonial Service, as a civil servant, in 1927.

While awaiting a Colonial Service posting to the colony of Nigeria, Kennedy embarks on a career in songwriting. His first success comes in 1930 with “The Barmaid’s Song”, sung by Gracie Fields. Fellow lyricist Harry Castling introduces him to Bert Feldman, a music publisher based in London‘s “Tin Pan Alley“, for whom he starts to work. In the early 1930s he writes a number of successful songs, including “Oh, Donna Clara” (1930), “My Song Goes Round the World” (1931), and “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” (1933), in which he provides new lyrics to John Walter Bratton‘s tune from 1907.

In 1934, Feldman turns down Kennedy’s song “Isle of Capri“, but it becomes a major hit for a new publisher, Peter Maurice. He writes several more successful songs for Maurice, including “Red Sails in the Sunset” (1935), inspired by beautiful summer evenings in Portstewart, Northern Ireland, “Harbour Lights” (1937) and “South of the Border” (1939), inspired by a holiday picture postcard he receives from Tijuana, Mexico and written with composer Michael Carr. He and Carr also collaborate on several West End shows in the 1930s, including London Rhapsody (1937). “My Prayer,” with original music by Georges Boulanger, has English lyrics penned by Kennedy in 1939. It is originally written by Boulanger with the title “Avant de Mourir” in 1926.

During the early stages of World War II, while serving in the British Army‘s Royal Artillery, where he rises to the rank of Captain, Kennedy writes the wartime hit, “We’re Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line.” His hits also include “Cokey Cokey” (1945), and the English lyrics to “Lili Marlene.” After the end of the war, his songs include “Apple Blossom Wedding” (1947), “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” (1953), and “Love Is Like a Violin” (1960). In the 1960s he writes the song “The Banks of the Erne'”, for recording by his friend from the war years, Theo Hyde, also known as Ray Warren.

Kennedy is a patron of the Castlebar Song Contest from 1973 until his death in 1984 and his association with the event adds great prestige to the contest.

Kennedy wins two Ivor Novello Awards for his contribution to music and receives an honorary degree from the New University of Ulster. He is awarded the OBE in 1983 and, in 1997, is posthumously inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.

Jimmy Kennedy dies in Cheltenham on April 6, 1984, at the age of 81. He is interred in Taunton, Somerset.