Archive News
Josef LockeÕs amazing story at the Town Hall
Date Published: 28-Feb-2013
The extraordinary life of Derry singer Josef Lock will be explored in a show at the Town Hall Theatre this Saturday, March 2.
Written by RTÉ’s former Head of Music, Cathal McCabe – also from Derry – Blaze Away features Locke’s great songs, including Hear my Song Violetta, Come Back to Sorrento, I’ll Walk Beside You, Blaze Away, The Old Bog Road and My Heart and I.
Blaze Away is based on a group of fans who are presenting a tribute to Locke, when he appears and tries to edit the content, explains Cathal, who previously wrote and directed I Hear You Calling Me: The Story of Count John McCormack. As a young man, Cathal played music for Locke during his Irish performances.
Josef Locke – born Joseph McLaughlin in 1917 – was a colourful character who had a reputation as a ladies’ man for much of his life and ran into trouble with the UK taxman in the 1950s. His popularity with women was no surprise, says Cathal, as he was over six feet tall, with a Clark Gable-style moustache and curly black hair.
The young Joseph McLaughlin began his career as a member of the Irish Guard in the British Army in 1933. He was posted to Palestine, where he took a job in the Palestine police. When he returned to the North, he became a PE instructor with the RUC. While there, the former choirboy began singing, and became known as ‘Joseph McLauglin, the singing Bobby’.
In the early 1940s, Joseph engineered a meeting in Dublin with the renowned Jimmy O’Dea, who ran pantomimes in the Gaiety Theatre. Because of World War II there was no talent coming in from England and Joseph got a job. After that he began singing with the Dublin Grand Opera Society, where he came to the attention of Ireland’s most famous tenor, John McCormack.
Joseph asked McCormack about taking singing lessons and McCormack advised against it, telling him to go to England and get an agent. Joseph did, signing up with Jack Hylton who changed his name to Josef Locke. His UK career took off, with his wages rising from £150 a week to £400 and eventually £1,200 – that was the mid 1940s.
“He was an engaging performer who could be very rude to the audience,” says Cathal. They loved it. Locke became a regular in the seaside town of Blackpool for years, and performed in no less than five Royal Variety Performances in London. In 1947 he released Hear My Song, Violetta, which became his signature tune.
“Whatever he sang was what he felt like singing and what people wanted. He had no pretensions.”
In 1958, pursued by the taxman for £27,000, Locke relocated to Ireland. After some years he settled his bill and moved freely between the countries.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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