Throwback Thursday: Memories of the showband era in Cork 

You know, it was drawn rather forcibly to my attention the other day that the legendary showband era never really went away.

We might associate it with the late 1950s and early ’60s, that simpler time before beat clubs, flower power, LSD, and taking trips (both self-induced and geographical) to Kathmandu in a Volkswagen bus.

But the showband era is actually still here, alive and well, and apparently as much loved as ever.

The Hot Country Awards, and country music generally, featured on Nationwide last week, where it was made clear that many showbands, particularly those playing rural venues, built their reputation around big country’n’western numbers. (Larry Cunningham and the Mighty Avons with Lovely Leitrim? Big Tom and the Mainliners with The Old Rustic Bridge?)

Reeling In The Showband Years is sure to sell out wherever it tours, and Gina and the Champions are playing at the Opera House this coming weekend.

And the highly successful Singalong Songbook team has just announced that they have devised a special Showband Sunday Afternoon on April 19, performing some of the best-loved hits which are almost guaranteed to have their audience dancing in the aisles.

There are even Facebook groups such as Irish Showbands catering for that longing for the halycon days.

What is the enduring attraction, the love engendered by the showbands of that great era?

We live these days in an age of apps and social media. You don’t have to leave your house – or even your bed for that matter – to keep in touch with friends across the world, find out the latest news, or enjoy the latest scandal in high life.

It should be great, and in many ways it is, but it can lead to a sense of loneliness, of detachment, of non-involvement. It can even lead to a total inability to interact and talk with those you meet everyday. (You have only to see groups in restaurants not speaking a word to each other, but busily texting on their phones, or kids outside the school gates not chatting and giggling but each one introspectively looking inward at their new best friend, the mobile.)

Online chats simply do not provide that wonderful shared sense of camaraderie, of making new friends, of belonging, that the dance hall did.

Back then, when other forms of amusement or entertainment were very few and far between, going to see your favourite showband meant you might meet the partner of your dreams and dance ‘a clinger’ with them to one of those memorable hits.

Clasping someone special close while Dickie Rock sang From The Candy Store, or Butch Moore crooned Walking The Streets In The Rain, was a lifetime’s memory.

And when the band picked up tempo and belted out High School Hop or I Ran All the Way Home, you worked off all that energy and frustration of a week’s school or work so simply and easily.

The height of the night was sharing a bottle of fizzy lemonade at the side of the hall. No alcohol in the dance halls back then, and young men trying to build up their courage beforehand at the neighbouring pubs might well be denied entrance.

For most of us, though, the spur of the alcohol wasn’t needed. The dance hall and one of the top showbands were more than enough.

Who were your absolute favourites?

Brendan Bowyer And The Royal would come top of most people’s lists, but Corkonians had a very definite preference for their home-grown and delightful Dixies with Brendan O’Brien’s good looks and beautiful voice, plus Joe Mac’s zany antics on (and off) the drums.

The Freshmen from Ballymena would probably gain top marks for their professionalism and superb harmonies, especially on Beach Boys numbers.

Joe Dolan and the Drifters were a hit wherever they went.

So many more... we’d like to hear you add in your own choice of Number One Showband Ever!

At the height of the showband boom, new groups were being formed everywhere across Ireland and trying their luck, first at small local venues, and then, if they were good enough, at bigger halls across the country.

The top ones got bookings not only across in England, but also in Germany, the U.S, and Canada.

The Galtymore in London’s Cricklewood, which opened in 1952, became a huge draw for homesick Irish immigrants yearning for familiar sights and sounds. When Larry Cunningham And The Mighty Avons played there in 1967, the queues stretched for miles outside the venue, and almost 7,000 eager young people packed the hall to hear him sing.

Remember, this was at a time when Ireland was only gradually moving out of the impoverished gloom of the 1940s and the Emergency, rationing and strict control by the Church of Rome. And there were very few places where young people could meet and mingle, get to know each other, and find future partners.

Until the emergence of the showbands, even going to a dance had been a rather formal affair, with an equally formal band seated on the stage, often in tuxedos - and you certainly needed to know your waltz from your quickstep if you were to have a hope of succeeding with the opposite sex.

Compare that with the liveliness of dancing The Yenka to the irresistible beat of The Freshmen.

Left foot, left foot, right foot, right foot,

Forward, backward, one two three!

Nothing to it, anyone can do it,

Come and do the Yenka, one two three!

Long lines of laughing, breathless boys and girls, arms linked, pounding the bouncing boards of the dance hall, having the time of their lives.

Just so you know, The Yenka originated as a Finnish hit song, based on an old traditional dance, but the movements are very similar to one invented in 1950s San Francisco known as the Bunny Hug. And that, we have to admit, is very similar to the 1930s conga with its endless hopping line, which my parents danced on honeymoon in Switzerland in the winter of 1938. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose…

The Clipper Carlton are generally credited with being the first band to ditch the seated format, the sheet music on stands, the dress suits and bow ties, for trendier outfits and a standing-up arrangement, with musicians playing from memory.

Others were quick to follow, and soon the format of a lead star singer, backed by a lively group that moved around the stage and responded to the music they were playing, became general.

(Does anybody remember the shrieks of delight that greeted The Shadows when they moved as one in perfect co-ordination behind Cliff Richard? Only from side to side of course, occasionally a step forward and back, but hey, it was new and exciting then!)

At the height of the showband period in the mid-1960s, there were as many as 800 full- and part-time bands travelling around Ireland, often playing a five or even six-day week.

The business as a whole, in fact, gave employment to thousands of musicians, not forgetting their support staff and managers, at a time when unemployment was still high.

Packed buses drove up and down the roads of our countryside, getting to venues just in time to unpack, set up, and get ready, while the crowds already filling the hall and listening to the warm-up band, were waiting eagerly for the big attraction.

In the really rural areas, most of the attendees would have walked miles or come on their bikes.

At a battered tin hall near the Waterford Greenway, an elderly local remembers seeing the lights of bicycle lamps converging from lanes and roads on all sides, the bikes then leant against the nearest ditch while their riders (and often pillion passengers) rushed to get into the corrugated-iron Ballroom of Romance.

The 1982 film of that name, based on the hall in Glenfarne, written about by William Trevor, captures perfectly the zeitgeist of that time.

Cathal McCabe, who has written and directed the forthcoming Showband Sunday Afternoon show for the Singalong Songbook team at the Everyman, was born and raised in Derry, and was invited to join a showband, the Senators, while at Queen’s. Therefore, he knew all the bands starting up, and made many permanent friends.

He remembers the Clipper Carlton taking that bold step of leaving their formal suits and their seats, and taking to the stage standing up, and moving, becoming an entirely different show.

Later, Cathal moved to RTÉ and became head of music there, when the station was still very coy about playing ‘popular music’.

“I remember a priest fulminating at McEntee because he wanted him to refuse to let RTÉ play pop, and McEntee wouldn’t!” recalled Cathal, referring to then Tánaiste Seán McEntee.

Does Cathal have favourites among those great showbands of yesteryear?

“Well, for music and melody, I would say Butch Moore And The Capitol. For superb harmonies and professionalism, The Freshmen. But for that explosive energy on stage, it has to be Brendan Bowyer And The Royal.

“Did you know that Brendan Bowyer’s father, Stanley, was a music professor, and conductor of the Waterford Theatre Royal and the opera festival?”

So music was in the family genes, although Stanley probably raised an eyebrow when his son went for Presley rather than Puccini.

Cathal tells a great story about the warm-up band that played before The Royal Showband on one occasion in New Brighton, just outside Liverpool.

“They came out the back door and admired the big glossy bus in which Brendan and the boys toured, with all its luxury mod cons, and said, ‘Gosh, wouldn’t we love to be able to travel in something like that!’

“Who were those young hopefuls? The Beatles….”

The thing about the showband era, stresses Cathal, is that it was a time of huge change in Ireland.

“We were coming out of the penurious years, and slowly moving into a new world. The ever-present power of the Church was slowly starting to wane. We could listen to Radio Luxembourg on our transistors, read what was happening in England across the water, and even in America.

“Those who were young at that time will remember how life began to get more exciting, more interesting, and the showbands were the perfect exemplar of that.

“You could go to a hall, a huge one or even a small country one, and hear the latest songs, dance rock’n’roll or do the twist, or whatever was in vogue that month, and have a whale of a time.

“And because you had actually grown up with the somewhat gloomier times that existed in the late ’40s and the early ’50s, this new, expanding and colourful life was an utter delight.

“That’s why we are doing this showband era story on Sunday Songbook. It’s about the songs, yes, but it is also because those who were there at the time will remember how they were then, how they felt. And that’s the best thing of all.”

Oh Cathal, what memories you bring back! Let’s hear some from those of you who put on your Hucklebuck shoes back then! Email jokerrigan1@gmail.com or leave a a message on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/echolivecork.