Luke Kelly was known as one of Ireland’s greatest folk singers. Born in 1940 into a working-class family living in a one-room cottage on Sheriff Street, close to the Docklands area of Dublin near the River Liffey and the banks of the Royal Canal, Kelly had a typical tough upbringing on the streets of Ireland’s capital. His father worked at Jacob’s biscuit factory but the family were surrounded by high unemployment, emigration and poverty. Luke left school at the age of just 12 to bring home a wage. He did a variety of jobs before coming to England with his brother Paddy to work on building sites.
In 1962 Kelly returned to Dublin where he met Ronnie Drew and Barney McKenna in O’Donoghue’s Pub and they formed the band which would later become known as The Dubliners. During and between his long stints with The Dubliners Kelly became known as the man with the big mop of red hair and the even bigger soulful voice, a rebel voice delivering songs that were often protesting against injustice and poverty. He was described by Shane McGowan “as a pop star amongst folk musicians” and by Gerry Adams as “a champion of the downtrodden”.
But how many know that this great legend of Irish folk music actually cut his singing teeth here in Birmingham in the late 1950s and early 1960s? That the roots of his passion and revolutionary spirit were in some large part formed right here in Brum?
Luke was a big music fan before he came to England, like many young people of his generation he loved Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Perry Como and Duke Ellington’s big band sounds. He also joined the Marian Arts Society in Dublin where he acted, danced and sang.
In 1957 Luke Kelly left Ireland and came to England, like so many emigrants of that period he probably never expected to return home again. He lived the navvy lifestyle in cities like Manchester and Newcastle, working on the roads and building sites. In a 1962 interview he said he had about 50 different jobs in England which included cleaning lavatories, railways and windows. In Newcastle he discovered the jazz and folk club scene.
But it was in Birmingham that Kelly really discovered a radical new identity. He moved into the home of a Dublin born teacher named Sean Mulready, a communist with strong musical links in Birmingham whose sister Kathleen Moynihan was a founder member of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann. Luke lived with Sean and his wife Molly on Howard Road East in Kings Heath.
Luke brought a five stringed banjo and began busking, playing in the style of Pete Seeger and Tommy Makem. Luke decided to settle for a while in Birmingham and became involved in the Jug O’Punch Folk Club run by Ian Campbell. He formed a musical partnership with Dominic Behan and they began performing at folk clubs and Irish pubs all over England and Scotland. He also became good friends with Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, often appearing at their Singer Club in London.
In 1999, Mary Maher a journalist with The Irish Times described Luke Kelly’s time in Birmingham as “a massive educational process”. Through Sean Mulready, he joined the socialist Birmingham Clarion Singers Choir and also became active in the Connolly Association, a left-wing group of Irish exiles in England.
Luke began to read and study at night school in Birmingham and to associate with left wing academics at the city’s university. The Mulready family were a big influence on Luke Kelly’s socialist thinking and also George Thomson, professor of classics at Birmingham University and a member of the executive committee of the Communist Party. The tough former itinerant Irish navvy from the Dublin dockland was now reading Jack Kerouac and Jean-Paul Satre amongst the socialist intelligentsia of the English Midlands.
Luke became active in CND and the Young Communist League. Ian Campbell once recalled that Luke was known locally as Luke ‘Sun is Burning’ Kelly because of his love for the anti-nuclear campaign anthem of that name. In Easter 1962 he joined the Aldermaston anti-nuclear march.
Later that year, his mentor George Thomson offered Luke a place at Prague University. Luke had two choices, either go to Prague or to return to Ireland to pursue a career as a ballad singer. He chose the latter but not before completing a musical apprenticeship under Ewan MacColl in London. Kelly would later say that MacColl was his greatest musical influence.
Not long afterwards, Luke Kelly met up with Ronnie Drew and Barney McKenna in O’Donoghue’s Pub back home in Ireland and The Dubliners were born. From the beginning of their relationship, Drew was keen to exorcise Kelly of his love and fascination with the English folk scene, saying “that was the first row I had with Luke. The English folkies used to drive me mad with the way everything was so precious”.
In her book Irish Music Abroad: Diasporic Sounds in Birmingham however, author Angela Moran presents the paradox that ‘the analogous musical ideas and singing techniques Kelly took from city centre folk clubs in Birmingham, his lodgings in Kings Heath and the seminar rooms at Birmingham University, helped to create what became his and his contemporaries’ recognisably Irish sounds’. She concludes “rather than belonging to Irish Dublin, Luke Kelly belongs to the diasporic space of Irish Birmingham”.
