Liam Clancy, the last surviving member of the folk singers Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, who started their international career 50 years ago in Greenwich Village, died Fri., Nov. 4, in Cork, Ireland, at age 74.
He died of pulmonary fibrosis, according to the Irish Times.
The youngest of the group that included the three brothers and their friend Makem — who recorded 55 internationally best-selling albums — Liam Clancy came to New York in the mid-1950s to be an actor and stayed in the Village with his brother, Paddy. He hung out with musicians, writers and actors at the White Horse Tavern and found it easier to get work as a singer with his brothers Paddy and Tom and Tommy Makem, their friend from Ireland.
The quartet performed concerts in New York, Boston and Chicago, and recorded “The Rising of the Moon,” an album of Irish Republican ballads, in 1959. An appearance on television on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on St. Patrick’s Day 1961 brought them national recognition and led to a Columbia Records contract.
Bob Dylan, their fellow performer in Village venues, said of Liam, “I never heard a singer as good as him ever. He was just the best ballad singer I ever heard in my life. Probably still is.”
The quartet, wearing white Aran sweaters and singing working-class and folk ballads, were among the leading lights of the folk music revival in the 1960s. They performed together until 1973 when they began to go their separate ways. Liam moved to Calgary, Alberta, where he performed on television. The group reassembled briefly in the 1980s, adding Bobby, another Clancy brother. Tom Clancy died in 1990, Paddy died in 1998 and Makem died in 2007.
Liam was born one of 11 children of Robert Joseph and Joanna McGrath Clancy in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary. His wife Kim, daughters Fiona and Siobhan and sons Eban and Donal, and a daughter Anya from a previous relationship, survive.
