Galway journalist’s book on showband legend soars up charts
By Declan Varley
The official biography of one of Irish showband music’s pioneers written by by a Galway journalist has soared up the book selling charts.
The book Larry Cunningham - A Showband Legend is penned by awardwinning Tuam Herald and Galway Bay fm journalist Tom Gilmore and is the culmination of a year’s interviews with the music star.
Many people from North Galway recently made the trip to the Hotel Kilmore in Cavan for the launch, which was undertaken by TV personality Jimmy Magee.
Mr Gilmore, who is the country’s leading authority on Country and Irish music and who ahs an encyclopaedic knowledge of the genre, is now fielding offers from other music stars to work on their biographies. He has covered country music in Ireland for various media since the early 1960s.
The Cunningham book is a slice of nostalgia from the 1960s and 70s swinging showband era and is a social commentary on a rural Ireland that was grappling with an age of change.
Daniel O'Donnell wrote the foreword, and as well as having over 230 pages of mostly humorous, but sometimes sad, memories from the Irish music scene at home and abroad, this publication also has 64 rare photographs spanning Larry's singing career from the 1950s to the present day.
One chapter is devoted to the life and times of Phil Fitzpatrick who wrote Lovely Leitrim and who died following a gunfight in a New York bar. He was a mounted police man with the New York Police. Stars from the world of showbusiness, including Brendan Grace, Tony Allen of Foster and Allen, Sandy Kelly, TR Dallas, Gene Stuart, Frankie McBride and many more, including former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds were at the book launch in Cavan.
The Longford singing star, best known for songs such as Lovely Leitrim, Tribute to Jim Reeves, Among the Wicklow Hills, Pretty Little Girl from Omagh, says he is delighted with the reaction to the book. Obviously much of the story is set in counties such as Longford, Leitrim, Cavan and Monaghan but there are many references to Galway and the West of Ireland too where Larry was very popular in the dancehalls and marquees.
Ther book comes with a free CD of four of Larry's biggest hits, including the emigrant's favourite Lovely Leitrim.
"Larry Cunningham - A Showband Legend" is now available in all leading book shops in Galway city and county and from Mentor Publications and via the website www.mentorbooks.ie