Farewell to Tommy Makem (1932-2007)

A pint for Tommy Makem (above, left), a giant of Irish music who blew up on the same early-Sixties Greenwich Village folk scene as his buddy Bob Dylan. A native of County Armagh, he emigrated to New York in 1955 and joined a rowdy gang of Irish singers, the Clancy Brothers. At clubs like the Village Gate and Folk City, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem sang tales of drinking, blackguarding, rebellion and drinking. They taught Dylan songs like "The Parting Glass" (which became "Restless Farewell") and "Brennan On The Moor" (which became "Rambling Gambling Willie"), but that's just the start -- Dylan raves about them in No Direction Home and Chronicles, describing Makem perfectly: "The singer always had a merry light in his eye, had to have it." They also taught Shane McGowan half his songs; check out the 1959 classic Come Fill Your Glass With Us. It's difficult to overstate Makemâ's importance to Irish-American pop culture over the past fifty years. Nobody will forget him (I know I won't, because my mom makes me sing "Bold Thady Quill" every year on her birthday). So as the old Irish funeral song says, "Let's not have a sniffle, let's have a bloody good cry." Here's a clip of Makem and the Clancys singing "The Little Beggarman" on Pete Seeger's TV show; Makem's the one standing up, singing lead and dancing a jig at the end. Dance on, Tommy.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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