Mush Mush Irish song lyrics and guitar chords
Song taken from the John Ford film ''The Quiet Man'' staring John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara and Barry Fitzgerald who sings this song.The easy guitar chords in G Major are in chordpro. The song writer remains unknown, recorded by The Clancy Brothers And Tommy Makem. I'm sure there was a verse at the start of this song that went missing over the years, I have yet to find it. The famous song from that movie is The Isle Of Innisfree Song. Recorded by Michael O'Duffy. The sheet music and tin whistle notes are included.
Also recorded by Josef Locke.
Also recorded by Josef Locke.
Song Words - Easy Guitar Chords In G Major Key
[G]It was there I learned readin' and [D]writin'
At Dick[G] Croly's where I went to[C] school,
And 'twas[G] there I learned [G7]howlin and [C]fightin'
[Am]with my[G] school master[D7] Mister O'[G]Toole,,[D]
Him and[G] me we had many a [D]scrimmage,
and [G]devil a copy I [C]wrote,
there was [G]ne'er a goss[G7]oon in the [C]village,
[Am]dared [G]tread on the [D7]tail of my [G]coat.
CHORUS
Mush, mush, mush, turaliady,
Sing mush, mush, mush, turalia,
There was ne'er a gossoon in the village
dared tread on the tail of my coat.
Oh 'twas there I learned all my courtin',
Many lessons I took in the art;
Till Cupid, the blackguard, while sportin',
An arrow drove straight thro' my heart.
Molly O'Connor, she lived just forninst me,
And tender lines to her I wrote,
If you dare say on hard word again her,
I'll tread on the tail of your coat.
But a blackguard called Mickey Maloney,
came and stole her affections away,
For he'd money and I had'nt any,
So I sent him a challenge next day.
In the evening we met at the woodbine,
The shannon we crossed in a boat,
And I lathered him with my shillelah,
for he trod on the tail of my coat.
Oh, my fame went abroad thro' the nation
and folks came a flocking to see
And they cried out without hesitation,
"You're a fightin' man, Billy McGee."
I have claned out the Finegan faction,
And I've licked all the Murphys afloat,
If you're in for a row or a ruction,
Just tread on the tail of my coat.
[G]It was there I learned readin' and [D]writin'
At Dick[G] Croly's where I went to[C] school,
And 'twas[G] there I learned [G7]howlin and [C]fightin'
[Am]with my[G] school master[D7] Mister O'[G]Toole,,[D]
Him and[G] me we had many a [D]scrimmage,
and [G]devil a copy I [C]wrote,
there was [G]ne'er a goss[G7]oon in the [C]village,
[Am]dared [G]tread on the [D7]tail of my [G]coat.
CHORUS
Mush, mush, mush, turaliady,
Sing mush, mush, mush, turalia,
There was ne'er a gossoon in the village
dared tread on the tail of my coat.
Oh 'twas there I learned all my courtin',
Many lessons I took in the art;
Till Cupid, the blackguard, while sportin',
An arrow drove straight thro' my heart.
Molly O'Connor, she lived just forninst me,
And tender lines to her I wrote,
If you dare say on hard word again her,
I'll tread on the tail of your coat.
But a blackguard called Mickey Maloney,
came and stole her affections away,
For he'd money and I had'nt any,
So I sent him a challenge next day.
In the evening we met at the woodbine,
The shannon we crossed in a boat,
And I lathered him with my shillelah,
for he trod on the tail of my coat.
Oh, my fame went abroad thro' the nation
and folks came a flocking to see
And they cried out without hesitation,
"You're a fightin' man, Billy McGee."
I have claned out the Finegan faction,
And I've licked all the Murphys afloat,
If you're in for a row or a ruction,
Just tread on the tail of my coat.
Here are the guitar chords as played by Barleyjuice
in the youtube video.
[D]It was [G]there I learned readin' and [D]writin'
At Dick[C] Croly's where [D]I went to[G] school,
And 'twas there I learned howlin and [Am]fightin'
[D]with my[G] school master[D7] Mister O'[G]Toole,
Him and[G] me we had many a [D]scrimmage,
and [C]devil a [D]copy I [G]wrote,
[D]there was ne'er a goss[D]oon in the [Am]village,
[Am]dared [G]tread on the [D7]tail of my [G]coat.
CHORUS
[G]Singing Mush, mush, mush, [D]turaliady,
Sing [C]mush, mush, mush, [D]turali[G]a,
There was ne'er a gos[D]soon in the [Am]village
[D]dared [G]tread on the [D]tail of my [G]co
in the youtube video.
[D]It was [G]there I learned readin' and [D]writin'
At Dick[C] Croly's where [D]I went to[G] school,
And 'twas there I learned howlin and [Am]fightin'
[D]with my[G] school master[D7] Mister O'[G]Toole,
Him and[G] me we had many a [D]scrimmage,
and [C]devil a [D]copy I [G]wrote,
[D]there was ne'er a goss[D]oon in the [Am]village,
[Am]dared [G]tread on the [D7]tail of my [G]coat.
CHORUS
[G]Singing Mush, mush, mush, [D]turaliady,
Sing [C]mush, mush, mush, [D]turali[G]a,
There was ne'er a gos[D]soon in the [Am]village
[D]dared [G]tread on the [D]tail of my [G]co
Mush Mush Sheet Music And Tin Whistle Notes In G Major. If you're playing this old folk song on the whistle then you a D whistle, as that's what the sheet music is set up for, regardless of what the key says.
Josef Locke was that magnetic sort of personality who is as colourful offstage as on. The edges of the private and public personas of this likeable rogue (and subsequent tax-exile) are blurred in the mind of the public and, whether or not the tales of his exploits are true, they are certainly all of a piece. By 1992 Locke was already a living legend and it was the essence of that legend- or, more precisely, some of its scabrous, Don Juan aspects-that Joe was flattered to see perpetuated in Peter Chelsom's film Hear My Song. However hyperbolised, this not-so-strictly biographical biopic still rates as kaleidoscopic, monumentally escapist entertainment. Mr. X, the "wanted" tax-dodger and romantic Locke look-alike who sticks up two fingers at the establishment and risks arrest to sing for his adoring (and largely female) audience has a naughty aura which well befits the J.L. image. And, for Locke himself, the Indian Summer rebirth of interest came as a rare recompense for long years of enforced exile, a proverbial cleaning of the slate both fictionally and in a real-life sense.
This charismatic ex-RUC constable "arrived" at a time when balladeering à la Webster Booth and "Strolling Vagabonds were already long in the tooth and the death in 1945 of the god McCormack, which extended an already-existing lease for imitation, was a bit of a mixed blessing. In order really to score in show-business any up-and-coming performer now needed more than sheer voice and stage-Irish ingenuousness to win his audience. In the wake of jazz, swing and the depression of a major world war, the late 1940s mass- public of seaside show and radio craved laughter or titillation-or both. Be-bop and rock- 'n'-roll lay just ahead and TV would soon be killing off Variety and, in order to "make it" singing straight and not sound "square", other more cinematic-frankly sexier-attributes were called for. With twinkling eye and roguish manner, "broth of a bhoy Josef bridged the gap. Whereas, by definition, he "sang straight (and generally very well, if not always surpassingly well), charm and a strong, flamboyant, vital delivery, became his stock-in- trade. Spanning an ever-widening gulf opened by the incipient fashion for pop, this immaculately-attired, moustachioed 18-stone hunk sang the latest "pop" numbers and kept a suitably diluted version of "opera" alive by making semi-serious music palatable to a wider audience. A truly great showman, he regularly topped variety bills at £2,000 per week at a time when others struggled to clear £100 and by the mid-1950s he was already a superstar.
Josef Locke was born Joseph McLaughlin in Derry, Northern Ireland, on March 23, 1917. The son of a cattle-dealer and butcher, he was one of 10 children. He sang in local church choirs in the Bogside prior to his first solo appearance at the age of nine. At 16 he lied about his age and entered the Irish Guards, serving in the Middle East and subsequently with the Palestine police. On retuming to Northem Ireland in 1938, he joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary and toured local clubs billed as "The Singing Bobby Opera seemed at first a likely road to follow but Joe took McCormack's shrewd advice and from 1945 focused his attention towards London's glamorous world of variety. Here, aided initially by impresario Jack Hylton (under Hylton's auspices he became "Josef Locke" and gave a resounding Victoria Palace debut in August of that year), he rapidly made a name for himself. In the summer of 1946 he gave his first season at Blackpool and the following year toured Australia as supporting artist to that show's star, George Formby, Jr. Meanwhile, late in 1946, Joe had cut the first of more than 100 recordings for Columbia and, early in 1947, signed a prestigious variety circuit contract with the Grade Brothers. This entailed whistle- stop tours around Britain and coast-to-coast in the USA and he was now thrust into a whirlwind of celebrity, glamour and fast sports cars.
Before long a resident vocalist on radio in Variety Fanfare, Joe was featured in Happydrome and various other programmes. In 1948 he toured with the show Passport To Paradise and in 1949 topped the bill at the first of many Blackpool summer seasons, also managing and presenting his own touring revue. With Tessie O'Shea, Frank Randle and other music-hall and variety celebrities, he appeared in low-budget films for John E. Blakeley's Mancunian company (notably in Holidays With Pay) and throughout the 1950s was well- known on TV due to appearances in Talk Of The Town, Rooftop Rendezvous and The Frankie Howerd Show. By the time of his 1952 Royal Variety appearance at the London Palladium, his average weekly eamings already exceeded £1,500 per week.
Although many rightly believed that, from 1958 onwards, he was happily ensconced in the Irish Republic, Joe's sudden, almost Lord Lucan-style disappearance from the English scene following his famous run-in with the taxman fuelled much gossip and mythology. Although he continued to sing in Australia, Canada and South Africa, he made no further English appearances - apart from This Is Your Life. While the Grades spent until the early 1970s ironing out his finances with the Revenue, Joe "retired" to run a pub in County Kildare. Every cloud, however, has a silver lining. However belatedly, from the long-drawn controversy (including the TV mystery of "former Christmas-tree salesman 'Mr. X"... was he really Josef Locke?) the idea for Hear My Song evolved. Thanks to that milestone Locke remains immortalised, his name metaphorically vindicated.
Josef Locke recorded a varied, if uniformly populist, repertoire. His discography contains three main types of song: Victorian and "sacred" ballad revivals (including Irish),recent film and show numbers and the latest love songs. His approach is unfailingly sentimental, at times heartfelt, the production at pianissimo often admirably poised. The first category includes such notable American favourites as I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen (this seemingly indestructible ballad by Thomas P. Westendorf first published in Cincinnati in 1876 was also featured by Cavan O'Connor) and the tender 1898 James Thomton "folk-ballad" When You Were Sweet Sixteen as well as Macushla (a Dermot MacMurrough ballad written for McCormack in 1910), The Rose Of Tralee (stage-irish, the work of London-bom violinist and conductor Charles Glover (1806-1863) and a best- selling 1920s McCormack re-creation) and Galway Bay (neurologist and amateur song- writer Dr. Arthur Colahan's 1926 ditty revived in 1948 by Bing Crosby). Anglicised versions of Italian and Neapolitan perennials include Santa Lucia (1849), Beneath Thy Window ('O sole mio, 1898) and Serenade (Enrico Toselli's famous "Serenata" of 1923) while into the religious or semi-sacred category fall Gounod's Ave Maria (1859), The Holy City (of 1892 vintage the best-remembered song of the Liverpudlian "Stephen Adams, alias Michael Maybrick, 1844-1913), and the once-hackneyed but now seldom heard Bless This House (by the Australian "May H. Brahe", otherwise Mrs. Mary Hannah Morgan (1877-1956), this dates from 1931).
Contemporary fare includes My Heart And I (hit-song of Richard Tauber's 1943 musical Old Chelsea), While The Angelus Was Ringing (an English setting of Edith Piaf's hit "Les trois cloches), Strange Music (from Song Of Norway, the long-running show loosely based on the life and career of Edvard Grieg) and In The Chapel Of San Remo (same tune as 1943 Piedigrotta Festival-winner "Munasterio e Santa Chiara - but in a different location!) while Joe's three "war-horses are really all revivals. Extemporising a tune lifted from Verdi's 1853 opera La traviata, Hear My Song, Violetta began life in the mid-1930s Berlin as "Hor mein Lied, Violetta and The Soldier's Dream is a translation of "Le rêve passe, a patriotic French march of World War I, while Goodbye (ready with the handkerchiefs!) is a rousing Marsch from Robert Stolz's lavish Viennese operette of 1930 In weissen Rössl, first heard in London in Harry Graham's translation, in 1931.
Josef Locke died in Clane, County Kildare, on October 15, 1999, aged 82 years.
Peter Dempsey
Josef Locke was a real character. Immensely popular in the Fifties, his plangent Irish tenor was complemented by flashy showmanship, rakish good looks and the sort of larger-than- life personality which ensured he was rarely out of the tabloid papers. He thoroughly enjoyed life and all the trappings of stardom which were all too briefly his. Wearing the very best clothes, he was frequently to be seen driving around in the fastest of sports cars (white Cadillacs were a favourite) accompanied by a glamorous woman. When the taxman began to take a more than passing interest in his affairs, Locke fled back to Ireland. He had the last laugh, however, when the highly-fanciful film of his life story 'Hear My Song" became a big hit in 1992 and brought the lovable old rogue back firmly into the limelight. Born Joseph McLaughlin in Derry, Northern Ireland on March 25th 1917, Josef Locke was one of ten children. As a youngster he sang in the local Catholic churches and having finished the little schooling he received, joined the Irish Guard before going abroad to join the Palestine Police. On his return to the Emerald Isle, in the late Thirties, he served in the Royal Ulster Constabulary while singing on a semi-professional basis as "The Singing Policeman'..
After the war, Josef Locke went to London where he so impressed impresario Jack Hylton that he booked him for a variety bill at the Victoria Palace. After making his first recordings, in 1947, he signed with top agents Lew and Leslie Grade, who realised, astutely. that his rather over-the-top, sentimental style might well prove more popular in the North than in London's West End. He was soon topping the bill at Blackpool, as well as making films for the Manchester-based 'Mancunian' company. Songs like 'Hear My Song, Violetta", 'Count Your Blessings, The Rose Of Tralee' and 'I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen' were all staples of his act, as was Goodbye', the dashing military number he appropriated from Robert Stolz's operetta White Horse Inn'.
At the height of his fame, Locke was earning more than £2,000 per week through touring, recording and appearing regularly on the radio. He also starred in five Royal Command performances. Things could not be going better for him when, in 1958, the Inland Revenue suddenly presented him with a bill for unpaid tax of more than £10,000. Having squandered much of his money he was unable to pay and after failing to appear in the bankruptcy court, Locke departed hurriedly to Dublin, outside the jurisdiction of the "British authorities. He continued to work abroad with engagements in Australia, Canada and South Africa, but was finally made bankrupt in 1967 with outstanding debts of £20,000. By the Seventies a masked singer, billed as Mr. X, appeared in British clubs looking and sounding remarkable like Josef Locke. It turned out to be him and though he appeared in an edition of the television show This Is Your Life', he had to fly out of the UK again before the Revenue caught up with him.
By the time Josef Locke's financial affairs had been sorted out finally most of the variety theatres had closed, leaving him to drift into semi-retirement in County Kildare. That might have been the end of the story, but there was a remarkable twist in the tail for the aging reprobate.
In 1992 episodes from Josef Locke's life were re-created in the curiously heartwarming movie 'Hear My Song' which starred Ned Beatty, Adrian Dunbar and Tara Fitzgerald. He returned to London for the premiere at which he serenaded the late Diana, Princess Of Wales with 'Sonny Boy'. Locke had lost none of his charisma. The success of the film made him an attraction all over again at the age of seventy-five. An album of his old recordings was a bestseller and he sang at a nightclub in Liverpool to packed houses. He became the oldest entertainer ever to enter the Top Ten of the album charts for the first time.
Josef Locke continued to sing in Ireland until only a year or so before his death in October 1999. He was survived by his fourth wife, Carmel and several children from his earlier marriages. This compilation contains many of Josef Locke's famous recordings from the late Forties and forms a splendid memento of one of British show business's most-colourful performers.
This charismatic ex-RUC constable "arrived" at a time when balladeering à la Webster Booth and "Strolling Vagabonds were already long in the tooth and the death in 1945 of the god McCormack, which extended an already-existing lease for imitation, was a bit of a mixed blessing. In order really to score in show-business any up-and-coming performer now needed more than sheer voice and stage-Irish ingenuousness to win his audience. In the wake of jazz, swing and the depression of a major world war, the late 1940s mass- public of seaside show and radio craved laughter or titillation-or both. Be-bop and rock- 'n'-roll lay just ahead and TV would soon be killing off Variety and, in order to "make it" singing straight and not sound "square", other more cinematic-frankly sexier-attributes were called for. With twinkling eye and roguish manner, "broth of a bhoy Josef bridged the gap. Whereas, by definition, he "sang straight (and generally very well, if not always surpassingly well), charm and a strong, flamboyant, vital delivery, became his stock-in- trade. Spanning an ever-widening gulf opened by the incipient fashion for pop, this immaculately-attired, moustachioed 18-stone hunk sang the latest "pop" numbers and kept a suitably diluted version of "opera" alive by making semi-serious music palatable to a wider audience. A truly great showman, he regularly topped variety bills at £2,000 per week at a time when others struggled to clear £100 and by the mid-1950s he was already a superstar.
Josef Locke was born Joseph McLaughlin in Derry, Northern Ireland, on March 23, 1917. The son of a cattle-dealer and butcher, he was one of 10 children. He sang in local church choirs in the Bogside prior to his first solo appearance at the age of nine. At 16 he lied about his age and entered the Irish Guards, serving in the Middle East and subsequently with the Palestine police. On retuming to Northem Ireland in 1938, he joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary and toured local clubs billed as "The Singing Bobby Opera seemed at first a likely road to follow but Joe took McCormack's shrewd advice and from 1945 focused his attention towards London's glamorous world of variety. Here, aided initially by impresario Jack Hylton (under Hylton's auspices he became "Josef Locke" and gave a resounding Victoria Palace debut in August of that year), he rapidly made a name for himself. In the summer of 1946 he gave his first season at Blackpool and the following year toured Australia as supporting artist to that show's star, George Formby, Jr. Meanwhile, late in 1946, Joe had cut the first of more than 100 recordings for Columbia and, early in 1947, signed a prestigious variety circuit contract with the Grade Brothers. This entailed whistle- stop tours around Britain and coast-to-coast in the USA and he was now thrust into a whirlwind of celebrity, glamour and fast sports cars.
Before long a resident vocalist on radio in Variety Fanfare, Joe was featured in Happydrome and various other programmes. In 1948 he toured with the show Passport To Paradise and in 1949 topped the bill at the first of many Blackpool summer seasons, also managing and presenting his own touring revue. With Tessie O'Shea, Frank Randle and other music-hall and variety celebrities, he appeared in low-budget films for John E. Blakeley's Mancunian company (notably in Holidays With Pay) and throughout the 1950s was well- known on TV due to appearances in Talk Of The Town, Rooftop Rendezvous and The Frankie Howerd Show. By the time of his 1952 Royal Variety appearance at the London Palladium, his average weekly eamings already exceeded £1,500 per week.
Although many rightly believed that, from 1958 onwards, he was happily ensconced in the Irish Republic, Joe's sudden, almost Lord Lucan-style disappearance from the English scene following his famous run-in with the taxman fuelled much gossip and mythology. Although he continued to sing in Australia, Canada and South Africa, he made no further English appearances - apart from This Is Your Life. While the Grades spent until the early 1970s ironing out his finances with the Revenue, Joe "retired" to run a pub in County Kildare. Every cloud, however, has a silver lining. However belatedly, from the long-drawn controversy (including the TV mystery of "former Christmas-tree salesman 'Mr. X"... was he really Josef Locke?) the idea for Hear My Song evolved. Thanks to that milestone Locke remains immortalised, his name metaphorically vindicated.
Josef Locke recorded a varied, if uniformly populist, repertoire. His discography contains three main types of song: Victorian and "sacred" ballad revivals (including Irish),recent film and show numbers and the latest love songs. His approach is unfailingly sentimental, at times heartfelt, the production at pianissimo often admirably poised. The first category includes such notable American favourites as I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen (this seemingly indestructible ballad by Thomas P. Westendorf first published in Cincinnati in 1876 was also featured by Cavan O'Connor) and the tender 1898 James Thomton "folk-ballad" When You Were Sweet Sixteen as well as Macushla (a Dermot MacMurrough ballad written for McCormack in 1910), The Rose Of Tralee (stage-irish, the work of London-bom violinist and conductor Charles Glover (1806-1863) and a best- selling 1920s McCormack re-creation) and Galway Bay (neurologist and amateur song- writer Dr. Arthur Colahan's 1926 ditty revived in 1948 by Bing Crosby). Anglicised versions of Italian and Neapolitan perennials include Santa Lucia (1849), Beneath Thy Window ('O sole mio, 1898) and Serenade (Enrico Toselli's famous "Serenata" of 1923) while into the religious or semi-sacred category fall Gounod's Ave Maria (1859), The Holy City (of 1892 vintage the best-remembered song of the Liverpudlian "Stephen Adams, alias Michael Maybrick, 1844-1913), and the once-hackneyed but now seldom heard Bless This House (by the Australian "May H. Brahe", otherwise Mrs. Mary Hannah Morgan (1877-1956), this dates from 1931).
Contemporary fare includes My Heart And I (hit-song of Richard Tauber's 1943 musical Old Chelsea), While The Angelus Was Ringing (an English setting of Edith Piaf's hit "Les trois cloches), Strange Music (from Song Of Norway, the long-running show loosely based on the life and career of Edvard Grieg) and In The Chapel Of San Remo (same tune as 1943 Piedigrotta Festival-winner "Munasterio e Santa Chiara - but in a different location!) while Joe's three "war-horses are really all revivals. Extemporising a tune lifted from Verdi's 1853 opera La traviata, Hear My Song, Violetta began life in the mid-1930s Berlin as "Hor mein Lied, Violetta and The Soldier's Dream is a translation of "Le rêve passe, a patriotic French march of World War I, while Goodbye (ready with the handkerchiefs!) is a rousing Marsch from Robert Stolz's lavish Viennese operette of 1930 In weissen Rössl, first heard in London in Harry Graham's translation, in 1931.
Josef Locke died in Clane, County Kildare, on October 15, 1999, aged 82 years.
Peter Dempsey
Josef Locke was a real character. Immensely popular in the Fifties, his plangent Irish tenor was complemented by flashy showmanship, rakish good looks and the sort of larger-than- life personality which ensured he was rarely out of the tabloid papers. He thoroughly enjoyed life and all the trappings of stardom which were all too briefly his. Wearing the very best clothes, he was frequently to be seen driving around in the fastest of sports cars (white Cadillacs were a favourite) accompanied by a glamorous woman. When the taxman began to take a more than passing interest in his affairs, Locke fled back to Ireland. He had the last laugh, however, when the highly-fanciful film of his life story 'Hear My Song" became a big hit in 1992 and brought the lovable old rogue back firmly into the limelight. Born Joseph McLaughlin in Derry, Northern Ireland on March 25th 1917, Josef Locke was one of ten children. As a youngster he sang in the local Catholic churches and having finished the little schooling he received, joined the Irish Guard before going abroad to join the Palestine Police. On his return to the Emerald Isle, in the late Thirties, he served in the Royal Ulster Constabulary while singing on a semi-professional basis as "The Singing Policeman'..
After the war, Josef Locke went to London where he so impressed impresario Jack Hylton that he booked him for a variety bill at the Victoria Palace. After making his first recordings, in 1947, he signed with top agents Lew and Leslie Grade, who realised, astutely. that his rather over-the-top, sentimental style might well prove more popular in the North than in London's West End. He was soon topping the bill at Blackpool, as well as making films for the Manchester-based 'Mancunian' company. Songs like 'Hear My Song, Violetta", 'Count Your Blessings, The Rose Of Tralee' and 'I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen' were all staples of his act, as was Goodbye', the dashing military number he appropriated from Robert Stolz's operetta White Horse Inn'.
At the height of his fame, Locke was earning more than £2,000 per week through touring, recording and appearing regularly on the radio. He also starred in five Royal Command performances. Things could not be going better for him when, in 1958, the Inland Revenue suddenly presented him with a bill for unpaid tax of more than £10,000. Having squandered much of his money he was unable to pay and after failing to appear in the bankruptcy court, Locke departed hurriedly to Dublin, outside the jurisdiction of the "British authorities. He continued to work abroad with engagements in Australia, Canada and South Africa, but was finally made bankrupt in 1967 with outstanding debts of £20,000. By the Seventies a masked singer, billed as Mr. X, appeared in British clubs looking and sounding remarkable like Josef Locke. It turned out to be him and though he appeared in an edition of the television show This Is Your Life', he had to fly out of the UK again before the Revenue caught up with him.
By the time Josef Locke's financial affairs had been sorted out finally most of the variety theatres had closed, leaving him to drift into semi-retirement in County Kildare. That might have been the end of the story, but there was a remarkable twist in the tail for the aging reprobate.
In 1992 episodes from Josef Locke's life were re-created in the curiously heartwarming movie 'Hear My Song' which starred Ned Beatty, Adrian Dunbar and Tara Fitzgerald. He returned to London for the premiere at which he serenaded the late Diana, Princess Of Wales with 'Sonny Boy'. Locke had lost none of his charisma. The success of the film made him an attraction all over again at the age of seventy-five. An album of his old recordings was a bestseller and he sang at a nightclub in Liverpool to packed houses. He became the oldest entertainer ever to enter the Top Ten of the album charts for the first time.
Josef Locke continued to sing in Ireland until only a year or so before his death in October 1999. He was survived by his fourth wife, Carmel and several children from his earlier marriages. This compilation contains many of Josef Locke's famous recordings from the late Forties and forms a splendid memento of one of British show business's most-colourful performers.
