Paddy Clancy could never stop singing - this correspondent can testify to that - so it was appropriate that his funeral in Carrick-on-Suir last November was marked by a spontaneous salute in song by fellow balladeers.
Clonmel-based RTE news and Nationwide cameraman Donal Wylde captured that graveside tribute when Liam Clancy, Tom my Makem, Ronnie Drew, John Sheehan, Paddy Reilly and Finbarr Furey launched into Paddy's trademark songs, Will You Go Lassie Go? and The Parting Glass.
The footage provided the inspiration for a 30-minute tribute to the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, edited and directed by Wylde, which will be screened tonight by TnaG. Around the funeral footage, Wylde and presenter Aodh O Coileain of Nuacht TnaG have mixed contemporary interviews with archive footage in a profile of the group and how it took Irish music from the ceili hall to the stage of Carnegie Hall.
From childhood days in Carrick-on-Suir to the turning point when the three Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem switched from being struggling Broadway actors to ballad singers in the folk boom of the 1960s, the rousing style of the group is traced in interviews and television excerpts stretching back almost 40 years.
Footage includes a 1961 appearance on the fabled Ed Sullivan television show. Other performances are featured from New York's Lincoln Centre, The Late Late Show, a "farewell reunion" at Clonmel's Regal Theatre in 1996 and a St Patrick's Day performance for President John F. Kennedy seven months before his assassination.
The background influence of Carrick-on-Suir is painted in by a local teacher, poet and writer, Michael Coady. As for the personal testimony referred to above, it relates to a night nearly three years ago when the sudden arrival of several dozen American tourists threatened to upset what had been until then a peaceful Saturday night in an unusually quiet Dublin city-centre hotel bar.
In the middle of the group, however, was Paddy Clancy, who had been performing for them at an earlier function. His work was done, but an impromptu performance of several numbers - including Will You Go Lassie Go? - brought a reverential hush to the premises. Then, public performances finally over, he joined two friends at the bar and the three of them, voices lowered, sang in turn until well past midnight.
Carraig an Cheoil goes out at 8.30 p.m. tonight on TnaG
