Cosmopolitan Corkman Jimmy Crowley
Think Locally, Sing Globally
by Steve Winick
On the cover of his latest CD, Jimmy Crowley, the mustachioed balladeer from Cork City, blasts his way out of a bottle of Murphy's Stout, arms akimbo, propelled by foam. It's a fitting image in several ways. First of all, Crowley is to his friends Christy Moore, Andy Irvine and Ronnie Drew exactly what Murphy's is to Guinness: not quite as famous, but equally tasty. Like Murphy's, Crowley is indelibly associated with his home turf of Cork city and its environs. And like the folks who generally hang out inside bottles, Crowley can usually grant your wish -- if it's a song you're after, that is.
Crowley's been granting the wishes of fans for years. He's sung on every stage that Irish music has to offer, and played with some of the greatest musicians in the tradition: Jerry O'Sullivan, Joe Burke, Jackie Daly and Micheal O Dhomhnaill, to name only a few. Talk about Crowley to a scholar of Irish music, and you get an immediate, positive response; Mick Moloney likens him to Zosimus, the legendary gleeman of 18th Century Dublin, while Micheal O Suilleabhain calls him a "musical icon." The most telling piece of evidence, however, comes from Crowley's biggest fans: other folksingers. Liam Clancy keeps a tape of Crowley's singing in his car at all times, while former Dubliner Drew calls him "a great singer." Mary Black relishes her memories of Crowley's performances in the late 1970s, and English singer Martin Carthy is even more effusive, saying that Crowley "embodies all that is good and true" about folk music.
Crowley is known for his taut, almost strident singing voice, which in Moloney's words "can only be described as lonesome." It's an urban voice, an Irish voice, a voice with echoes of children's street games and hawkers' cries ringing in cobblestoned alleys. Crowley uses it to sing a wide range of songs, but he's best known for his thorough knowledge of Cork's rich folklore.
Songs have been Crowley's passion since his teen years. He served his time as a cabinet-maker, but in his heart his apprenticeship was in singing. Part of the reason for Crowley's eclectic repertoire today is the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Cork. "Cork was a port city, and we had the whole heart of Ireland sail out of Cobh to go to the New World, and that affected the place," he explained in a March, 1999 interview. "We had a lot of the merchant princes in Cork and they did business with people on the continent. So the music was touched by all that, yet there was an indigenous kind of a ballad culture." The result was a richly varied repertoire that he picked up at a young age: "a lot of urban ballads, songs about the First World War, or the war of independence. A lot of comic songs, a lot of music-hall songs."
Although he was enjoying his musical life in the city, Crowley also became fascinated by country life in the Irish-speaking areas of Ireland. "Going up to Miltown Malbay in the late 60s," he told me, "was like going to a different world. It was like going to Morocco. I was brought up in the city, you know, but I always just loved country people." Besides Miltown, favorite haunts included Dún Chaoin in Co. Kerry and Cúil Aodha in Co. Cork, both of which were bastions of the Munster dialect of Irish. In these and other rural townlands, Crowley spent his time listening to sean nós singing, fiddling, and piping by local musicians like Niochlás Toibín, Denis Murphy, and Willie Clancy. "For a young fella, about 16," he said, "it was great to see all the different colors of Ireland. I spent a very memorable time going around, picking up bits of bealoideas, folklore, and collecting songs."
