Luke Kelly

Luke Kelly (17 November 1940 – 30 January 1984) was an Irish singer, folk musician and actor from Dublin, Ireland. Born into a working-class household in Dublin city, Kelly moved to England in his late teens and by his early 20s had become involved in a folk music revival. Returning to Dublin in the 1960s, he is noted as a founding member of the band The Dubliners in 1962. Known for his distinctive singing style, and sometimes political messages, the Irish Post and other commentators have regarded Kelly as one of Ireland's greatest folk singers. Early life Luke Kelly was born to Luke Kelly and Julia Fleming, a working class couple, in Sheriff Street, Dublin. His maternal grandmother Elizabeth McDonald, who emigrated to Ireland from Scotland, lived with the Kelly family until her death in 1953. Kelly's father, who was also named Luke, was wounded as a child when a detachment of soldiers from the King's Own Scottish Borderers opened fire on a Dublin crowd on 26 July 1914 in what became known as the Bachelor's Walk massacre. He was taken to Jervis Street Hospital with a bullet wound to the lung and, although not expected to recover, he overcame his injuries. After growing up, Kelly's father worked for most of his adult life at a Jacob's biscuit factory and enjoyed playing football. The elder Luke was a keen singer: Luke junior's brother Paddy later recalled that "he had this talent... to sing negro spirituals by people like Paul Robeson, we used to sit around and join in — that was our entertainment". After Dublin Corporation demolished Lattimore Cottages in 1942, the Kellys became the first family to move into the St. Laurence O’Toole flats, where Luke spent the bulk of his childhood, although the family were forced to move by a fire in 1953 and settled in the Whitehall area. Both Luke and Paddy played club Gaelic football and soccer as children. Kelly left school at thirteen and after a number of years of odd-jobbing, he went to England in 1958. Working at steel fixing with his brother Paddy on a building site in Wolverhampton, he was apparently sacked after asking for higher pay. He worked a number of odd jobs, including a period as a vacuum cleaner salesman. Describing himself as a beatnik, he travelled Northern England in search of work, summarising his life in this period as "cleaning lavatories, cleaning windows, cleaning railways, but very rarely cleaning my face".