21st March, 2002
The music world lost another great icon last week
with the death of songwriter Harlan Howard. Most of you will not
be too familiar with the name but music expert, Pat Carey from
the South Douglas Road passed on the news to me when we met in
Douglas Village Shopping Centre. Most of his songs have been hits
in the country music field. He’s written over four thousand
songs, over one hundred of these have reached the top ten in the
country chart over fifty years. At the height of his success he
had fifteen of his songs in the top forty at the same time. That
was in 1961, a feat that has never been equalled and probably
never will. Last weekend being a long one I made a tape of his
songs and listened to them as I drove through west cork and Kerry.
Songs such as “I Fall To Pieces”, “Heartaches By
The Number”, “Pick Me Up On Your Way Down”, “The
Streets of Baltimore”, “I Won’t Forget You”,
“Mary Ann Regrets”, “Tiger By The Tail”,
“Busted”, “Too Many Rivers”, “The
Blizzard”, the list goes on and on. The following are a few
quotations from Harlan Howard; “I take a whole life story
and compress it into three minutes”. “I’m always
collecting emotions for future reference.” “I’m
seventy-three years old now and I’ve never heard anything
that refutes what I say, if you’re gonna write, write about
love, sad, happy, fast, slow, it doesn’t matter. That’s
the only thing worth writing songs about. That’s what the
masses want from us, so we should give it to them.” “Songwriting
is both my living and my pleasure, so I’m a happy man.”
Harlan Howard 1929 - 2002.
Flicking through the T.V. channels on Friday night (before I went
out) I discovered that the Late Late Show was coming live from
New York. As the studio camera panned through the audience did I
spot General Manager of Douglas Renault, Moss Kennedy sitting
there? I suppose everybody in the audience got a copy of Bill
Cullen’s “Penny Apples”!! I thought comedienne
Joan Rivers was very funny on the show. I taped the rest of it,
to be watched at a future date.
Congratulations to General Manager of Tesco Douglas, Tom
Singleton and his wife Emma on the birth of a little girl last
week. Tom it’s time to learn some new songs, especially
lullabies!!
Anybody reading last week’s sports section might have
thought that Avondale Utd. Soccer Club had taken over or bought
out Douglas G.A.A. Club. The reason being that we published the G.A.A.
results under an Avondale heading. I can confirm that no take-over
has taken place, and that the typist culprit responsible has been
sentenced to reviewing the latest best seller “My thoughts
on the meaning of Life” by Samantha Mumba!!
We decided to go away for the weekend. I know a lot of people
flew to the sun for the holidays, flying out last Wednesday and
returning one week later. The last time we went away we made a
big mistake. A well known hotelier had mentioned that he was sick
and tired of hearing about West Cork and Kerry so we decided for
a change we’d go east. We travelled to Waterford and stayed
in a hotel on the beach, what a disaster. It should have closed
at the end of the Summer season. The Bailey’s Irish cream
was flat and terrible. We made coffee in the bedroom and the
sachets of milk were gone off. As we sat in the bar at night,
with background music on and T.V. sound turned off. Three young
female guests returned from a swim in the hotel pool. “Can
we have a pot of tea and some toasted sandwiches please”
they asked. This was at about 8.30. The reply came “The Chef
is gone home but if you hurry back to the Leisure Centre before
it closes, they sell crisps.”
So on Saturday morning we headed West, but that’s another
story for another day. Perhaps next week, till then.
Bye for now,
Michael O'Hanlon.
