We lost a great singer/songwriter, folk-song collector, writer, civil rights activist  and broadcast journalist on April 15th,  with the death of Bill Meek.   As part of one of his many projects Bill sat hour after hour interviewing Paddy Maloney. The result was Paddy Maloney and the Chieftains.  It includes more than a hundred photographs showing everything from Paddy Maloney meeting the Pope in 1980 to the Chieftains playing on the Great Wall of China, the first folk-group to do so. I’m lucky enough to own a copy of the book which, as far as I know, is now out of print.  If you can manage to track down a copy it will be well worth the effort.

Bill was famous on  both sides of the Atlantic and further afield.  Of his trip to South  America he wrote the following;

“Visiting South America in 1987 will always remain a highlight of my life, both professionally and otherwise. It all began when my brother-in-law John Redmond, then attached to the Irish embassy in Buenos Aires, suggested the idea that as a radio producer/presenter with RTÉ (the Irish national broadcasting station) I might consider making a documentary series on the Argentine community of Irish descent. My response was one of enthusiastic interest, but tempered by caution as it was a time when there were many cutbacks in radio budgets, and projects involving travel abroad were subject to close scrutiny at the highest administrative level. Nonetheless I went ahead with preparatory planning and duly submitted a proposal. To my delight, indeed almost amazement, the submission was approved. Thereafter on May 25 (a coincidental but nevertheless appropriate date) I found myself – microphone in hand – in the centre of Buenos Aires.”

In 2001  Bill  was going through boxes in his attic when he rediscovered a box of reel to reel tapes that had been lying undiscovered for over three decades, they dated back to 1963 and contained material documenting the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South of the United States. As a broadcaster he made good use of them. I'm attaching a recording of Bill singing one of his less serious compositions, The Heroic Crubeen.

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Poet, author, folklorist and traditional music aficionado, with a penchant for holding forth at length on the little vignettes and foibles of human nature that many others pass by unnoted, Mattie Lennon welcomes you to his own place in Cyberspace at www.mattielennon.com.