On the road with the sounds of other days

On the road with the sounds of other days
Paddy Cole: King of the Swingers

by Paddy Cole with Tom Gilmore. Foreword by John McColgan (O’Brien Press, €19.99/ebook €9.99)

It is amazing how ‘the little bit of religion’ creeps into strange places sometimes. These are the music-making memories of a leading figure in the music scene since the 1950s. Paddy Cole is a great tale teller: For many of the years covered by this book, I lived abroad – in the United States and then in London – so let’s just say I missed his act at Vegas. But I loved this book.

The little bit of religion? Paddy and his wife Helen are, so the co-author tells us, regular church-goers, then and now. But, more than that: like many in the Irish music and arts worlds, the Coles are friends of the great and inspiring Fr Brian D’Arcy who from his earliest days had set himself to be the pastor to the Irish showbusiness world.

Clergyman

He was not the only clergyman to float through Paddy Cole’s life. But so did a great many other people. This is a book filled with glimpses of figures such as Albert Reynolds, who attempted to use music contacts from his dance hall to promote contacts with the unionists. He also cured Paddy Cole of his taste for brandy and soda.

Paddy ran a pub in Castleblaney, Co. Monaghan for many years which seems to have been a hairy business at times. But, it is not for those bits that historians of the future will read this book. Unlike so many books Paddy Cole reveals what a ‘changing Ireland’ really was. Political leaders have nothing to do with it. The rising post-war generation went their own way, and forced the politics and the journalists to follow. There comes across in these pages the sound of an era of happy innocence, no matter what many carpers thought about the dancehalls and their musicians.

The book is great fun, a saga of changing life and years of fun and music. I love it and I suspect so will many others, for it will ignite their own memories of youth and courtship and a world of travel, here and abroad. I wouldn’t like anyone to take away the impression that this is a serious book. It goes with a real swing and provided a great read, which in these dark days of lockdown is a much needed thing.