The accomplished traditional musician Arty McGlynn was usually mentioned in connection with other perhaps more famous musicians like Van Morrison, Paul Brady or Christy Moore, which for the well-travelled guitarist was just the way he wanted it.
“I always see myself as a side man more than a front man,” he told interviewer Ita Kelly.
Throughout his career as showband guitarist, revered folk musician, producer and session guitarist, that is exactly where he liked to be, in the background playing music.
Arty McGlynn, who died last Wednesday at the age of 75, was born in the townland of Botera outside Omagh, Co Tyrone in 1944.
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His father was a carpenter but played in a ceili band at the weekends and his mother was a traditional Irish fiddle player.
From the age of five, when he got his first accordion, the young Arty was destined to be a musician. But when his mother gave him a guitar at the age of 12, his life changed dramatically.
Listening to Dixieland jazz on the radio in the late 1950s, he began to pick up American influences and by the age of 14 had “thrown my schoolbag over the wall” and embarked on a career as a guitarist with local outfits, the Melody Boys and later The Platters.
At that time in the early 1960s, Omagh was dominated by two showbands, Brian Coll and the Plattermen (who emerged from the Platters) and Frankie McBride and the Polka Dots.
The members seemed to be in constant flux.
McGlynn played with McBride when he had a No 19 hit in the British charts in 1967 with Five Little Fingers when the band was managed by Barney Curley, who would later go on to be a legendary gambler.
He had previously played with another local Brian Call and he switched back to him when he founded the Buckaroos and the New Buckaroos showbands.
In all he spent over 18 years on the road as a showband musician. “What else could I do, I had to earn a living, and I had a family to support” he said.
He was married and had a family to support and he was making good money, although he was becoming increasingly disenchanted with both the music and the arduous schedules criss-crossing Ireland. Although he was much in demand as both a guitarist and one of the few “pedal steel guitar” exponents, the band Country Spoonful “featuring Arty McGlynn” was launched to a luke-warm reception in 1980.
By that time McGlynn was bringing an acoustic guitar in the showband wagon and was picking out folk tunes to entertain himself and anybody else who was interested in hearing him play.
He said later that although he was reared with traditional music he was “put off” by the conservative nature of folk music and the lack of innovation at the time. That changed when he started “messing around” in sessions with Paul Brady, then a student.
When Brady came back from the US in the mid-1970s to record Hard Station McGlynn played guitar on the album.
“It was Paul who really stimulated me to do it,” he said in an interview.
His own first solo album McGlynn’s Fancy (1979) completed the transition from showband guitarist to folk hero. “I was amazed at the attention it got, because I did not circulate on the Irish circuit at all when it was in the showbands,” he said, “you play six nights a week, so you don’t meet anybody when you are going out like that.”
He followed this with a stint playing with Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem before joining the Van Morrison band in 1982, where he spent seven years, on and off touring and recording. Because he wasn’t on the road all the time he combined it with playing in the acclaimed traditional band Patrick Street, which featured a succession of many of the best traditional musicians of that generation.
As a session musician he also played with Enya, Liam O’Flynn and Frankie Gavin. He produced a chart-topping album for Christy Hennessy and worked with Frances Black and Sean Keane.
In 1986 he married fiddler Nollaig Casey and they toured, recorded and played together ever since.
They arranged and played music for the sound track of feature films Moodance and Hear My Song.
He is survived by his wife Nollaig Casey and his five children.
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