The Grand Old River Moy
By Tom Gillespie
RECENTLY, while out walking, I was listening to music on Spotify on my iPhone. The album, The Fabulous Irish Showbands, was playing and one of the tracks brought me back in time.
It was the song ‘The Grand Old River Moy’ by the Jack Ruane Showband from Ballina. Along with The Royal Blues from Claremorris, they would have been one of the top outfits from the west during the showband era.
Back in the mid-1980s for several years The Connaught Telegraph staged their annual showbusiness awards, the proceeds from which went to charity.
One of the categories was the Hall of Fame and Jack Ruane was the recipient on one occasion.
On returning home I Googled ‘Jack Ruane’ and got several hits, one of which was written by Judd Ruane, Jack’s son, who from an early age played trumpet and guitar with the band.
Judd is now best known for sea trout fishing trips on the Moy Estuary which he has been doing for over 30 years.
In the article, Judd wrote: “My musical education started at an early age. First on piano and then the trumpet. I received tuition from the brass players in the band and in 1957 I was granted six weeks leave from school to go on an English tour.
“I was 12 years old and I remember this made headlines in the Sunday papers. But what a culture shock. I thought England was an awful place full of dirty red brick buildings where all the mothers worked - unheard of in Ireland in those days.
“When I returned to school I had to tell the class about the tour and England. When I told them that mothers left the homes and went out to work, the boys thought it was so funny they started to laugh. How times have changed. Such is the price of progress.
“That summer I travelled the country playing with the band and by now I had the bug. I wanted to be a musician and no more school. Over the next few years we went through the transition from orchestra to sowband. We were lucky. Some of the bands failed to change and so they folded.
“During this transition period my younger brother, Jack, joined the band on bass guitar and vocals.
“Older members of the band were being replaced by younger musicians because the emphasis had moved on to the visual aspect of the ‘show’. Once the ‘new look' band was settled we went into the recording studios and released a few singles.
“We had some minor hits, nothing wild, but it was good exposure and good for business. Our most successful single could best be described as an immigrant song, ‘The Grand Old River Moy’.
“The lyrics were written by a local man, Seamus Foody, and the music was composed by ‘the Head - (as Jack Ruane senior was known to members of the band).
“Back in 1962 we went on our first American tour. We opened at the City Centre in New York and for six weeks we played to full houses in various cities. It was incredible. We got the real VIP treatment, radio interviews and TV performances.
“But my dad was the real star. Every Irishman in America seemed to know him. Remember, immigration was rampant in those days but there were Irish dance halls all over the States. As soon as the Irish got off the boat they would head for the dance hall and continue where they left off at home.
“The dance hall continued to be the centre of the social life for many of the Irish in the States (and England) until, eventually, they met a partner and settled down. Once that happened their lifestyle and social habits changed and they would not frequent the dance hall so much.
“However, for everyone who dropped out, there was another one arriving on the boat. That continued until the immigration laws were changed in the ‘60s and with the introduction of visas, immigration was greatly curtailed. By ’68 (my last tour) the writing was on the wall for the dance hall. Slowly, but surely, these great halls closed.
“At this time, disco was being discovered in Ireland. Women started going into bars and hotels were granted dance licences. The dance halls were refused liquor licences (the politicians were afraid that drink in the dance hall would corrupt Irish society).
“In the end, the halls were not able to compete with the discos. At first discos were viewed as a young person's night out but the liquor licence changed that. By the late '60s I knew the writing was on the wall for the dance hall so I decided to leave the business before it left me without a roof over my head.”
In a further search I discovered that during the 1940s, ‘50s and ’60s Jack Sr. was one of the top figures on the music scene west of the Shannon and across the nation. Judd, who also played with the band, has said that his dad was one of the first bands to leave Ireland during the season of Lent and toured England in the late ‘40s. By 1965 he was on his 22nd tour of the UK.
During the ’50s the band made the slow transition from orchestra to showband. Eventually following the lead of the biggest bands of the day they kicked away their music stands and sheet music. They also dropped their lineup down from 15 members at one point in the '50s to an eight-piece band in the early 1960s.
Jack finally retired from the scene in the mid-sixties and Judd took over as band leader and his other son, Jack Jr., became the band's front man, playing bass and doing most of the singing. They continued to be one of the leading bands out of the west.
In 1967, Jack Jr. flew to London and appeared on the BBC's Monday show, alongside Lulu.