On St. Patrick’s Day in 1982, my boss took me out for dinner to a bar owned by his wife’s family, and I got rather loaded on green beer. (I don’t recommend it.) While I was working at the elevator-music station in the late 80s, the station’s jocks were scheduled to walk in our town’s St. Pat’s parade, dressed in green-trimmed tuxedos and handing out green-tinted carnations. However, a strong thunderstorm rolled through just as the parade was lining up. We got caught in it, trying to take refuge at one point under the overhanging back end of the nearby Oscar Meyer Weinermobile. Although the parade went on after a delay, it went on without the four of us, who had gone back to the station to wring out our rented suits. And because that is the sum-total of my St. Patrick’s Day memories, I wouldn’t be inclined to write about St. Pat’s at all, were it not for the Irish Rovers mp3s in my music stash.
The one Irish Rovers song everybody knows (everybody likely to be reading this blog, at least) is “The Unicorn.” The song is not remotely Irish, however—it’s a Shel Silverstein poem set to music. It went to Number 7 in the late spring of 1968, and it turned the Irish Rovers (who were based in Canada) into stars. The album from whence it came, also titled The Unicorn, was a substantial hit, with traditional Irish songs such as “The Orange and the Green” and “The Black Velvet Band,” plus original songs. All Hung Up followed swiftly on The Unicorn’s heels. Both “The Puppet Song (Whiskey on a Sunday)” and “The Biplane, Ever More” were released as singles from that album, but reached only Number 75 and Number 91 respectively. And after 1968, the Irish Rovers’ stardom was confined mostly to Canada, where they had their own variety show on the CBC, which ran from 1971 to 1975.
A left-field novelty hit, “Wasn’t That a Party,” blasted onto American radio in 1981. The group was billing itself as “the Rovers” by then, although at some point in the ’90s, they went back to calling themselves “the Irish Rovers.” In the years since “Wasn’t That a Party,” they’ve frequently toured the States—in fact, they played my hometown, Monroe, Wisconsin, on their current tour, just a couple of weeks ago. Three of the five original members are still in the group, although the founder, Will Millar, retired in 1995, and another member, Jimmy Ferguson, died in 1997.
The reason I know anything about the Irish Rovers apart from “The Unicorn” is that my parents bought both The Unicorn and All Hung Up, and before we had our own records, my brother and I frequently played theirs. So I know the words to far more traditional Irish songs than you’d expect from a guy who is mostly Norwegian.
“The Unicorn”/Irish Rovers
“The Puppet Song (Whiskey on a Sunday)”/Irish Rovers
(buy both here)
Filed under: Tracks
