28 October 1967
Aha, says you: another Irish folk ballad about drinking! However, ‘Whiskey On A Sunday’ was really a contemporary English song called ‘The Ballad Of Seth Davy’, the reference to the Dublin district of Beggar’s Bush was originally Bevington Bush in Liverpool, plus the Seth Davy (or Davey or Davie, depending on sources) it features was a real-life early-1900s Jamaican-born street entertainer on Merseyside. And if that dents your Irish national pride, I have news for you too about ‘Dirty Old Town’.
Now that we’ve established ‘Whiskey On A Sunday’ isn’t tiresome stage-Irish enjoyment of alcohol irresponsibly, and is in fact a wistfully nostalgic ‘Mr Bojangles’ of the British folk revival, I’m more favourably disposed to it. Yes, the story is sentimental and the music-hall piano is whimsical, but the pop kid in me digs the humming descent into the lilting, carefree chorus: now there’s a hook! Doyle, a straight-bat balladeer compared to the raucous soul-scorching voice of Luke Kelly, has the sense to keep his performance simple and unaffected, though the cavernous production does him no favours. Neat, in small measures.
