8 April 1972
How popular and iconic was Big Tom? Well, he was the first Irish person to have a song named after them go to number one in Ireland, and is one of only four Irish people ever to have had that distinction. His home town of Castleblayney in Co. Monaghan had already been planning a memorial of him even a year before his death; unusually for such things, the statue of Big Tom actually looks like him. A 2018 biography of Big Tom begins by comparing him to Jesus.
If this is the first time you’ve heard or read about Big Tom, I’d say that has piqued your curiosity. So, what should you expect? Big Tom in his ’70s and ’80s heyday was by popular consensus the “king” of the country & Irish sound. His gentle-giant persona made him much-loved by fans of that scene who would later similarly dote on wee Daniel. An RTÉ profile a few years after his death surfaced some uncomfortable details from a 1992 court case involving his personal life, but his public standing doesn’t seem to have been affected.
‘Broken Marriage Vows’ is the first of three Irish chart-topping singles for Big Tom in the space of just over two years. If you’re familiar with perhaps his best-known song, 1981’s ‘Four Country Roads’, then you’ll recognise here the signature Big Tom style of chugging two-step rhythm and twanging electric guitars. His deep voice and broad Monaghan accent serve to gloss over this song’s ominous lyrics: “Marriage vows forgotten is a debt you’ll have to pay”, he intones to a regretful straying wife. In its original Nashville milieu ‘Broken Marriage Vows’ may have been just another rhinestone-and-bourbon melodrama, plus it was a hit for a woman, the trailblazing Kitty Wells, singing it to a straying husband. Sung by a man in socially conservative ’70s rural Ireland, however, it feels more sinister: the patriarchal and religious status quo reasserting its norms. Jesus, the Big Tom of world religion, would no doubt have approved.
