Joe McCarthy, showband drummer
“YOU’LL ENJOY THE crack with Joe Mac,” read the 1978 flyer for Stage 2, the band formed by former Dixies drummer Joe McCarthy. And no one in the showband scene was better crack than McCarthy, whose onstage antics made him one of the best-known (and most elastic) faces in Irish showbiz.
The Dixies were Cork’s biggest showband, regularly packing them in at Cork’s legendary Arcadia ballroom, and regularly topping the Irish charts with covers of international pop hits. Their frontman, Brendan O’Brien, was a heartthrob to rival Brendan Bowyer and Dickie Rock, but Joe Mac was their ace in the hole, a gurning, wisecracking sticksman who invariably upstaged the singer with his own quickfire comic routines.
Joe formed The Dixielanders as a jazz three-piece in 1954, but as the musical climate started to change, the band shortened their name to The Dixies, added members and adapted their repertoire to fit the tastes of the day. “We started for the love of jazz, and then we started to make a few bob, and then the trend changed to rock’n’roll and pop and The Beatles, and we started chasing that,” says McCarthy.
At the height of their fame in the 1960s, the Dixies were up there with the Miami, the Royal Showband and the Capital, filling dancehalls, and becoming superstars in their native Cork. They broke the attendance record for the Arcadia, packing in 4,300 punters – and possibly breaking fire and safety regulations too, reckons Joe. They released 27 singles during their heyday, most of which became Irish top-10 hits. They had their biggest hit with a version of Leapy Lee's Little Arrows,which lodged in the Irish charts for half of 1968.
In the early 1970s, Joe left The Dixies to form Stage 2, taking singer Brendan O'Brien along, and upping the comedy quotient. Stage 2 had homegrown success throughout the 1970s. One of their biggest hits was a cover of Daniel Boone's Beautiful Sunday.
As the showband tide ebbed in the late 1970s, Joe quit the business and opened a restaurant in his native Cork. The lure of the stage was too great, however, and by 1982 a reformed Dixies were back on the circuit.
Most of the original Dixies have since passed away, but at 75, Joe is still playing with his trio, the Joe Mac Band, clocking up an average of three gigs a week around Cork. "We do a litany from the past," says McCarthy. "We still include Little Arrows, a bit of jazz, a few standards and a little bit of up-to-the-minute pop as well. I still do a bit of wisecracking on the stage, and sing a couple of songs."
McCarthy lives in Ovens, Cork with his wife Ann. Their family was struck by tragedy in 1981 when their son Aidan, the eldest of their four children, and their daughter-in-law, Linda, were killed in a car crash. They have nine grandchildren and one great-granddaughter aged 15 months.
Two years ago, McCarthy was part of a project to create a showband Walk of Fame outside the site of the old Arcadia ballroom in Glanmire, with 20 plaques bearing the names of the great showbands of the era. Including, of course, the Dixies.
