About

The John McCormack Society

Since the time of John McCormack’s death in 1945, there have been many collectors of his gramophone records, LPs, and CDs and in more recent years his global admirers now enjoy his wonderful recordings across various digital platforms. Despite being one of the greatest world artists of his era with reputed sales of 200 million records, it is a disturbing fact that in the country that produced arguably the greatest lyric tenor of the 20th century there was not even a John McCormack Society until 1960, fifteen years after his death. True, the Irish newspapers waxed eloquent when they published obituaries of him, naming him as the greatest singer who ever left Ireland. Yet for those fifteen years, the only tributes paid to him by the country were the masses in his honour twice a year and short radio programmes tracing his life somewhat sketchily and playing some of his records. Only his family and close friends and those who had helped him in his career really knew in detail the life of the man and his interesting personality.

A friend of the singer, a man named F. J. Kelly, who was secretary of the Dublin Gramophone Society, became an unofficial authority on the tenor and dispensed information to hundreds of people who wrote to him with their questions about McCormack records. But he died shortly after the singer himself, and so there was no longer a ‘go-to person’ in Ireland to answer such queries until another enthusiastic collector of the tenor’s records took on the task. Robert Webster was a caretaker of office premises in the city and a trombone player in a Salvation Army band. In Dublin, in 1960 the John McCormack Society of Ireland was formed, which within a few short years had managed to recruit 150 members.

The objectives of the society were:
          To bring about a re-birth of interest in the man and his music.
          To make known as widely as possible McCormack’s art.
          To try to form a McCormack museum in Ireland.

Robert Webster was not alone. A twenty-six-years-old Dublin bank clerk, Morrough Linnane, who was just eleven years of age when McCormack died also rallied behind the idea. Linnane had collected 350 McCormack records, and his father, Maurice Linnane, a fifty-five-year-old customs officer, had another 100. The following account by the young bank clerk reveals how a little bit of duplicity was required to get the society up and running.

  “I only knew McCormack from his records, and my father only saw him once in Glasgow. I consider he is the finest singer on record, but we had always thought that if a McCormack Society were formed it should be started by someone who was more closely associated with the tenor.

       My father and I continued collecting his records. Many are not now readily available, and they have to be searched for in the second-hand record shops. If you are collecting Mac records you have to keep at it. You can pay as much as £10 for a lesser known McCormack record.”  

On an October evening in 1959 while the bank clerk and his father were having a drink in a public house in Clontarf, on the coast, three miles from the centre of Dublin they decided to set up a society dedicated to the singer. They composed a letter on a piece of scrap paper beside their stout glasses that evening and sent it to a Dublin newspaper with a request for its publication. The newspaper published it in its correspondence column. It read:

    “The art of John McCormack is known and acclaimed throughout the world, but in his native land his voice is seldom heard today. This is indeed a shame, and those who knew and loved that voice in his lifetime are dwindling.

     The present generation have little opportunity of hearing it, as apart from the occasional records played by Radio Eireann and local gramophone societies there are no other sources available to them. We believe that something more is necessary, and I invite anyone interested to get in touch with me with a view to forming a John McCormack Society to foster a love of the art of this great singer.” 

They received only twenty replies! One was from a Glasgow doctor and another from a music teacher in America. There were several expressions of interest from people living in Dublin.

To the tiny group of organisers, it looked like defeat. But two months later a Dublin priest, Father Oliver, who was a lover of McCormack’s voice, offered them free of charge the use of his church hall beside the river at Merchant’s Quay for a recital of McCormack records.

It was time for some creative publicity. When they published a notice in January 1960, inviting the public to the recital, they made a slight but excusable exaggeration. They stated in the announcement that the response to their earlier suggestion to form a McCormack Society had been –

“so encouraging that a public recital of the tenor’s music was essential.”

Their spin on the truth generated tremendous interest, seeing 500 people fill the hall. After the recital, they formed a committee of eleven and drew up rules for the fledgling society.

Today, after more than 60 years, the society continues hosting regular recitals, supporting annual vocal bursaries awarded to Feis Ceoil winners, and other initiatives celebrating John McCormack’s life and legacy.

What contemporaries said about him

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