'The Mayo Nightingale' left a rich musical legacy

My father had a well-loved collection of old 78 records. They mostly featured the fiddle playing of Michael Coleman and the singing of John McCormack, but among them was a record made by a certain John Feeney. The song on the record was The Dawning of the Day, and Feeney sang it sweetly in his tenor voice and with a distinctive Irish brogue.

In the past, we always gave great credit to the talented and famous who came from faraway places; we were impressed by their start quality and mystique. I was, therefore, quite surprised to hear my father say that Feeney was actually born and reared in Swinford.

Early years

John Feeney, affectionately known as Jack, was born on August 9, 1903 in Swinford. His father, Patrick Feeney, was a grocer in the town and his mother, Mary Kelly, was a daughter of another prominent Swinford business family. 

Young John attended the local convent school until the age of nine and then studied at Swinford National School until he was 16. During these schooldays, he developed his early love of singing. Lawrence White, writing about John Feeney in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, takes up the story.

On leaving school, he worked in the family grocery before going to London (early 1920s) where he worked on building sites, including Wembley Stadium, for McAlpine's Contractors. 

In 1928, he emigrated to America with the express purpose of training his fine tenor voice, and attempting a career as a professional singer. He married (February 1932) in Brooklyn, NY, Maura Ruddy (1904–90), of Ballina, who had followed him to America in 1929. A steadfast moral and practical support to Feeney through his singing apprenticeship, when he lost his job in a Western Electric plant in the 1929 economic depression, she supported him and other family members on her wages from clerical work and funded his early voice lessons.

New York, New York 

Feeney began to make steady progress in his new career. He pushed for performances at school and community events in the New York area as well as performing on local radio. He recorded several songs, without receiving any fees, with lesser-known record labels. Quite soon, his efforts began to pay off, as Lawrence White continues.

In 1933, he began writing a weekly social column for the Irish Echo newspaper, thereby attaining both a regular income and valuable contacts in the Irish-oriented entertainment industry. In 1934, he was signed to a recording contract by Decca, a British label seeking to penetrate the slumped, depression-era American market. Feeney's first Decca recording session (November 1934) produced his biggest hit, ‘When It's Moonlight in Mayo’, a Tin-Pan-Alley composition of 20 years’ provenance, which remained his signature tune.

Career highlights 

Dubbed ‘The Mayo Nightingale’ by The New York Times after his first major American concert recital at New York's Hotel Barbizon-Plaza in April 1936, Feeney was to become the foremost Irish-American tenor and succeeded the hugely popular John McCormack. White provides further information on Feeney’s progress, and versatility.

Feeney reached his widest audience as a prominent performer of the 1930s–40s, the ‘golden days’ of American radio, when the medium was the country's dominant form of home entertainment. He began a long association (1937–64) with the Schaefer brewing company of Brooklyn. Throughout the 1940s, he sang regularly on Schaefer's weekly musical variety shows, broadcast from New York and networked to the company's other markets in Boston, Albany, Baltimore, and Cleveland.

When radio declined after the advent of television in the 1950s, Feeney really showed his powers of adaptability. While retaining the Schaefer's radio residency, he now also appeared on the company's sponsored television broadcasts. 

Feeney was, however, at his best on the concert stage. He would open with operatic arias, continue with British and American folk songs and ballads, and conclude with a range of Irish favourites. He performed frequently at New York's Carnegie Hall and made trips back to Ireland to appear in Dublin's Olympia and Theatre Royal.

Singing at the 1947 All-Ireland Final between Cavan and Kerry at the Polo Grounds in New York was another of his achievements. He later sang in his native Swinford and to 2,000 mass-goers at St Muredach's Cathedral in Ballina. During his 30-year professional career, John Feeney recorded some 50 records.

Preserving a legacy

John and Maura retired to Ireland in 1964. Maura had by now inherited her family business, The Mineral Water Company in Ballina. 

On their return to Ireland, she operated the business while John acted as its public relations officer. Their time together, however, was to be short-lived. John Feeney died suddenly while driving between Tubbercurry and Ballina on the shores of Lough Talt in 1967. He passed away in the arms of his beloved Maura in a place of great natural beauty - a fitting backdrop to their life’s concert. At the time of his death, John Feeney was only 64.

There was, however, one final twist to come in the John Feeney story. Not surprisingly, it would come from his great champion, Maura. She had been his support in life and now she would continue in that role after his death. Maura had meticulously archived every shred of Feeney's body of work and was anxious to place it in safe hands before her own departure from the stage. Declan McCormack, in an article in the Irish Independent in September 2003, entitled 'Saving Mayo's Lost Tenor from Obscurity', relates the story.

Harry Bradshaw, RTÉ radio producer, is a man with an eclectic taste in music but even he baulked when the widow of an Irish tenor invited him to listen to her dead husband's musical legacy. He politely but firmly said no. 

"I told her it wasn't my area."

Maura did not take Harry's "no" lying down. The feisty septuagenarian told him she was going back to the States and would be donating her husband's tapes, records and documents to the garbage collecting department of Dun Laoghaire borough if he didn't take them. 

"I couldn't have it on my conscience to let this stuff be lost to the nation so I took the five big chests and deposited them in the attic."

Many years later, when Bradshaw rediscovered the dusty boxes, he became hooked by the project. It was Feeney's radio show recordings that really piqued his interest. He knew that during the 1920s and '30s, NBC and CBS competed for the huge audiences created by radio. Manufacturers invested fortunes in big productions with outstanding orchestras, successful stars, and dazzling dance troupes. He soon came to realise that John Feeney had become one of these big stars. Bradshaw immediately took to researching Feeney's life and began remastering his many recordings. Bradshaw eventually produced a collection of Feeney’s varied repertory in time for the centenary of the tenor's birth in 2003. The resultant collection, a double CD and biographical booklet, entitled When it’s Moonlight in Mayo, became a huge hit and re-introduced a new generation to the remarkable legacy of 'The Mayo Nightingale'.