In the heyday of the showbands – dating roughly from the mid-1950s to the late 70s – an estimated 1,500 bands of various musical genres travelled the country.
This week Francis K. Beirne recalls some of the female stars who fronted these bands.

Nobody ever said it would be easy. Cooped up in a minibus with six or seven ‘lads’, changing in a toilet or a mineral-bar, dealing with amorous punters and then facing the long journey home. It’s not a surprise that well over 95% of showband member were male.

On these pages, Francis K. Beirne turns the spotlight on the girls who threw in their lot with a showband and became stars in their own right.

The best-known was probably Eileen Reid of The Cadets. With ‘Fallen Star’, she sang the first showband single to break into the British Top 50. Strangely, Pat Murphy who formed the Cadets, didn’t want a female singer at all as he felt that “the showband circuit was no place for a woman.”

Tina Quinn had a successful career, first with The Mexicans, then with Jim Farley and later in her career with the Real McCoy. She and Muriel Day of the Dave Glover Showband were the first women to represent Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Terry Mahon sang with Jim Farley’s Band for many years. She started her career with The Neptunes Showband and married the bass-player in Farley’s band, Frank Doyle.

The Nevada Showband was first launched as a backing band for Sligo singer Maisie McDaniel. Unfortunately, soon after the band’s launch, Maisie was involved in a car-crash and Cork girl Eileen Kelly had her big break when she replaced her in The Nevada.

A rare being in ‘60s Ireland – a female bass-player! This was Patsy Fayne, of Roscommon showband, The Exciters. Later in her career, with her band Paddy Wagon, she had an Irish Number 1 with ‘Sunday, Bloody Sunday’, a record which had the unique distinction of being banned from the Irish airwaves. Margaret Murphy took up the ‘bass-baton’ with the Swallows in the seventies.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own