If someone posed the question ‘who wrote the song ‘Long Before Your Time’, you would be forgiven if you said Foster & Allen but of course it was Johnny McEvoy who wrote it in the mid 1970s. Foster & Allen had a big hit with it as indeed had thye man himself and it still remains one of his most requested songs.
Known in the eraly years as ‘The Rambler’ having been part of a duo of the same name,Johnny McEvoy first came to the attention of this writer (as it did for thousands of others) back in the mid 1960s when ‘Muirsheen Durkin’ was played continuoudsly on the radio as it topped the charts and stayed at No I for a number of weeks.
Not long after came ‘The Boston Burglar’ which also reached number one in the charts and it was around the time of his first tour of the U.S. in 1967, that he he had his third No 1 hit with the song ‘Nora’, (a version of ‘When You and I wer Young, Maggie’ (from the Seán O’Casey’s play ‘The Plough and the Stars’).
But it wasn’t until he formed a band in the 1970s that he wrote his first song which was the aforementioned ‘Long Before Your Time’. This too made the number one spot. Since then he has gone on to write countless other songs, many of which have become standards that have been recorded by other artists, songs such as ‘Michael’, ‘Going To California’, ‘The Ballad of John Williams’, ‘Rich Man’s Garden’ to name but a few.
A song that was a great party piece in the late ’60s was ‘A Funny Man’, a song written and recorded by Donovan but it was the Johnny McEvoy version that we sang along to.
Now in his late 70s but singing as well as ever, Johnny McEvoy has included the Palace Theatre, Fermoy in his current tour, so you can see him in person and hear him sing many of his evergreen hits on Saturday, October 14th.
Tickets are now on sale from the theatre box office at Fermoy Community Youth Centre (025-32042), from The Avondhu offices in Fermoy (025-32227) and Mitchelstown (025-24451), from Cotter’s Bar, Kilworth or you can call or text 087-6492514.
