Biography
An aging Irish musician tends to keep his instruments close at hand while making bold assertions about his own life. He once declared himself 112 years old and attributed his continued vigor to a fondness for whisky. While employed in the Tyneside shipyards he acquired the nickname “Whistling Welder,” regaling coworkers with impromptu performances and claiming he could launch red-hot rivets from his piccolo.
Those colorful stories aside, his command of tin whistle and piccolo has earned him lasting respect as one of the Godfathers of Irish music, reflected in long-standing band work and in the small-instrument collection The Lark in the Clear Air, issued by Topic in the early 1970s.
Both his father and grandfather played fiddle, and as a youngster he took up that instrument along with flute, mandolin, and piano. Preference gradually settled on the slim silver flute, leading him in 1946 to organize a traditional ceili band that combined five fiddles, three concert flutes, and drums; his father sat among the fiddlers. Family ensembles have remained central to his career, culminating in the Doonan Family Band, which featured sons Mick on piccolo and Kevin on fiddle and produced the albums Fenwick’s Window and Manna From Hebburn.
He eventually moved from flute to piccolo, believing the smaller, higher-pitched instrument would cut through the surrounding players more effectively—the same reasoning cited by jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. Unlike Sanders, who lost his piccolo in a bar and never replaced it, Doonan has kept performing on the instrument, as heard on the live recording At the Feis released by the Lark in Clear Air label. He captured the 1964 All Ireland flute title and has also appeared on recordings by Irish guitarist and singer Archie Fisher.
Those colorful stories aside, his command of tin whistle and piccolo has earned him lasting respect as one of the Godfathers of Irish music, reflected in long-standing band work and in the small-instrument collection The Lark in the Clear Air, issued by Topic in the early 1970s.
Both his father and grandfather played fiddle, and as a youngster he took up that instrument along with flute, mandolin, and piano. Preference gradually settled on the slim silver flute, leading him in 1946 to organize a traditional ceili band that combined five fiddles, three concert flutes, and drums; his father sat among the fiddlers. Family ensembles have remained central to his career, culminating in the Doonan Family Band, which featured sons Mick on piccolo and Kevin on fiddle and produced the albums Fenwick’s Window and Manna From Hebburn.
He eventually moved from flute to piccolo, believing the smaller, higher-pitched instrument would cut through the surrounding players more effectively—the same reasoning cited by jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. Unlike Sanders, who lost his piccolo in a bar and never replaced it, Doonan has kept performing on the instrument, as heard on the live recording At the Feis released by the Lark in Clear Air label. He captured the 1964 All Ireland flute title and has also appeared on recordings by Irish guitarist and singer Archie Fisher.
Albums