Susan McCann

Born Patricia Susan Mary McCann on 26 February 1949 in Carrickasticken, Forkhill, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, she grew up as one of eight siblings. Local venues provided her first stage at age eight, and by her teens she fronted a nearby ceilidh band as lead singer. After meeting future spouse Dennis Heaney, the pair chose practical careers to offset the uncertainties of music: she trained as a hairdresser while he pursued accountancy. With a friend they launched the Fairylanders, a trio that later expanded into the Storytellers. Only after the arrival of their two children did McCann begin treating her singing ambitions with full seriousness.

Midway through the 1970s she signed with Top Spin Records and turned professional. Her follow-up release, “Big Tom Is Still The King,” reached number one on the Irish charts and confirmed her status as a leading act; the track reworked Waylon Jennings’s “Bob Wills Is Still The King” as a tribute to Irish country figure Big Tom. The hit prompted tours across the UK and Europe, followed in 1977 by her inaugural American visit. A 1978 automobile accident left her severely hurt, yet she overcame both the injuries and subsequent throat ailments to restore a demanding performance calendar before year’s end. Returning stateside in 1979, she made her Grand Ole Opry debut.

Throughout the 1980s she shared European bills with visiting American headliners such as Charley Pride and Emmylou Harris while appearing repeatedly at the Wembley Festival. Additional U.S. engagements took her back to the Opry, to Carnegie Hall, and to Nashville’s Fan Fair; in 1988 she became the first non-American performer at Dolly Parton’s Dollywood Theme Park near Knoxville, Tennessee. In 1991 she achieved another milestone as the first non-American headliner of the Strawberry Festival in Plant City, Florida. She returned for the event in 1992 and 1993, the latter year also fulfilling a special concert invitation from Gulf War hero General Norman Schwarzkopf and performing for President George Bush. That same year she numbered among the few country artists to appear in Russia. By 1998 she had graced the Strawberry Festival five times, completed two South African tours, and topped the bill at the Belgian Country Music Festival.

Over the decades McCann issued a consistent sequence of albums on multiple labels, several cut in America under Porter Wagoner’s production. Blending Irish and country material, she continued to score Irish chart entries with numbers such as “When The Sun Says Goodbye To The Mountains,” “While I Was Making Love To You,” “Rockabilly Can Rock,” “String Of Diamonds,” and “Blue Velvet.”