Val Doonican

Born Michael Valentine Doonican as the youngest of eight siblings, the future entertainer left school early after his father died of mouth and throat cancer and took a lumberyard job to help support the household. While employed there he continued composing and arranging songs in his free time, eventually quitting to play drums in a band without any previous experience on the instrument. Six months later he was performing on guitar with Bruce Clarke for a radio sausage advertisement, and by the early 1950s he had relocated to England as a member of the Four Ramblers.

Often likened to an Irish Perry Como, Doonican cultivated a relaxed crooning style that remained far removed from the rock tumult of the 1960s yet still won over a substantial British following through gentle interpretations of “If I Were a Carpenter,” “Scarlet Ribbons,” “He’ll Have to Go,” and “The Folks Who Live on the Hill,” together with comic numbers such as “O’Rafferty’s Motor Car” and “Delaney’s Donkey.” A well-received 1963 guest spot on the ITV program Sunday Night at the London Palladium quickly led to his own series, after which he issued more than fifty albums and maintained chart success into the 1970s with releases including “Elusive Butterfly,” “What Would I Be,” “The Special Years,” and “Walk Tall.” In 1997 his hometown of Waterford and the Waterford Corporation saluted his fifty years in entertainment.

Married to Lynnette Rae, with whom he raised two daughters, Doonican wrote the autobiographies Walking Tall and The Special Years before his death at age eighty-eight in a Buckinghamshire nursing home in July 2015.