Death of Johnstons' musician, Dr Mick Moloney

Musician and folklorist, Dr Mick Moloney, who was a member of the folk group, The Johnstons, died on Wednesday at the age of 77.

He performed in Slane in May during the Johnstons Folk Festival.

He was instrumental in having the story of the Johnstons Folk Group recorded and entered into the Irish Music Archive for the first time, as part of last May's festival.

The recording took place at Slane Castle which was also the venue for a major Irish music concert featuring his group, the Green Fields of America.

Mick Scully of the Johnstons Folk Festival  paid tribute to Dr Moloney, saying he had been a great friend and help to the festival.

“He was always available with advice and encouragement. He was a wonderful man, an extraordinary man and will be missed across the world .”

Mr Scully said that Dr Moloney had been instrumental in organising the first Johnstons Festival in 2011 which was known as the Johnston's Reunion.

“It was the first time they were back together in 40 years. In the years since he was very helpful to us,” he said.

The Johnstons were a1960s folk/traditional band formed in Slane by siblings Adrienne, Lucy and Michael Johnston, playing in their father Marty's pub in Slane and they eventually went on to stardom, recording seven albums.

They were later joined by Dr Moloney and Paul Brady.

Born 1944, in Limerick Mick Moloney began playing tenor banjo at 16 years of age.

Growing up, he learned to sing traditional songs and to play guitar as well as mandolin and tenor banjo. He played with the Emmet Folk Group before joining the Johnstons. He spent five years touring and recording with the Johnstons.

He moved to the US in 1971, where he combined the careers of professional musician, folklorist, musicologist, teacher and arts presenter and advocate.

With a PhD in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania, he also taught ethnomusicology, folklore and Irish studies courses at the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University and Villanova University and was a Global Distinguished Professor at New York University in the Irish Studies Program and the Music Department. In 2008, he won the Golden Dozen Award for teaching excellence at NYU.

He will be remembered as an accomplished singer as well as an instrumentalist and possessed a vast collection of songs and instrumental pieces from the Irish and Irish-American tradition. He is the author of Far From the Shamrock Shore: The Irish-American Experience in Song, published by Crown Publications/Random House in 2002 with an accompanying CD on Shanachie Records.

Dr Moloney recorded and produced over sixty albums of traditional music in the United States with noted traditional musicians such as Liz Carroll, Seamus Egan, Joanie Madden, Johnny McGreevy, Joe Shannon, Ed Reavy, Jack and Charlie Coen, Mike Rafferty and many others.

He worked with various recording companies in doing reissues of some of the classic 78 rpm recordings of the 1920’s and acted as advisor for scores of festivals all over America and was director for 25 years of the Irish Week at Davis and Elkins WV – the first Irish music summer school in the USA.

He formed the group The Green Fields of America which has showcased Irish American traditional artists since 1978. He was also instrumental in forming Cherish the Ladies, the first all-woman group in the US.

He was a performer and interviewee on the Irish Television special Bringing It All Back Home, a participant, consultant and music arranger of the PBS documentary film, Out of Ireland and a music researcher and performer on the 1998 PBS special The Irish in America: Long Journey Home.

In 1999 he was awarded the National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts – the highest official honour a traditional artist can receive in the United States by the then First Lady Hillary Clinton. In 2013 he received The Distinguished Presidential Service Award from the President of Ireland. In 2014 received the Gradam Cheoil Award from TG4 — the highest honour a traditional Irish musician can receive in Ireland.