PORTLAOISE'S FIRST RECORDING STAR
Mention Patrick Ward's name in Portlaoise today and, for the most part, it will mean nothing. Many people I asked replied
with "Sure all the Wards were great singers"1 but very few said any more than that.
There were some vague memories: one man
"heard tell, years and years ago" about “a Ward, only a young lad” who “sang opera for a full hour”, standing on a wall in St John’s Square.
In my informant's words, "you couldn't stir, the square was so packed".
One of the oldest men in the town, Maurice Kerry (born 1922), recalled that, when he was six or seven, “all the big shots of the town” went down to Limerick to hear
Patrick Ward in concert. Maurice's father, Michael, was a friend of the Wards and when the singer came back to Portlaoise, he gave an impromptu recital outside
Kerry's house on the New Road. "He had a voice that could knock down the house", said Maurice, "and the road outside was black with people".
A voice that could knock down the house. What a great phrase. The publicity material for Patrick Ward's Parlophone records described him as
Ireland's Greatest Ballad Singer; he himself always used
the term 'Operatic tenor', while people I've played his music to, replaced 'operatic' with 'lyric' or 'light'.
I seldom actually listen to tenors - or, for that matter, baritones, sopranos or
contraltos - at all, so I'll let others determine
his technical merits. All I can say is that, whenever I hear Patrick Ward, my response is purely emotional and goes way beyond music. I think of
how he once walked our streets, spoke with my accent, probably knew some of my ancestors. I think of how he transcended humble origins, and I like to think
that his father used to drink - and maybe sing - in my great-grandfather's pub just up the street from Lyster Lane. Thanks to everyone who helped me in any way, especially Charlie, Derek and Mickey Ward, Jane D'Angelo, Bill Dean-Myatt, Johnny O'Brien, Eamon Donegan, Denis O'Leary.
1
An exaggeration obviously, but one that contains a grain of truth. In the 1970's Thomas ‘Mario’ Ward, a nephew of Patrick’s, was a well-known singer in Galway, and
various local Wards of my and others' acquaintance were, in Leonard Cohen's words,
born with the gift of a golden voice. Young people I spoke to invariably mentioned Shayne Ward, winner of X Factor in 2005, who was born to Irish parents in Manchester.
When I hear that song,
I see my mother outside Fortune's on the Main Street, fifty years ago, fumbling in her handbag, scented gloves, a prayerbook full of memory cards. I see
her pass the church railings on her way from mass. She appears before me now,
slipping in and out of life, her face a map of bones, the lightness of her body,
the darkness in her eyes. You'd torment a saint in heaven so you would. Torment a saint in heaven.
HOMEPAGE