We were a cabaret duo, with a focus on Irish ballads, comedy patter, and musical parodies. We called ourselves the Dublin Rogues. Ben Kopelow, our agent in Vancouver, chose the name for us. He dressed us up in green corduroy pants, white sweaters and tweed caps, and had us performing at every corporate banquet job that called for an Irish tenor to hit the high notes of “Danny Boy” and “Macushla.” Duffin was the Irish tenor. He didn’t always hit the high notes but the crowds loved him anyway. I played piano. I also sang bass harmony, and strummed a little on acoustic guitar.
We first performed together at a Burnaby restaurant called Little Black Sambo’s Pancake House. At least, that’s what the place was called when I first arrived in Vancouver in November 1966. A sign on the outside of the restaurant depicted a caricature of a curly-haired black child. The B.C. Association for the Advancement of Coloured People complained, the owner removed the offending sign, and changed the name to the less offensive Sambo’s Family Restaurant.
The customers at Sambo’s didn’t have much interest in Irish folk music. Although Duffin was getting some airplay on Vancouver radio stations with a self-produced recording of an old IRA marching song called “Off to Dublin in the Green,” he discovered that the Sambo’s customers preferred listening to popular vocal selections from the musicals The Fantasticks and The Sound of Music. He sang “Try to Remember” and “Climb Every Mountain.” I played “A Walk in the Black Forest” and “Lara’s Theme” from Dr. Zhivago. The customers applauded and the restaurant management was happy.
Duffin was keen to work full-time in show business. An upholsterer from Dublin who claimed to have once installed leather padding on a toilet seat in Princess Margaret’s Kensington Palace apartment—you could never tell if Duffin, an inveterate teller of tall tales, was making these things up—he did bit parts in movies and television shows shot in Vancouver, sold boxes of his 45-rpm singles on consignment at the Bay, and did his Irish tenor routine at golf club dinners and trade fairs.
The chance to quit our day jobs came in June 1967. A Vancouver impresario named Fran Dowie heard Duffin and me performing at Sambo’s and booked us for a two-month summer gig at the Palace Grand Theatre in Dawson City. Duffin was to be the emcee, telling jokes, and doing some solo singing on stage. I would be in the pit, playing piano accompaniment as musical director. A second piano would be pushed out on stage when we did our ten-minute Dublin Rogues routine. By this time, Duffin and I had released our first album of Irish ballads, Off to Dublin in the Green, on the RCA Camden label.
The Dawson gig gave Duffin and me a great opportunity to expand our musical repertoire and create a tight show. Every night after the Palace Grand Theatre show we went over to the Westminster Hotel to play music in the bar until closing time. By the time we left Dawson we had developed enough Irish material to fill four one-hour sets without repeating ourselves. We quietly retired “Try to Remember” and the hits of The Sound of Music from our program, and in their place offered renditions of “The Garden Where the Praties Grow,” “Johnnie, I Hardly Knew Ye,” and “The Boston Burglar.” We drew simultaneously from the repertoires of the great Irish tenor John McCormack and the popular Irish folk group The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. That made it difficult for the music industry to pigeonhole us. We moved between the genteel Victorian drawing-room style of musical performance later depicted in the John Huston movie The Dead, and the raucous style of pub singing that one associates with the rhythm of clinking bottles and tapping feet. How do you categorize a hybrid like that? One minute we were all decanted port and pianos draped in brocade. The next, we were doing percussion with spoons (“stolen only from the finest restaurants,” quipped Duffin) and encouraging the crowd to shout out the words, “Fine girl, you are!” The record company and the radio stations called us a folk act. But we viewed ourselves as supper-club entertainment, as a Vegas-type act that should be featured on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Needless to say, we never made it onto Ed Sullivan. We never had a hit record to get us there. Instead, we went on the road, playing nightclubs in Ontario and Atlantic Canada until we got bored of touring. At that point, Duffin and I discussed the possibility of putting together a theatrical show based on the life of the booze-loving Irish playwright Brendan Behan, with Duffin impersonating Behan and me providing on-stage accordion accompaniment. But that would have taken goodness-knows how long to research and write, with no guarantee of getting any workshop money or production commitments when the show was ready for staging. It seemed too much of a gamble to me. I opted out of the project before it began. Duffin, to his credit, took the idea and ran with it. He developed the concept as a one-man show and later performed it to critical and audience acclaim throughout Canada and the United States. “Mr. Duffin, if not Behan, has given us a memorable evening,” said The New York Times.
I went into journalism after quitting the road, and Duffin carved out a successful career for himself in television and movies. He played the ring announcer in Raging Bull, a horse trainer in Seabiscuit and the bar owner in the early scenes of Titanic. We didn’t remain in touch over the years, but I admired his success from afar.
He died this morning in Los Angeles, of complications following recent heart surgery. I will miss him.
[Excerpted from my memoirs, to be published next year by RMB Books]
Greetings form Dawson City Brian. You’ll be happy to know that the Palace Grand is still standing! I’d love to see any photos that you have from you time in Dawson, sounds like you had quite an act. If you like you can become a fan of the Dawson City, Yukon page on facebook and post photos there. Bet there are some old friends you could find there as well. Cheers.
Hi Rachel, I was back to Dawson about thirteen years ago, and was glad to see that the Gaslight Follies revue is still going strong at the Palace Grand. I was also pleased to see that musical entertainment still swings nightly in the Snake Pit. Some traditions never die!
Hi Brian, I am working with the Duffin daughters on creating a slideshow on Picasa (Google site) on a box of photos that Shay wanted to be in his long awaited book. I was with the girls yesterday as they are working through their father’s vast collection of memorabilia of his life. They are four beautiful caring women that Shay was very proud of. The Duffin daughters are his greatest productions besides his acting career.
Hi Lorraine, I remember the girls, of course, from when they were very small. Give them my very best. They likely won’t remember me. I look forward to seeing the slideshow when you have it up.
Hello Brian I have to say I had no idea of you or Shay or the the Dublin rogues but I do now after a visit to nova scotia this summer I inherited a record collection and took a real liking to “Off to Dublin in the Green” it is an excellent album. I am from Newfoundland originally living in Calgary now my wife’s family is in Sydney Nova Scotia where the record collection came from her grandparents. Her grandmother has passed grandfather still kicking at 95 they had a collection of Irish, Newfoundland and Country music which they were happy to give to me as they knew I would enjoy and I do. It is so great to hear you are in Calgary sad to hear that Shay has passed on but sounds like you would have some stories to tell. Take care and all the best I will keep enjoying this record you and Shay recorded as my wife’s grandmother did often.
Hi Peter, I hope your copy of “Off to Dublin in the Green” is in better shape than my scratched-up old version from 42 years ago. We recorded the album in a Vancouver studio as an independent venture, and were pleasantly surprised when RCA said they would like to issue it on their Camden label. Glad you’ve enjoyed listening to it. It was a real labour of love for us. And, yes, I have plenty of good stories about Shay that I will be including in my memoirs, scheduled for publication by RMB (Rocky Mountain Books) in the fall of 2011.
Hi Brian,
Great story of your musical journey in Canada with Shay. Our family knew him from Dublin, through his time in Toronto while my parents were there (plus where I was born) then to So. California. He went too soon! Such a shame. Please contact me about your latest book. Thanks.
Hi Lorraine,
Thanks for stopping by. What can I tell you about my book? It’s for sale on Amazon if you’re interested in getting a copy. Shay figures prominently in one chapter.
Just to say I have both of your albums, the early ones if there are more…and I say you performe at Brass Rail in Halifax many times, about 1969 I would guess…