Ben Dolan – oldest singer in town

Kate Pendred

In his 92nd year, Ben Dolan is one the oldest artistes in the world still touring and is looking at the possibility of getting into the Guinness Book of Records. He and his band are currently on tour with the Remembering Joe show that attracts sellout performances around the country every year. Ben spoke to the Westmeath Examiner about his life in showbusiness and how he is still going strong, despite being “a bit long in the tooth”.

“I wouldn’t do it if I hadn’t the family around me. Half of them are nearly older than myself!” he laughed.

Ben shared the stage with his younger brother Joe for “47 great years”. Now he shares it with his daughter Sandra, sons Adrian and Ray, singer Karen Carroll and “some of the boys that were in the band with Joe”.

“There are nine of us on stage and the line-up is good,” he said.

He recalled how, after Joe’s death in 2007, the family decided they should do a tribute show. “I hadn’t the heart to do it for three or four years, but when we did, it went down very well,” he remarked.

This year’s tour will take in Mullingar Arts Centre in March, as well Cork, Limerick, the Helix in Dublin and the Opera House in Belfast. They have already played dates in Donegal and Navan.

Ben loves playing in Mullingar, where he has always got great support, but admits that he is most anxious when he is playing on home turf.

Joe started his working career as a compositor with the Westmeath Examiner. Ben started as a carpenter at Reynolds’ at the Green Bridge.

“We made horse carts and did repairs and all that type of work,” he said. After a few years there, he joined builder Frank Mulligan, a relative of his from the town. “We mainly did shop fronts in Mullingar,” he remarked.

When Ben asked Joe what his work involved, he explained: “’I have to put the news upside down in the paper’.”.

They started the band in 1960 and Joe was soon let go from the day job in the Examiner for not turning up. “We were getting the odd dates and Joe got sacked by the manager, Mr Cadigan,” Ben recalled. Ben went to Mr Cadigan, told him that they were out late, playing music, and persuaded him to give Joe his job back as he had only a year to go to finish his apprenticeship.

Joe finished out his apprenticeship, got his first full week’s wages as a qualified compositor (£15), and quit, Ben laughed. “Joe said he’d get a job singing with a band if our band folded,” but the band took off and they decided to go professional. Gradually they got more and better dates and the money improved. “It was well worthwhile,” Ben remarked.

They went on tour, taking in South Africa four times, Las Vegas twice, Israel and Russia. “We did about 12 weeks each time and toured the world, even though at the time we didn’t make much of it,” he said.

‘There’s no show like a Joe show’ was the catchphrase that described the electrifying performance of Joe Dolan on stage. “Joe really had the X factor, he was a great performer and a great singer,” Ben said, adding that Joe is now reaching a wider audience than ever as people can hear all his recordings. “Back then, they only heard what was played on the radio,” he pointed out.

NAMM, the National Association of Music Merchants, wanted Joe to move to London, but he refused, arguing that he was only a one-hour flight from the English city. “Joe was a home bird at heart. He enjoyed doing shows, playing a game of golf and visiting the neighbours,” Ben said.

The Dolans grew up in Grange, Mullingar, but the older members, including Ben, were born in Austin Friars Street. They then went to live in their mother Nellie’s home place in Walshestown.

Paddy and Nellie Dolan had nine children, one of whom died at the age of four, and they moved from Walshestown to Grange.

Nellie had sung in the church choir in Walshestown as a girl and was interested in singing “but was not pushy”. Ben said it was a pity she died two years before they started the band, although he reckoned she might not have been impressed by rock ‘n’ roll that was just starting.

Ben is married to Helen, his second wife. His first wife Moira, mother of his five children, died 27 years ago. Their son Colin runs Dolan’s bar in the town and their son Michael runs the farm at Sonna.

Ben says he is keeping “very well”, a fact he attributes to “clean living” and the great care Helen takes of him. He can still tour, he says, because the tour is spread over five months, and when it is over, he and Helen head to Spain for a holiday.

When he is not on tour or on holiday, Ben likes to go into Dolan’s pub in the morning and “drink coffee with a couple of fellas – it’s like a men’s shed”, he chuckled.