Music legend strikes chord with audience
Westmeath Examiner Community and Sports Awards
Many will know the name Ben Dolan, saxophonist, and brother of Joe Dolan, and one of the most notable figures in Westmeath music.
At 92 and a half, Ben is the oldest singer in town, has a long, rich career, and has travelled the world to perform from the Soviet Union to Las Vegas, as he told the audience last Thursday when he accepted a Special Recognition Award at the Westmeath Examiner Community and Sports Awards in the Mullingar Park Hotel.
You wouldn’t guess Ben was a man of 92 as he made his way the stage to Westmeath Examiner editor Brian O’Loughlin, who reminded the audience that the Remembering Joe Tour is performing at the Park Hotel in April 2027.
“That’s right,” Ben quipped, “it’s part of my retirement!”
Ben said he was contemplating retirement following this tour – but he is also open to doing one more.
“I think I’m just about running low now at 92 and a half,” he said to applause and laughter from the audience.
Ben is clearly made for the stage; from the minute he stepped up, the audience were in the palms of his hands, and he has a comic turn that would have served him well if he hadn’t gone into music.
Ben told the audience about his beloved brother, the late Joe Dolan, who he played alongside for nearly five decades.
“We had the band going for 47 years until Joe got sick, and he wasn’t sick in all that time until the last few months before he died,” he said.
The depth of the bond between Ben and Joe was clear in the way he spoke about them working side by side for so long, performing and travelling together. “But anyway that’s enough about Joe,” said Ben and the crowd erupted with laughter again.
“My job in the band was to make sure we all got there on time, we travelled together in a minibus for all those years, Joe was living in Dublin so sometimes he would travel on his own. We’d go in that minibus all over the country and we wound up going all over the world.
“Originally we were trying to put a name on it (the band) and we called ourselves The Drifters Showband but then we discovered there was a Drifters in America.
“We thought the chances of us ever going to the States were very slim in 1960, but we did wind up in America.”
In 1964 Dolan brothers with their local musician colleagues made their way to Las Vegas where they did a residency, a dream of so many artists.
“The new comrade at the time, Tommy Swarbrigg, had only been in the band for two or three weeks and then we were in Vegas,” said Ben.
Asked if it was true that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, Ben, ever charming, replied: “I’ll tell you one thing, we were so nervous we didn’t notice anything happening.”
Once they had made it in America, the world was their oyster and the lads did not waste their chance, and nor did they forget their roots.
“We travelled the world after that, Joe, myself and the band. We always said we came from Mullingar, some of these people used to say, ‘Is Mullingar near Ireland?’!.”
They went to Russia in 1978, during the Cold War, and performed in Moscow and Leningrad. They also performed in Moldova. They performed 23 nights in a row and were even under surveillance by the Irish Army intelligence services for risk of communist affiliation.
“People used to say something beforehand, every night,” said Ben as he recalled Russian phrases their audiences fired at them, if he was still in Moscow. (We think it translates to a welcome along the lines of ‘Irish Artist Joe Dolan’.)
“We used to hear that every night, we were there for about three weeks.”
Ben then returned to his thank-yous, including to his wife Helen, sitting in the front row with other members of the Dolan family.
Concluding, he said: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to thank the Westmeath Examiner for this wonderful tribute. I didn’t get too many tributes in my time, Joe was always there and I used to carry them home for him.”
There was no envy in his story, only nostalgia, the audience laughed at the comment and he continued:, “Half of them are in my house, Joe’s awards. I used to have to say to him, ‘Are you bringing them home?’, and he’d say, No, I have enough at home’.”
Ben thanked the audience one final time and descended from the stage to the sound of himself and his band playing their hit ‘It’s You, It’s You, It’s You’ (the same song that welcomed him to the stage) as the audience clapped along.