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Luke was born in the Dockland area of Dublin City in 1940. He left school at 13, worked at odd jobs around Dublin for four years and then roamed to England. He continued odd-jobbing but secretly aspired to be the Irish Sinatra. When he fell for folk music, however, he fell hard and with his boundless physical energy and totally uninhibited vocal style soon became a singer to be reckoned with. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem met him on one of their trips to Ireland and they added many of Luke's songs to their repertoire. In 1963, he and three other lads formed a group, "The Dubliners," but Luke likes singing alone also. He came on his own to the Newport Folk Festival '64 where the Festival Committee, after hearing a sample of his singing, invited him to perform at a workshop and at the New Folks Concert.

source: Newport Folk Festival songbook

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Is a 26-year-old strawberry-haired and bearded Dubliner that grew up in Dublin's dockside area. He left school at 13½ and went through the usual gammit of jobs. "I started singing folk song after realizing that they were not as square as I had been led to believe." His repertoire of songs ran into the hundreds in a very short time, and somewhere along the way he picked up the five-string banjo. Luke is humble when he claims that he is "reasonably proficient" in the many picking styles on the guitar. Anyone can see that he is a talented musician as well as having an extremely powerful voice that goes with the rest of him.

source: Concert Program [circa 1967]

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One of the few people capable of carrying a copy of "The Times" into an Irish pub with the title to the front - and he does. His chief interests are politics, literature, singing and the theatre, which last interest has become much more important to him of late.

source: More of the Hard Stuff [Songbook]

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Is 26 years old with a halo of wirey ginger hair. He grew up in Dublin's dockside. He left school at 13½ and went through the usual gammit of jobs, starting to sing folk songs after realising that they were not as square as he had been led to believe. His repertoire of songs runs into hundreds. He has an extremely powerful voice and somewhere along the way he picked up the five-string banjo and guitar. Luke is married to Deidre O'Connell, who has opened her own theatre in Dublin. Some of his likes are good quality casual clothes, Beethoven, violin concertos, reading and staying up late, as well as, of course, 'good black stout'. But he says: "Everything fascinates me".

source: Concert Program [circa 1968]

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Luke Kelly started to sing folksongs when he discovered they were not as square as he'd always been led to believe. Married to Diedre O'Connell who operates her own theatre in Dublin, he is interested in literature, Beethoven, violin concertos and, in his own words, "good "stout".

source: At Home [Songbook]

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Luke was born in Dublin on either the 16 November or 16 December 1940. The confusion arises because his mother says November and his birth certificate December. In the main Luke has always taken his mother's word for it, for he reasons that she was there at the time.
The family was a large close one. Luke's father, another Luke, worked for Jacobs the biscuit people and had a great love of soccer - a love he passed on to his son.
Luke was educated at St. Lawrence O'Toole's (the patron saint of Dublin) School in the North Strand area. He left school when he was thirteen and did a variety of jobs before coming, via the Isle of Man, to work in England.
His hobbies include golf and anything to do with the arts. He's a voracious reader and is rarely found without at least two books and as many newspapers about his person.
Luke is married to Deirdre O'Connell, the Irish-American method actress who owns and runs Dublin's Focus Theatre.

source: The Dubliners Scrapbook

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Luke Kelly - 1939-1984
The Song of & Bird Alone.
Giusseppe Ungaretti, the great Italian poet who died a few years ago, lived for a while in Paris - there one of his friends was an exiled Arab. He wrote a little poem in his memory. It ends: E non sapeva sciogliere il canto del suo abbandono - he wasn't able to express the song of his loneliness. Luke Kelly lived much of his life among his own - and yet he too knew a kind of exile: it was the spiritual exile of one who wished for a better world. Luke was luckier than Ungaretti's friend: he found expression for his loneliness. For him singing was as essential as it was for the American blues' singers who found themselves 'lonely and afraid in a world they never made'. Luke brought home to you that singing had been man's primal mode of expression. When language was rudimentary, the musical notes expanded it: man sang before he spoke. And it is fair to say that Luke was a primitive, in the sense of the term as it is applied to such painters as Douanier Rousseau. The Douanier was a sophisticate, intimate with the history of art and acutely aware of contemporary movements - and yet he seemed to have come out of nowhere. Better than most, Luke Kelly knew what was happening in his own field - and indeed in the fields around it - but he was his own man. Ewan McColl may have inspired him - but only to go his own way. It may seem paradoxical that such a 'bird alone' should gain fame with a group - but The Dubliners were less a group than a meitheal. In the old peasant pattern the meitheal came together to do a job -and that was it. The Dubliners were all individualists -Luke and Ronnie and Ciaran and John and Barney were leaves from different trees blown together by the wind that changed the world of music a generation ago. What they had most in common was artistic honesty. Luke's ambition was to express 'the song of his loneliness1. He succeeded as much as a mortal can -and in doing so he became an immortal.

CON HOULIHAN 1984

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DUBLIN-Ballad singer Luke Kelly, a member of the internationally acclaimed Dubliners died in a Dublin hospital on Jan. 30.
The bearded balladeer, who was 44, had been in a critical condition following a brain tumor operation.
Four years ago, Kelly had the first of several major operations after collapsing in Cork. In April, 1981 he collapsed again during a performance at the Embankment in Tallaght, Dublin.
Ronnie Drew and Barney McKenna, two other members of the Dubliners, were with Luke Kelly when he died.
Ronnie said early today: "We will all miss him terribly. I think he was the best we ever had. God rest him. You cannot measure how much we will miss him. We were all very close."
Kelly's craggy face, framed by a shock of red curls and a goatee beard, was a much-loved feature of the Irish and international music scene.
Born 44 years ago in the North Wall area of Dublin Luke Kelly never had it easy. Educated at Laurence O'Tooles in Seville Place, he left school at 13 to ride a messenger boy's bicycle. And in the footsteps of his father, his mother and the rest of the family he went to work in Jacobs when he was 14.
He then worked for a while as a docker, a builder, a drain digger and a furniture remover before leaving for England in 1957. At that time he had no thoughts of becoming a folk singer, but while selling vacuum cleaners in Newcastle he soon developed an interest in music.
In London, he met Dominic Behan who introduced Luke to the folk music of Northern England and Scotland. Soon, he became a name around the ballad clubs, singing and strumming a banjo. After two-and-a-half years he shouldered his banjo and went to Paris where he sang in the streets.
Arriving back in Dublin in 1962, he frequented O'Donoghue's pub on Merrion Row, which was known as a good outlet for a folk singer. There he met Barney McKenna and other musicians, who shared in the growing interest in folk music.
After he had appeared on a show with other individual members of the Dubliners, the suggestion was made by Ronnie Drew, who was already well-known at the time, that they should form a group.
Among the numbers Luke's fans loved to hear were his gutsy versions of "The Town I Loved So Well," "Dirty Old Town" and "The Molly Maguires."
After they established a secure base in Dublin in places like the Abbey Tavern in Howth, Luke and the Dubliners made a record, which was released in England, boosting their popularity and creating a demand for them elsewhere in the world.
Very shortly they were touring the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.
The heady mixture of instrumentals from John Sheehan on fiddle, banjoists Luke and Barney McKenna, whistle player Ciaran Bourke, along with Ronnie Drew's nasal poetry and Luke's gravel-voiced singing, soon put the Dubliners to the forefront of the international folk and ballad circuit.
Since the mid-60s, the group has made many bestselling records and toured extensively.
Throughout this time Luke diversified his interests and found time to act and write poetry. One of his best-known performances was in Brendan Behan's play, "Richard's Cork Leg."
Luke Kelly leaves his widow Deirdre O'Connell And he also leaves countless thousands of friends - many of whom only know him through concert or record - who have followed his career with the Dubliners for over 20 years.

source: Irish Echo - February 11, 1984