www.communityvoice.ie - Art news from Dublin 15

The Sonny side of the road

When one surveys the flotsam and jetsam of today’s pop music industry, it is somewhat sobering to look ahead and guess how many of them will still be going strong fifty years from now. It takes a special kind of appeal and an almost obsessively loyal fan base to still have the capacity to pull a crowd over half a century into one’s musical career.

Sonny Knowles is the ultimate survivor. Starting out life in the tenement houses of Chancery Lane, he lost his father at seven years of age to pneumonia and learned to play the clarinet as a means of escaping the dire unemployment situation prevalent in the country. He has beaten cancer not once but twice and, at a time when most men his age are wondering about nursing homes, he is hitting the comeback trail with a vengeance, bringing his big band to Draiocht as part of a spring tour.

“I just wanted to be involved,” he told Community Voice, referring to his reasons for entering showbiz back in the fifties. “I saw musicians the way others see footballers.” He learned to play clarinet and sax in the Dublin School of Music and the doors really opened for him in the great Irish showband era that followed the Rock and Roll explosion in America.

First coming to public attention with the Earl Gill Showband, and subsequently as lead singer with the Pacific Showband, Sonny Knowles soon became a household name around Ireland. With eight successful albums on the Pye record label and regular primetime radio play, the velvet tones of his soft mellow voice set him up to survive the inevitable decline of the showband era.

He gradually moved onto the Cabaret circuit which, he said, he loved. “Cabaret was the best time of my life,” he recalled. “I had great times. You did your hour and you won or you lost. I very seldom lost. I always came out doing well with audiences.”

Affectionately known as "the window cleaner" because of his trade-mark hand moving stage mannerism, Sonny is also known as "Mister Nice Guy" of the Irish music industry. Perhaps it is his easy going personality that has his legion of fans returning for more, I suggest to him. “I wish I knew!” he laughs. “I’m only glad they do! They’ve come to all my other gigs and I’m hoping they come to Draiocht too. I suppose I’ve always just taken things as they come and I’ve never fallen out with anyone.

“And of course, I think the songs I sing are ones that people feel they can join in with and sing along to.”

After suffering from what he thought was a stomach bug in his twilight years, he was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer and had successful surgery at St James Hospital. His wife Sheila helped to nursed him back to health, and, being a devout man, he relied also on prayers to St Bernadette. The one downside is that he is barred from his favourite tipple, brandy and port, though he is still allowed Guinness!

And does he still play the clarinet? “I haven’t played for about two years,” he says. “I couldn’t when I was sick, and then recently I broke a tooth you need to play it! The dentist is sorting me out though, so I hopefully should be playing again in the next few weeks.”

Sonny Knowles and his Big Band, in his comeback show celebrating fifty years in showbiz, play Draiocht’s main auditorium on Saturday 17th May at 8pm.

Tickets are €28 / €25.

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