How very sad! What a grand voice. So very perfect for folk music.

I first heard Tommy Makem in 1959 - I think it was. I'd not heard him before. And I'd not even heard OF him before. I was there at Chicago's Eighth Street Theater to hear the only other man on the show that night---Bob Gibson.

This was when Bob was a star at Chicago's GATE OF HORN folk club/bar on Dearborn Street and Chicago Ave. It was a very rare concert setting by Mr. Gibson in a venue that wasn't alcohol drenched and taking place in the wee small hours of the morning. (I was 18 years old and too young for nightlife and drinking.)

But Tommy Makem came out on stage---sat down in a chair--didn't say a word, and mesmerized the audience doing his "With a ring ting of an ing ting of an ido..." --- the wonderful 'shoemaker's song' complete with all the mechanical pantomiming that went with the various steps one would go through while making an actual pair of shoes by hand in days of old. ----- It blew me away--showed me how folk songs really are time machines that could pick us up here and now, and drop us off in other times and places. ----- I've been a huge fan of Tommy's ever since.

There is no more I can say, Kendall. Just give him my best wishes--from an American folksinger and long time fan who never met him. I do hope this last journey is a relatively easy one.

Love,

Art Thieme