Nobody interested in folk songs who saw the Clancys and Tommy Makem's TV debut on the Ed Sullivan Show about 1960 or their appearance on the Danny Thomas sitcom a little later is likely to forget it. Sure, the
guitar was thumpy and the rowdy enthusiasm has become unfashionable, but the energy! the freshness! the fabulously unsentimental songs like "Brennan on the Moor," which were then almost never heard outside of the old Folkways catalogue! The tin whistle, played to perfection by Tommy Makem, was also a novelty.

The Irish repertoire in the US at the time was mostly limited to "Danny Boy," "When Irish Eyes are Smiling," "Harrigan," and a few others, plus bel canto performances of some of Thomas Moore's pieces - and "Danny Boy."

Makem and the Bros. opened up the Irish songbag to Americans (and most Irish!) like no commercial group before or since. Their texts and tunes were free of hokum and almost always close to the originals.

If their best albums now seem bland or dated, it's only because we've become used to the more complex performance styles that the Clancys paved the way for.