Culture That Made Me: Joe Mac of The Dixies picks his touchstone influences    

The Cork music legend includes Chubby Checker, a book on Fenians and Sammy Davis Jr among his selections

Joe Mac (Joe McCarthy), drummer with The Dixies. Picture: Dan Linehan

Joe McCarthy, 86, grew up on Copley St, Cork city. He is known to the world as Joe Mac. In 1954, he was a founding member of The Dixies. In the 1960s, The Dixies were one of Ireland’s most popular showbands. They recorded a string of hits – including chart-topping singles Little Arrows and Katie’s Kisses – and performed internationally at New York’s Carnegie Hall and at venues on the Las Vegas strip. Joe Mac performs live at Canty’s Bar,  Cork, on Sunday evenings.

Radio Luxembourg

Growing up, the most popular programme we listened to was Jack Jackson on Radio Luxembourg on a Saturday night. We had a big old-
fashioned valve radio. My mother was very influential. She knew all the songs from the shows. She’d sing around the house. Eventually, I wound up with a pair of brushes like drumsticks. I’d be backing her on the kitchen table. To this day, we still play some of the songs she sang then like ‘All of Me’ and ‘It Had to Be You’.

The Dixies at Cork Airport in 1966. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive 

Doing the splits

When I met my wife first, we’d go to Francis Hall, near the Mardyke in Cork. There was a popular gig there. It was spacious. They’d have a band on stage. People got together. You had your dancing, your waltzing, your quickstep, jiving, maybe the Siege of Ennis. You had to learn to dance. It was allowed at that time that two women would dance together, but you’d never see two men dancing together. I was a good dancer. The rhythm was in me. I was a good jive dancer. I could do the splits and everything.

Chris Barber

Chris Barber and His Jazz Band

I loved Chris Barber and his Jazz Band when he had Monty Sunshine. His numbers like ‘Hushabye’ and ‘Whistlin’ Rufus’. Jazz classics. The Dixies became resident band in the Arcadia about 1958. All the visiting bands would come. Chris Barber came and I felt like I knew him as a brother. It was a huge buzz for us. That’s where we learned a lot of our trade – in the Arcadia, playing relief to big bands.

Las Vegas

On a trip playing in America, the promoter Bill Fuller told us to audition to play Vegas. We were in contact with the Royal Showband, who were after succeeding in Vegas. We asked them for advice. We said, “What kind of music should we play?” They said: “Definitely a lot of Irish music and standards from the shows.”

We rehearsed a few Irish songs like ‘Come into the Parlour’, jigs and reels and everything. We hired out tuxedos so we’d look well. We passed the audition, and we worked there 15 weeks in all. Once you made it to Vegas, you became accepted as top-class entertainers. I was afraid to sleep there in case I missed anything. Everything went on 24 hours a day.

 Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr and Frank Sinatra. (AP Photo/Files)

Sammy Davis, Jr

I was lucky to meet a lot of the greats when we played in Vegas – Tony Bennett, Perry Como, the Everly Brothers. We got to see Little Richard in his dressing room. He said, “Ireeee-land. You guys still throwing stones at each other over there?”

The actor Jimmy Durante caught me by the nose and said: “You have a big one too!”

Sammy Davis, Jr. made the biggest impression of them all. He could sing. He could dance. He could do six-gun routines – he’d twist them around his fingers and fire them up in the air. What an entertainer.

Sign of the peace at mass

In Vegas, we worked at The Desert Inn – which is there no more – on the graveyard shift, at three or four in the morning. There was a mass down on the strip at five o’clock. We said we’d go to mass. This was the start of turning around and making the sign of the peace to whoever was near you. There was a guy in a police uniform turned around. Christy O’Mahony and myself were standing together. He put his hand out to Christy to shake hands, and Christy said: “Do I know you?”, because we hadn’t seen that before.

Barrett Deems

I totally admired the jazz drummer Barrett Deems. He played in Louis Armstrong’s band. One of the first times we were in New York, there was a music club just off Broadway called The Metropole. We saw it advertised during the day that Louis Armstrong’s band were playing there, without Louis. I said to the lads, “By God, I’m going there later on.” 

Unbeknownst to me, Steve Lynch of the Dixies went down and met Barrett Deems before the gig started. He told him there’d be a fella coming in with a Beatle haircut and a big nose, give him a shout out. When I arrived into The Metropole I was greeted by my favourite drummer in the world: “And here we got Joe Mac from Ireland!”

Chubby Checker

We were doing a gig in King’s Hall in Belfast. It’s an enormous hall. Chubby Checker was appearing there as well. You were able to drive into the hall, back up to the stage, put your gear up, play, and then pack up
and go.

We finished our set. Chubby Checker was due to come on and his amplification broke down. They put out a cry for help. We got our amplification out of our van. We set it up for Chubby. He was overjoyed. Sometime afterwards, we were walking down Broadway, and we met Chubby. We were chatting away with him and next thing, walking down Broadway towards us, is Fats Domino. Chubby said, “Hey, Fats, come and meet my friends from Ireland!”

The Five Pennies

I loved the film The Five Pennies with Danny Kaye when it came out in 1959. Danny Kaye’s character was a jazz player but had to give up playing because his daughter gets sick with polio. There is a lovely human story in it. Louis Armstrong and his band are in the movie. Danny Kaye’s character gets to return to the stage to perform. It’s a lovely story.

Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Another movie I loved was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with Jack
Nicholson. He’s an amazing actor. I saw it in London. I came out of that movie and I was laughing and crying. I was totally mixed up.

The Voyage of the Catalpa

Of my favourite books is The Voyage of the Catalpa by Peter Stevens. Six of the top Fenians in the 1870s were sent to prison in Western Australia. There was a plan set afoot to rescue them by a crowd of Irish people in Boston.

They refitted a fishing boat and they sailed to Australia and they helped the six prisoners to escape. It’s a fantastic book.