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Dermot O'Brien

Irish musician and Gaelic footballer (1932–2007)

Summary

Irish musician and Gaelic footballer (1932–2007)

Field	Value
code	Football
sport	Gaelic football
image	File:Dermot O'Brien accordionist.jpg
name	Dermot O'Brien
irish	Diarmuid Ó Briain
occupation	Musician
county	Louth
province	Leinster
club	St Mary's
clyears	1949–1960
clcounty	3
counties	Louth
icposition	Centre-forward
icyears	1952–1960
icprovince	2
icallireland	1
nfl	0
birth_place	Ardee, County Louth, Ireland
death_place	Ardee, County Louth, Ireland
birth_date
death_date

| clapps(points) = | icapps(points) = Dermot O'Brien (23 October 1932 – 22 May 2007) was an Irish céilí and showband musician and singer, as well as a Gaelic footballer who played as a centre-forward at senior level for the Louth senior football team.

Gaelic football career

O'Brien made his first appearance for the Louth team during the 1952 championship and was a regular member of the starting fifteen until a broken finger ended his career in 1960. During that time he has won one All-Ireland winners' medal and two Leinster winners' medals. In 1957 O'Brien captained the team to the All-Ireland title.

At club level O'Brien was a three-time county club championship medalist with St Mary's.

Musical career

A long-time amateur musician, in 1962 O'Brien became a professional musician when his band the Clubmen went professional; O'Brien played the piano accordion for the band rather than the more typical Irish button accordion. Dermot O'Brien and the Clubmen had considerable musical success, with their hit single "The Merry Ploughboy" (a cover of a Jeremiah Lynch/Dominic Behan song about joining the Irish Republican Army) reaching the top of the Irish Singles Chart in only seven days and holding that position for six weeks in late 1966. The single was rushed to market to compete with a Top 100-ranking cover of the same song by the Abbey Tavern Singers.

In the late 1960s, O'Brien began his own RTÉ show called The Styles of O'Brien.

In 2018, Brown University students started a Dermot O'Brien appreciation club.

Personal life

In 1962, Dermot married Rosemarie Walshe of Ballinacurra, Limerick City. Rosemarie died in New York in 2005.

References

(27 May 2007). "Obituaries: Dermot O'Brien". [[Irish Independent]].
(30 November 2007). "Friends we lost". [[Hogan Stand]].
(23 May 2007). "Tributes pour in for GAA singing legend Dermot". [[Irish Independent]].
[[Billboard charts. (8 October 1966). "Billboard". Nielsen Business Media, Inc..
[[Billboard charts. (7 June 1969). "Billboard". Nielsen Business Media, Inc..

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

1933-births 2007-deaths all-ireland–winning-captains-(football) irish-male-accordionists louth-inter-county-gaelic-footballers musicians-from-county-louth people-from-ardee rté-people st-mary's-(louth)-gaelic-footballers 20th-century-irish-accordionists 20th-century-irish-male-musicians

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