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Ronnie Drew, the gravelly voiced folk singer and guitarist who founded the Irish group the Dubliners and also sang with the Pogues and other rock bands, died on Saturday in Dublin. He was 73.
Mr. Drew, who had throat cancer, died in St. Vincent’s Private Hospital, his family said in a statement.
Known for his distinctive long white beard and deep voice, Mr. Drew and three other musicians Luke Kelly, Ciaran Bourke and Barney McKenna became the original members of the Ronnie Drew Group in 1962. Unhappy with the name, Mr. Drew changed it to the Dubliners, after the novel by James Joyce, which Mr. Kelly was reading at the time.
The group got started singing in Irish pubs, accompanied by Mr. Drew on Spanish guitar, which he learned while teaching English in Spain during the 1950s. He spent two stints with the Dubliners, from 1962 to 1974 and again from 1979 to 1995.
The Dubliners became widely known in Europe, as well as the United States, for bold versions of traditional Irish folk songs.
“You can take the hardest rock band on the earth and they sound like a bunch of girls next to the Dubliners,” Bono, the lead singer of U2, once said of the group.
Two of the group’s earliest hits, released in 1967, were folk songs: “Black Velvet Band,” which describes the deportation of a tradesman to Australia, and “Seven Drunken Nights,” a bawdy tale whose last two verses were considered too indelicate for public broadcast, leading to a ban by Irish radio. Regardless, the hits earned the band a spot on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1968.
Mr. Drew, a teetotaler in later life, was as well known in Ireland for his drinking antics and sharp quips as his music. Liam Collins, writing in The Belfast Telegraph on Tuesday, recalled a story told by Mr. Drew’s son, Phelim, about the morning the singer stopped into an empty pub for a co*cktail. The bar’s only other patron looked at Mr. Drew and remarked, “I thought you were off the drink.”
“I am,” Mr. Drew replied, “but I have a gin and tonic every now and again. I find it helps me to mind my own business. Would you like one?”
Told that Michael Flatley, a founder of Riverdance, earned £1 million a week, Mr. Drew was asked what he would do if he took in a similar amount. “Work two weeks and then stop,” he said, according to Mr. Collins.
Mr. Drew was born Sept. 16, 1934, in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, south of Dublin. His wife, Dierdre McCartan, whom he married in 1963, died last year, and he was buried next to her on Tuesday in Greystones, County Wicklow. In addition to his son, he is survived by a daughter, Cliodhna, and five grandchildren.
In 1987 Mr. Drew and the Dubliners linked up with the Pogues, a group best known for blending traditional Irish and punk music, to record a fast-moving version of “The Irish Rover,” which became a British hit.
Earlier this year the Irish music world paid tribute to Mr. Drew in another hit song, “The Ballad of Ronnie Drew,” with proceeds benefiting the Irish Cancer Society. The ensemble included U2, members of the Dubliners, Bob Geldof, Andrea Corr, Sinead O’Connor and Glen Hansard, the Oscar-winning composer, who phoned in his section of the song while on tour.
Mr. Drew, by then bald, his distinctive hair lost to chemotherapy treatments, looked on with delight as members of the ensemble performed the song on Irish television.
In a statement Saturday on U2’s Web site, U2.com, Bono said that Mr. Drew “has left his earthly tour for one of the heavens,” adding: “They need him up there. It’s a little too quiet and pious.”
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