For the generations of Irish singers that followed her, Bridie Gallagher was a flag carrier, a pioneer, and, to many of them, a veritable saint.
In the second half of the 1950s, she established an international career unparalleled for an Irish singer since the glory days of John McCormack earlier in the century.
More familiarly known as ‘The Girl from Donegal’ or ‘The Girl with a Tear in her Voice’, she came to fame in 1956 with her first single, A Mother’s Love’s a Blessing, its peculiar blend of heart-on-sleeve sincerity and maudlin Irish sentimentality proving a potent mix. Later singles such as the signature The Boys From The County Armagh, Moonlight in Mayo, and Homes of Donegal cemented her position in the vanguard of Irish singers who spoke not just to the country’s widely dispersed diaspora, but also introduced Irish popular music to a wider audience and laid the foundations for a renaissance of folk, traditional and country-infused music that would bloom in the 1960s and beyond.
Appearances in Britain quickly followed, including Sunday Night at the London Palladium on television, and at the Royal Albert Hall (where she established a house record with an audience of 7,500), before the US, Australia and even greater success beckoned.
She also hosted her own radio show on RTE in her native Ireland, and continued to perform into her late 50s, singing live in public for the last time at the An Grianan Theatre in Letterkenny in 2000.
Born in Creeslough, County Donegal, on September 7, 1924, she had lived in Belfast for the greater part of her adult life, where she died, aged 87, on January 9
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