“The roadies hated the load-in because it was down a narrow alleyway. But it was fairly funky when everyone was packed in and the sweat was pouring down the walls.” Barry Devlin of Horslips recalls playing at the Carlton.
“On Sunday nights we would have had twelve or thirteen hundred people in the Mayfair,” remembers John Breen, manager of the Mayfair Ballroom during the 1960s. “The pubs used to close at 10 o’clock on a Sunday night and then everybody would make their way to the Mayfair. We would have about 200 women in early but when the women started going to pubs too, there would be no one in until about 10.30. It was six shillings to get in and for that you got a night’s dancing to a live band until 2 o’clock in the morning.”
The Mayfair, in Moriarty’s yard next to the St Francis Brewery, (now the brewery’s canteen) and the Carlton (on Chapel Lane) were the main ballrooms in Kilkenny during the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. Under their roofs, the couples of Kilkenny and beyond, experienced joy, love and broken hearts as they waltzed, jitterbugged and jived in drainpipe trousers and dirndl dresses.
“I met my wife Anne in the Mayfair when I was manager,” says John, “She was Anne Dunphy from Castlecomer then and we were married in 1963.”
Before the Mayfair first opened its doors on St Stephen’s night, 1943, Desart Hall was the place to be on a Friday night.
“Desart Hall was a great place on a Friday night,” says John. “I worked in the Woollen Mills in Greenvale all week and then on Friday night I went dancing. It was all waltzes then and The Ormonde Follies were the band.”
The Mayfair Ballroom held dances on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday nights with a céilí on Monday nights.
“There were no Saturday night dances that time,” recalls John, “because Saturday was the eve of a holy day. Some of the hotels, like the Rose Hill (now Hotel Kilkenny), The Club House, The Globe and The Railway Hotel on John St, had small ballrooms but The Mayfair was the big one and people came from all over the county. It was also the place where club dinner dances were held, usually on a Wednesday night, and they went on until 4 o’clock in the morning. They would be the nurses or Macra na Feirme or other organisations. Every year, the County Dance on the night of the Kilkenny County Show was held and I remember at the bottom of the poster for the County Dance, it said, ‘Free Bicycle Park,” says John laughing. “People would cycle miles to dance at the Mayfair, then cycle all the way back home again and then get up for work the next morning.”
John was manager of the Mayfair from 1963 until 1970 and was responsible for booking the bands and organising the catering for the ballroom’s mineral and sandwich bar and supper room which overlooked the dance floor.
“There was no bar in the ballroom,” he says, “but if a club wanted a bar for their dress dance, an outside publican would come in and set up a bar for the night. He brought his own bottles; no draught.”
The ‘60s saw the arrival of the showbands and Kilkenny’s ‘Black Aces’ were the biggest band in the county. Their original line up consisted of Liam Drennan on saxophone, Sonny Cullen on bass and vocals, Seán Holland on trumpet, Arthur Connick on trombone, Tom Dullard on guitar, Jimmy Lennon on guitar and vocals, Ollie Kearney, MC and vocals, Paddy Hanrahan on vocals and John Joe Cantwell on drums.
“We started as a skiffle group in 1957,” says Black Aces leader, Liam Drennan. “A few of us from St Fiacre’s Place got together and practised the tunes of Lonie Donergan. I was the only one with a proper instrument at the time because I had been playing in orchestras and I had my saxophone. We used a washboard and thimbles for rhythm and for a bass, we took a tea chest, cut a hole in the centre of it, put a pole up the back of it and tied a string to it and played that. The string’s tautness could be adjusted to vary the sound. For drums, we had a biscuit tin and drumsticks. The drumsticks were real drumsticks,” he adds laughing. “One day a priest named, Fr Walsh heard us rehearsing in the old schoolhouse on Patrick St and asked us to play in a charity concert. We said yes, and then he asked the lads who were there to come up with a name for us. Some of the lads were playing cards and this guy, PJ O’Neill came up with, The Black Aces and that’s how we got our name.”
Playing covers of the Top 20 of the day, The Black Aces made the hits of Frankie Lane, Harry Bellifonte and the big bands of the US their own. Their popularity grew and in 1962 they toured the Irish heartlands of America.
“We played in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and the City Centre Ballroom on Broadway in New York,” says Liam, “and it was great. We did it again in 1966 and each tour lasted a month.”
The traffic was not all one way. Over the years, the Mayfair played host to a number of well-known American names including Ray Charles, The Everly Brothers, Dusty Springfield, The Tremeloes, Engelbert Humperdink, Chubby Checker and, just months before he was killed in an air crash Jim Reeves played to 1,700 people, the biggest crowd ever seen at the Mayfair.
“He had four black guys with him and they were down the front holding the crowd back using the handles of brushes,” remembers John laughing. “He had played at Tullamore earlier the same day to make it worth his while financially.”
The home-grown bands’ schedule was also pretty gruelling. The Black Aces played five-hour shows, five nights a week for many years.
“We got the body of a lorry and had it custom-built with aeroplane seats inside and ‘The Black Aces’ written on the side and top. We were travelling all over the country and doing a lot of work up north aswell. It meant we only got to play in Kilkenny about once very six months but the crowd were always brilliant and they thronged to see us. We were so young when we started; most of us weren’t even 20 years old. Of course it came to an end and I got a job in the ESB but I’m still playing. I’m with The Marble City Sounds now and we’re mostly a wedding band.”
Disco sounded the death knell for the ballrooms and The Mayfair closed in 1973 but in 1998 the brewery opened it for ‘The Last Dance at the Mayfair’, a charity concert in aid of the O’Neill Centre for which tickets sold out in a day. Once again, the walls of the Mayfair resounded to music and the floors creaked under the weight of hundreds of dancers.
Before leaving John Breen, there was the matter of the truth or otherwise of an old rumour which did the rounds in Kilkenny thirty years ago. It was said back then that if a farmer came into town on his combine, he gained free admission to the Mayfair.
“Oh, that’s a good one,” says John laughing, “but unfortunately, it’s not true.”