Lyrics In Conversation with Bobbie Hanvey, Pt. 3: Talking About a Surprise Number One - Susan McCann

And then we got married on the first of September 1971
And then I got a job in Newry
Just as a hairdresser in Venus hairdressing Salon in Newry
And that was it, we had our two children, and we had a group going
And the two of us had left John Murphy's band
And we had a group called The Fairylanders
And the group was, I'll tell you what the group was
Dennis had a bass drum in front of him
And I had a tambourine, and he had the accordion
That was the group when we started off first

We were going out for a meal
Dennis and I, for our fifth wedding anniversary
1976 then
Aha, that's exactly 1976
And we went to the Ardmore Hotel
And Philomena Begley had a cabaret show in it that night

She can work a stage
Ah yea, Philly's great, brilliant
I said, I said to Dennis, erm
"I'd give my right arm to be able to do what she is doing"
She had a fabulous band behind her

And Dennis said, "But you know what Susan, if you had a band"
Like I knew Philomena from the Old Cross
She was about the same time as the John Murphy days
And he said, "If you had a band as good as that, you could do that"
But he said, "That's a serious band"

We were about to leave the show that night
I wanted to go up to say hello to her, and we were about to leave the show
And I bumped into Tony Loughman, haven't seen him in years
And he was managing Philomena, and he just asked me
"Are you doing any singing now?" I said, "Just doing a bit"
I said, "Just keeping the wolf from the door, you know"

So he gave me a telephone number, he said, "Give me a ring on Monday"
He said, "I'll get a few dates for you around Monaghan and that sort of thing"
He said, "Sure you'd be known around there from the John Murphy days"
'Cause I was only playing locally here in Newry
And sure enough, true to his word, I rang him and the rest is history, it went from there

The song that made you known internationally, Susan
Was Big Tom is Still the King, and he still is (he is)
How fast did it accelerate your career?

Tony Loughman, the man that he was, and the great vision that he had
He would always tell you what to sing
There was this guy in Galway, his name is Michael Commins
And he had written a song
The original of this song was one called, Bob Wills is still the King
And he took the air of the song, and the story of the song, type of thing
But changed it to Big Tom
He was a huge Big Tom fan, so he changed the story to the Big Tom thing
And because Big Tom was so popular at the time I went in and recorded it
And it made number one in the charts in Ireland