Butch Moore

Butch Moore (10 January 1938 - 3 April 2001) was an Irish singer. He was born James Augustine Moore in Dublin and was a showband icon during the 1960s. He achieved celebrity status as Ireland's first contestant in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1965 and attracted huge crowds with the Capitol Showband in the State's many ballrooms. Butch Moore was at the height of his success, when he won the National Song Contest to represent Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest 1965, in Naples, singing Walking the Streets in the Rain. The song reached number one on the Irish Singles Chart, but failed to chart in the UK.

He played with a number of bands before securing his big break with the Capitol Showband in 1958. Its line-up included band leader, Des Kelly, and Paddy Cole, who is still involved in the entertainment business, and an early songwriter for the band was Phil Coulter. The Capitol achieved a considerable degree of success in the early 1960s. It toured America in 1961, and two years later became the first showband to appear on the new RTÉ television service. The Capitol played in the London Palladium in 1964 on a night when the lineup included Roy Orbison.

As the lead singer with the Capitol Showband, he rivalled the Royal Showband's Brendan Bowyer as Ireland's most popular showband vocalist. When his career went into a decline, he emigrated to the United States in 1970, where he spent the last 31 years of his life.

Butch Moore married Irish ballad singer Maeve Mulvany (born 1945) in 1972 in the United States. They formed a very successful group known as "Butch N Maeve" with a mixture of ballads and pop. They also owned a pub in Massachusetts named after a song they sang "The Parting Glass". They had three children, Rory, Tara and Thomas. Butch died of a heart attack on 3 April 2001 and Maeve on 14 February 2004; she had planned to move back to Ireland where she had bought a house in Cormeen, County Meath.

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