The Miami Showband

The Miami Showband
The Miami Showband lineup in early 1975 L-R: Tony Geraghty, Fran O'Toole, Ray Millar, Des Lee, Brian McCoy, Stephen Travers
Background information
Origin	Dublin, Ireland
Genres	Pop, country
Years active	1962–1982 Intermittent later reunions
Associated acts	Dickie Rock

The Miami Showband were one of the most successful and popular showbands in Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s. Led at first by singer Dickie Rock, and later by Fran O'Toole, they had seven number one records on the Irish singles chart. In 1975 during The Troubles, when returning from a performance in County Down, Northern Ireland, three members of the band, Fran O'Toole, Tony Geraghty, and Brian McCoy, were killed in what became known as the "Miami Showband massacre".

The band was established in Dublin in 1962 by impresario Tom Doherty. He recruited an existing group, the Downbeats Quartet, comprising Joe Tyrell (piano), Tony Bogan (drums), Clem Quinn (guitar), and Martin Phelan (saxophone), and augmented them with singer Dickie Rock (at the time, a member of another group, the Melochords), trumpeter Tommy O'Rourke, trombonist and vocalist Murty Quinn, and bass player Denis Murray. The group's first engagement was at the Palm Beach Ballroom in Portmarnock, and so they were named the Miami Showband. They rapidly became one of the top showbands in the country, and their first single, a version of the Elvis Presley album track "There's Always Me" reached number one in the Irish charts in December 1963. They had four further number one hits over the next two years: "I'm Yours" and "From the Candy Store on the Corner" (both 1964), and "Every Step of the Way" and "Wishing It Was You" (both 1965). "Every Step of the Way" was the first song by an Irish artist to go straight in as a number one single in the Irish charts. In 1966, they were chosen to sing Ireland's entry in the Eurovision Song Contest, and their song "Come Back To Stay" also reached the top of the charts. They also appeared on British TV, on Sunday Night at the London Palladium and Thank Your Lucky Stars.