'Banjo' Barney McKenna, Irish folk legend

DUBLIN -- "Banjo" Barney McKenna, the last original member of the Irish folk band The Dubliners, died yesterday while having a morning cup of tea with a friend. He was 72 and had just marked his 50th year with the troupe.

Irish classical guitarist Michael Howard, who was with McKenna when he died, said he was talking with his longtime friend at his kitchen table when "all of a sudden Barney's head dropped down to his chest. It looked as if he'd nodded off."

McKenna was considered the most influential banjo player in Irish folk music. He spent a half-century performing, recording and touring with the band ever since its 1962 creation in the Dublin pub O'Donoghue's. The other three founders -- Ronnie Drew, Ciaran Bourke and Luke Kelly -- died in 2008, 1988 and 1984, respectively.

McKenna completed a United Kingdom tour with The Dubliners last month and performed Wednesday night at a Dublin funeral. Howard, who also performed there and drove McKenna home afterward, said his friend performed "absolutely beautifully. When he finished there was a spontaneous, thunderous round of applause in the church."

Born in Dublin in 1939, McKenna tried to join the Irish army band but was rejected because of bad eyesight. He busked in the streets and pubs of the capital and developed a reputation as an innovative performer on a specially tuned, four-stringed tenor banjo, then a virtually unknown instrument in Ireland that he made an Irish folk favorite.

The gravel-voiced Drew recruited him to Friday night "sessions" -- impromptu barside concerts -- at O'Donoghue's, a diminutive pub so famously packed that its barmen had to stand on stepstools to take orders. It soon gained a reputation as the country's top venue for live folk music.

Many noted how McKenna always made time to help younger musicians learn the tenor banjo.

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"His influence on and generosity to other instrumentalists was immense," said Irish President Michael D. Higgins, who saw McKenna perform last month.

His wife, Joka, died 28 years ago and the couple had no children.

McKenna lived alone in the upscale fishing port of Howth, and he spent spare time tinkering with his boat and fishing on the Irish Sea.