Josef Locke

In 1992 the Peter Chelsom film Hear My Song was released, a fantasy based on the notion of Locke returning from his Irish exile to complete an old love affair and save a Liverpool-based Irish night-club from ruination, with Locke played by Ned Beatty. The album went on to become McDonald's first major hit since the 1980s. Kildare, emerging for the occasional charity concert and reappearing in Blackpool in 1968, making his last public appearance in the 1970s. In 2003, he returned to national consciousness when several tracks from his Motown album, a collection of covers of classic Motown songs, were used in television commercials for MCI's local phone service, The Neighborhood. When his differences with the tax people were eventually settled, Locke retired to Co. As it turned out, McDonald's solo work was a cross between the Doobie Brothers' white-bread soul and Cross' adult contemporary ballads. Eventually he fled the country for Ireland, where he lay low for several years. Prior to the Doobies' farewell tour in 1982, he sang harmony on several hit singles, including tracks by Donna Summer, Toto, Kenny Loggins, and Christopher Cross.

In 1958 after appearing in five Royal Variety Performances, and while still at the peak of his career, the British tax authorities began to make substantial demands that Locke declined to meet. He was largely responsible for moving the group away from boogie rock and toward polished, jazzy blue-eyed soul. His other songs were mostly a mixture of Irish ballads such as I'll take you home again Kathleen, Dear old Donegal and Galway Bay, excerpts from operettas including The Drinking song, My Heart and I, and Goodbye, along with familiar Italian favourites such as Come back to Sorrento and Cara Mia. After singing backup on several Steely Dan albums in the mid-'70s, Michael McDonald joined the Doobie Brothers in 1975. In 1947, too, Locke released Hear my song, Violetta, which became forever associated with him. He initially essayed his signature style with The Doobie Brothers, ushering in the group's most popular period with hits like "What a Fool Believes" and "Taking It to the Streets." McDonald disbanded the group in 1982 to pursue a solo career, which was initially quite successful, but by the end of the decade his popularity had faded, since he preferred to tour rather than record new material and was hesitant to update his sound to suit shifting popular tastes. He was signed to the Columbia label in 1947, and his first releases were the two Italian songs Santa Lucia and Come back to Sorrento. McDonald found the middle ground between blue-eyed soul and smooth soft rock, a sound that made him a star.

He made his first radio broadcast in 1949, and subsequently appeared on TV programmes such as Rooftop Rendezvous, Top of the Town, All-star Bill and The Frankie Howerd Show. Louis, Missouri) became one of the most distinctive and popular vocalists to emerge from the laid-back California pop/rock scene of the late '70s. The renowned Irish tenor John McCormack (1894-1948) advised him that his voice was better suited to a lighter repertoire than the operatic one he had in mind, and urged him to find an agent -- thus he found the noted impresario Jack Hylton (1892-1965) who booked him, but couldn't fit his full name on the bill, thus Joseph McLaughlin became Josef Locke. With his husky, soulful baritone, Michael McDonald (born February 12, 1952 in St. Known as The Singing Bobby, he became a local celebrity before starting to work the UK variety circuit, where he played 19 seasons in the northern English seaside resort of Blackpool. He started singing in local churches in the Bogside at the age of seven, and as a teenager added two years to his age in order to enlist in the Irish Guards, later serving abroad with the Palestine Police, before returning in the late 1930s to join the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Born in Londonderry, now in Northern Ireland, he was the son of a butcher and cattle dealer, and one of nine children. Josef Locke was the stage name of Joseph McLaughlin (23 March 1917 - 15 October 1999), a tenor singer who was enormously popular in Britain and Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s.