Carmel Quinn, Irish Singer and Storyteller, Dies at 95

Carmel Quinn, Irish Singer and Storyteller, Dies at 95

The New York Times-Arts·2021-03-15 06:03

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The Irish-born singer Carmel Quinn gave an annual St. Patrick’s Day benefit concert at Carnegie Hall for a quarter-century. Credit...Carnegie Hall Susan W. Rose Archives

Carmel Quinn, a blue-eyed, flame-haired Irish singer and storyteller who packed Carnegie Hall on St. Patrick’s Day for a quarter-century and regaled her audiences with tunes and tales from the Old Country, died on March 6 at her home in Leonia, N.J. She was 95.

The cause was pneumonia, her family said.

Ms. Quinn, who was born and raised in Dublin, came to the United States in 1954 and won an audition on “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” the next year. Those auditions were famous for their rigor: Others who passed them included Pat Boone, Tony Bennett and Connie Francis; those who flunked included Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly.

Ms. Quinn became a regular on another Godfrey television show, “Arthur Godfrey and His Friends,” for six years while rotating through other popular variety shows of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, including “The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom,” “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Mike Douglas Show” and many more. Much later, she showed up on “Live With Regis and Kathie Lee.”

With the gift of gab and a voice that some compared to Judy Garland’s, she performed at the White House, first for John F. Kennedy and then for Lyndon B. Johnson.

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