Hearing about the turnouts at the recent funerals of both Joe Longthorne (well-known nationally, but HUGE in Yorkshire) and Brendan Grace (again, in these circles known for Father Ted, but in Ireland, BELOVED to the point a street is to be renamed in his honour)
https://www.discogs.com/Various-BBC-Radio-Merseyside-The-Hits-You-Couldnt-Get/release/6699712 Reminded of this BBC Radio Merseyside compilation.
Full of local stars, mainly Irish showband people my father will watch, roar at you when you give an opinion, "how do you know that?". Yesterday, he got shirty when I started to overanalyse stetson-hatted Galwegian Mike Denver murder the already godawful Racey's Some Girls (no, really) in a strange zydeco-faux-country manner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1mJvT-tpOA, A few B-sides from US names. Daniel O'Donnell's Medal for Mothers (basically, O'Donnell is the Irish Longthorne but without the vocal dexterity), and a few I have never heard of. David Alexander seems to have been a Colin Welland-ish Welsh bloke who was jealous of Tom Jones, despite being a decade older than Jones, and started much later. Tony Stephens intrigues me. A reasonably popular Irish singer, who perhaps account of his utterly generic name, barely anything shows up on google.
Rose Marie I know from Shooting Stars, but seems to have been ostracised from the Irish country community bar the odd bit on BBC NI