DUBLIN - "Banjo" Barney McKenna, the last original member of the Irish folk band The Dubliners, died Thursday 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." Howard said paramedics over the phone talked him through emergency revival procedures, but McKenna "was pretty much gone."
"The comfort that I take from it is, he passed away very peacefully sitting at his own breakfast table having a quiet cup of tea and a chat," Howard said.
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.
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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 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.
