Born in 1933 in Chapelizod, a village by the banks of the Liffey, Frank
Harte died of a heart attack at his Dublin home on June 27. He was 72
years of age. An architect by trade, Frank Harte was renowned and beloved as a Singer and collector of Irish narrative songs, many of them from or about his native Dublin. Possessing the finest instincts of a historian, archivist, and conservator, Harte expressed his fascination with and deep knowledge of Ireland's cultural past through singing and more than 24,000 songs he accumulated. For him, the past always reached out to the present in the songs he found or sang. "Those in power write the history," he often remarked, "and those who suffer write the songs, and given our history, we have an awful lot of songs."
Franks final project was as usual a heartfelt endeavour and it was important to him to finish this cd, which he did in the weeks before we lost this man, who has rightly been described as 'a national treasure'. It's a collection of songs about navvies (canal, construction, and other labourers) entitled "There's Gangs of Them Digging." Christy Moore, Mairead ni Dhomhnaill and Altan were among the musicians who performed at Frank Harte's funeral on July 1 2004. Now three years later and coinciding with the anniversary of his death, The Daisy Label is releasing Frank's last album.