Mary Black's crystal clear voice is an instrument of uncommon beauty and expressiveness. Her gifts as an interpreter of both folk and contemporary material have made her a major recording artist in her native Ireland. Named "Best Irish Female Artiste" in the Irish Recorded Music Awards Poll (IRMA) two years running, Mary Black is one of those rare talents who crosses musical boundaries effortlessly and makes every song she performs her own.
Black's musical roots run deep. Her father, a fiddle player from a small island off the North coast of Ireland [Rathlein], and mother, who sang in the dance halls of Dublin, gave their five children a real love of music. At age eight, Mary was singing folk songs her brother [Shay] taught her. As she grew older, she began to perform with her siblings in small Dublin clubs for the fun of it. The joy of singing led her into a full-fledged career. Her next step was to join General Humbert, a folk band which toured Europe and released a pair of albums in the late 1970s. (see discography for album details).
In 1982 she joined forces with musician/producer Declan Sinnott to record her first solo album, Mary Black. The LP reached number 4 on the Irish charts and earned her a gold album in Ireland; it was honored in 1983 with the Irish Independent Arts Award for Music, and is ranked among the best Irish albums of the early 1980s. Shortly afterward, Black became a member of the folk group DeDannan (see discography for recording details) and toured extensively in Europe and the U.S. The DeDanann album Anthem, won an Irish Album Of The Year award. Black also continued her solo career, releasing her Collected LP in 1984 and Without the Fanfare in 1985, an album which took her in a more contemporary musical direction. "I started in folk music," she says, "but never felt there should be any boundaries in music. Fortunately, here in Ireland there's an openness about music that allows you to step outside of categories." In 1986, she received the Entertainer of the Year award in Ireland.
Black's expanding solo career and other commitments led to her departure from DeDannan in 1986, which set the stage for By The Time it Gets Dark, her first multi-platinum Irish album after three gold albums. 1987 and 1988 saw Mary Black voted the Best Female Artiste in the Irish Recorded Music Awards Poll.
Mary's No Frontiers album was released in Ireland in August, 1989, went straight to the top of the Irish album charts (where it stayed on the Irish Top 30 for 56 weeks), and achieved triple platinum status. Meanwhile, Mary Black's music had become known to a select but growing audience in America, thanks to several tours and public radio airplay of her imported albums. When No Frontiers was released in the U.S. in June, 1990, enthusiastic reaction from public/college/alternative radio was immediate...audio stores discovered No Frontiers was ideal to demonstrate their audio equipment... America discovered "Columbus" (the lead track from No Frontiers) and Mary Black became a hit NAC recording artist. Critical response to her spring 1991 tour removed any doubt as to Mary Black's destiny in America
