Columnist Jerry Fink: Irish band survives changing Las Vegas

Friday, Aug. 17, 2001 | 9:37 a.m.

Jerry Fink's lounge column appears on Fridays. Reach him at 259-4058 or jerry@ lasvegassun.com.

Bill Fuller.

Brendan Bowyer tossed out the name during a conversation just before the legendary Irish Show Band performed the first of two sets one night last week in the lounge at Lady Luck. The group will be there through Sunday.

It took a moment for me to realize who Bill Fuller was, but then it struck me. I didn't recognize the name immediately because it was out of place.

Bill Fuller is more familiar when mentioned in the same breath as Sandy Murphy, convicted last year (along with Rick Tabish) for the 1998 murder of Ted Binion.

Fuller is an 84-year-old Irishman who took a liking to Murphy and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for her defense, and is now paying for an appeal of the conviction.

He also took a liking to Bowyer and his band when they were popular in Ireland in the late '50s and early '60s.

"We were pretty well-known in Ireland," Bowyer, 60, said. "We had a couple of hit records, but nothing in the United States."

Fuller, who made a fortune in mining and real-estate development, liked the band well enough to bring them to America.

"He built Irish centers in New York, Chicago and Boston, and in the early '60s, long before we came to Vegas, he brought us to the United States to perform in the (shopping) centers," Bowyer said.

At the time, Bowyer said, Fuller was married to an Irish singer, Carmell Quinn, a popular guest on the Arthur Godfrey show in the 1950s.

Through Quinn and Fuller, Bowyer and his group (then known as the Big Eight) became acquainted with producers Frank and Rocky Sennes. The Sennes brothers re-dubbed the band the Royal Irish Show Band and brought it to Las Vegas in 1967 to perform in lounges at the Desert Inn and Stardust.

"They were under the same management," Bowyer said. "We did four weeks at the Desert Inn, and in January 1968 we played the Stardust."

They performed in the lounge at the Stardust six months a year for seven years. When they weren't booked into the lounge, they toured Ireland.

"The Stardust had a fine lounge in those days, a mini-theater, as most lounges were," Bowyer said.

But then sports handicapper Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal became entertainment director at the Stardust, and in 1976 turned the lounge into a sports book.

The Irish Show Band played through the waning years of the mob era. From the Stardust they went to the Aladdin, where they were based for about four years.

"Then, a lot of the management at the Aladdin went to jail and the casino went into receivership," Bowyer said.

The band went to the Barbary Coast, where it performed until 1990, when management decided to reduce the size of the lounge and the Irishmen were without a permanent venue for the first time in almost 25 years.

The group limped along for a couple of years, getting short-term gigs at places such as the Showboat (now Castaways) and the Four Queens.

"The new corporations didn't have much interest in the lounge acts, and once we lost the residency situation it was hard to keep the group together," Bowyer said. "So that was the end of that. Guys went their different ways."

Bowyer, who lives in Las Vegas, struck out on his own but did well enough to live in semi-retirement the past several years.

Then, three years ago, he said for some reason there was a renewed interest in him and his Irish music and he started getting more calls for gigs all over the world.

Earlier this year Bowyer released an album with alumni of Van Morrison's band. The CD, "Follow On," is not yet available in this country.

In March he completed a tour in Australia with his daughter, Aisling (pronounced Ashling), who is performing at Harrah's in Reno.

Bowyer said he was surprised when he received a call from Lady Luck for the current gig, the first time he has been together with former members of the band for several years.

The band has been playing before standing-room-only audiences for the past month.

Unfortunately, there is only room for 50 people in the lounge, which doesn't make for much of a crowd.

But Bowyer's booming Irish tenor voice expands the venue's boundaries to the entire casino, where slot-machine junkies mouth the words to the popular ballads while dropping quarters into slots.

As Bowyer and his group belt out their songs, passers-by stopp and listen and hum along, mesmerized by the entertainers who appear to be having as much fun as the people they entertain.

Fans of all nationalities and ethnic backgrounds become Irish while listening to the Irish Show Band.

Thank you, Bill Fuller.

Lounging around

Catch Trout at the Railhead Thursday night. That would be blues guitarist Walter Trout, described by the Los Angeles Times as "a torrential, gladiator guitar player -- the kind the term 'guitar hero' was coined to describe." Every Thursday is Blues Night at Boulder Station's Railhead, where some of the best blues musicians in the country may be heard for free. Showtime is 8 p.m. For information call 432-7777.