When Joe contacted me, he was 82 years old and had been retired for many years, after a 40-year career as an electrical engineer, book author, teacher and lecturer on electrical engineering technology. He spent 40-years with the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company as director of their electrical publications, having authored 31 books on electrical technology and has travelled all over the US and Europe conducting engineering seminars and conferences. "I first met Joe in the early 50s when he came to New York to do a concert at Carnegie Hall. I enjoyed him so much, that I ordered all of his records (78rpm) from Christopher Dean Records Ltd. in London. Then on a vacation trip to Ireland in 1976, I met Joe again and sang with him at the Teac Furbo Ballad Hall in Spideal, a suburb of Galway City. By that time, I had been singing his songs for about 25 years and we hit it off great. I sang with him again on that trip, at the Gleneagle Country Club in Killarney and he wanted me to team up with him and do a concert tour. But for me, that was not at all a possibility because of my dedication to my own business career in the US. I last looked in on Joe in about 1994, when he was living in Edenderry, Co. Offaly, and recovering from back surgery." "I have been singing in public since I was a 10-year old boy growing up in the Bronx, New York City, where I was born. But I have never done it as a main activity or as a source of income. Although I continued to sing in many different public venues over the course of my business career, I did not make any recordings until about 10 years ago. In my retirement, at the urging of my nine sons, I began recording and have made eight CD albums, some of them also on cassette tapes.  "All of my singing activity has been done purely and simply for my love of the songs, their music and their sentiments."