With a successful music career spanning four decades, Irish singer Red Hurley has the inside scoop on show business. But what's truly remarkable is that his latest act is turning out to be his greatest. This week he tells CAHIR O'DOHERTY how he signed up with Sony BMG for no less than five new albums.

WHEN Red Hurley moved from Ireland to his new home near Clearwater, Florida in the 1990s he must have thought that his four decades long singing career had reached a nice cruising altitude. Things were going well. He had recently released a successful album, his concerts were in demand and the road ahead was clear.

But all that comfortable coasting came to an abrupt end when he decided to play a concert at Dublin's famous Olympia Theatre last year. Unusually, the tickets sold out the day they went on sale.

So, thinking to avoid disappointing his fans, he added another night, and it sold out, too. So he added another, and then another. It didn't take him long to realize that there was something in the air.

But this sudden new spike in Hurley's popularity can't have been a complete surprise to him; he's been a star for decades. The truth is when they write the history of Ireland's showband era, Red Hurley will be the one uncontested superstar that those far off years, the sixties and seventies, produced.

Touring every night with one of Ireland's top bands - the Nevada Showband - in the early seventies, Hurley paid his dues traveling the length and breadth of Ireland on a schedule that left little room for glamour offstage.

This was in the era before seatbelts, breathalyzers and spot tests, so it's no surprise how many showband members were involved in road accidents or simply burned out over those halcyon years. Late nights and drinking sessions and the rocky road back to Dublin took their toll on many performers, and in some cases even cost them their lives.

Hurley saw all the highs and the lows of that period, but his own good sense and commitment above all to the music kept him on the straight and narrow.

Having represented Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1976, Hurley became a household name, with the show giving him the kind of exposure he needed to tour Europe and the U.S. The winning formula of Irish standards crossed with ballads and chart hits drew the crowds and cemented his reputation from day one.

"For as long as I can remember I was singing," Hurley told the Irish Voice this week. "From the time I was two or three. I sang in all the choirs in school and when I was 18 I joined the Dublin Grand Opera Society and then I joined my first band. I don't think I even realized how passionate I was about it - I just wanted to be a singer."

Home in those days was Milltown, a leafy suburb of south Dublin. Hurley's father was a trumpet player and a musician, playing in the Pembroke Orpheus, a well-known Dublin orchestra. Because of this Hurley grew up listening to classical music and grand opera.

"We were listening to Puccini and Verdi without realizing who they were. But we knew Madame Butterfly before we were five," Hurley recalls.

Remarkably, Hurley's ascent to national and international pop stardom was enviably painless - but even four decades later no one is more surprised than he is to learn that his singles have spent an impressive 140 weeks on the Irish charts.

Admitting that his one and only ambition was to be a singer, he feels the success may have come because he refused to give up.

"I think I got lucky real quick and had a hit record and 10 number ones after that. And it helped both me personally and professionally - because if the artist is enjoying the work you can certainly hear it in the recording, you know?"

But the fact is the last 10 years of Hurley's career have easily been the most professionally rewarding of his life. His albums have been selling well and he was recently asked to tape a show for PBS, the nationwide network which has seen a resurgence of interest in Irish music and singers and have programmed for it accordingly.

Featuring tracks taken from an ambitious 36-song set, the majority of Hurley's shows will air on PBS this March in segments that are guaranteed crowd pullers for both Hurley and the network.

Agreeing that there's has always been tremendous public interest in Irish programming on PBS/Channel 13 in New York, Kent Steele the executive director of broadcasting at the station told the Irish Voice, "Irish programming is both popular and profitable for the station and they provide some of our most successful fund raising drives. I don't see the Irish musicians many more places than with us, and we are more than happy to provide a forum for them."

But first though, there's the matter of his new album, Raised on Songs and Stories, which is scheduled to be released here on March 4.

"The new album will mix it up. I have selected some Irish traditional tacks, and some tracks from the Great American songbook and possibly some from Broadway, too."

Two years ago Hurley performed the entire Phantom of the Opera for Irish broadcaster RTE with a full concert orchestra. It was, he says, a terrific experience and it also demonstrates his powerful range.

Fans can also expect him to test that vocal range when he performs at Manhattan's prestigious Symphony Space on March 14.

"I'm constantly recording. The songs of Cole Porter and George Gershwin are classics that are still gems, still beautiful to sing and I'll gravitate toward them next," he says.

"From operatic to jazz to pop to Irish traditional, I'll try to tackle it all. And where else would you want to be but New York during the St. Patrick's week?"

At a time when the music industry is fighting massive loss of revenues and cutbacks due illegal downloading and industry wide shakeups, it's a tribute to Sony BMG's faith in Hurley that they have signed him for no less than five new albums. Clearly they expect to see lucrative returns on their investment, and there's no question Irish and American audiences are ready and waiting.

For Red Hurley, all the renewed public interest in his career and in the musical styles he works in are a welcome if surprising new development, but he's more than ready to respond.

"The last few years have been remarkable, how my career has seemed to resurrect itself out of the blue," he says.

"Although I've been reasonably busy and working all the time from the point of view of my career, in the last two years it hit the stratosphere. I'm grateful and surprised and I just want to make sure the album and the concerts are as good as I can make them."