And that’s what led most of the family to sing and perform throughout the years.”įeeney was born to an Irish-American family in Grand Island, Neb., and as a child sang in the church choir.
“He loved it,” Tim Feeney said of the singing. His last performance was in Syracuse, N.Y., in December. “When you have 10 kids, even in those days, things were expensive,” said another son, Sean Feeney of La Costa. He performed at venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to Disneyland, in part to support a big family. “He came home and never told us he sang for the president.” “We knew him as dad,” Tim Feeney said in a telephone interview Tuesday from his home in San Diego. He sang for five presidents at the White House and for Pope Paul VI in 1975 at the Vatican, according to his Web site. The shows are still broadcast on public television stations.įeeney also had a rich career away from the show. “He never smoked a day in his life” and the family believes he may have contracted the illness from decades of performing in smoky casinos and nightclubs, his son said.įrom 1957 to 1982, Feeney was the featured tenor on the Welk show, which offered easy-listening “champagne music” and clean-cut, family oriented songs. The elder Feeney lived in San Marcos in San Diego County, He was 76.įeeney died of emphysema on April 16 at a hospice in Carlsbad, Calif., son Tim Feeney said. Joe Feeney, a Nebraska-born tenor who crooned “Danny Boy” and other standards for 25 years on “The Lawrence Welk Show,” has died.
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