John Redmond (February 25, 1906 – August 26, 1982) was an American

songwriter A songwriter is a musician who professionally composes musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music gen ...

. He was born John Redmond Lynskey and grew up in Clinton, Massachusetts. Among his better known songs was "

Christmas in Killarney "Christmas in Killarney" is an Irish-American Christmas song written by John Redmond, James Cavanaugh and Frank Weldon, copyright 1950. This song has been performed by many artists. Two recordings made the '' Billboard'' retail chart in 1950 ...

" (copyrighted 1950), co-written with James Cavanaugh and

Frank Weldon Frank Weldon ( Lawrence, Massachusetts, -1970) was an American songwriter. He wrote, or co-wrote, many popular songs of the 1930s and 1940s.Don Tyler ''Hit songs, 1900-1955: American popular music of the pre-rock era'' 2007 "Frank Weldon - Frank W ...

. In 1955, Redmond spearheaded the organization of the Religious Music Guild, along with Father Timothy Flynn, then director of radio and television for the

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York The Archdiocese of New York ( la, Archidiœcesis Neo-Eboracensis) is an ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church ( particularly the Roman Catholic or Latin Church) located in the State of New York. It encompasses the borough ...

. He subsequently devoted most of his remaining career as a songwriter to creating music for Catholic children. His Religious Music Guild produced two albums of these songs: ''Seven Songs on the Seven Sacraments'' and ''Twelve Songs on the Apostles' Creed''. For Christmas 2016 the St. Augustine Academy Press came out with the first ever compilation of the sheet music for the Religious Music Guild songs. They also issued a remastered CD from the original vinyl, including a few Religious Music Guild songs originally on 45 r.p.m. records not included on the original LPs.

References

1906 births 1982 deaths 20th-century American musicians {{US-musician-stub