Old Concertinqa Recordings

[Lawrence Reeves]

I am searching for any vintage recordings of the concertina players of Clare. Tom Carey primarily, but others like Gerald Haugh would be great. John Kelly Sr. on Topic. LP, cassette, Wav files, CD all welcomed.

[Guest Peter Laban]

Just a few examples:

 

Micho Doyle Of Spanish Point playing The Mt Phoebus Hunt, fragment (first playing omitted), from the 1970s I would guess, private recording

 

Mary Haren of Clooneyogan, Miltown Malbay playing The Heather Breeze, early 60s, BBC recording

 

Not from Clare but what he heck: Mary Ann Carolan from Westmeath playing Off she goes, private recording 1970s

 

before I get overrun with people asking, yes I have whole tapes, no I can't supply them. I posted them for a different purpose/discussion on another forum. I link them here for your entertainment.

Edited March 9, 2006 by Peter Laban

[Dan Worrall]

Just a few examples:

 

Micho Doyle Of Spanish Point playing The Mt Phoebus Hunt, fragment (first playing omitted), from the 1970s I would guess, private recording

 

Mary Haren of Clooneyogan, Miltown Malbay playing The Heather Breeze, early 60s, BBC recording

 

Not from Clare but what he heck: Mary Ann Carolan from Westmeath playing Off she goes, private recording 1970s

 

before I get overrun with people asking, yes I have whole tapes, no I can't supply them. I posted them for a different purpose/discussion on another forum. I link them here for your entertainment.

Peter,

 

You have made my day many times over. Thank you!!

Micho Doyle was my granduncle. I grew up in Texas and didn't get the chance to go to Ireland until after he had already passed on. Junior Creehan told me that he played a lot with Micho in the old days, for the dances in and around Mullagh. Junior taught me a few tunes he used to play with Micho (Junior could play the concertina in addition to the fiddle), but I never had a recording of Micho. A cousin of Junior had one, but died before I got a copy from him. So you can imagine my delight at reading your post! Do you have any others?

I remember meeting Micho's widow in the late seventies, and she showed me the old concertina he had...a simple german two row, with double (octave) reeds and green cardboard bellows. She told me he never liked the sound of what he called "English" concertinas (meaning Jeffries etc), as that this is what concertinas sounded like in his day. Stephen Chambers tells a similar story about an old player he knows there.

 

Lawrence, have you tried the organization in Dublin...I think it is called something like the Irish Music Archives or something like that; it should be easy to research the name through the Irish folk music societites. They are building some sizeable collections of vintage recordings, although I couldn't make copies when I visited them. Also, I do have some of home-made concertina cassette tapes from the late seventies/early eighties when visiting with Junior Creehan, Chris Droney, Tommy McCarthy, Sonny Murray, and Tommy McMahon. Most are deeply buried in my attic and would be trouble to excavate and digitize, but if you really needed any of them, I might be able to help. Most of these folks are freely available on commercial recordings however...Neil Wayne was a godsend for that.

[JohnEverist]

for a couple of relatively recent recordings of Tom Carey go here:

 

Walsh's Pub

 

The last set is Mr. Carey playing solo. If anyone has the name of the second tune here (after Sgt. Early's Dream) I'd appreciate getting it. I've been playing it for a couple of years as Tom Carey's . It sounds a lot like Devil Amongst the Tailors to me.

 

Back to Lurking,

 

John