Taped in Johnnie Maguire's house in Belfast in 1952 by Peter Kennedy, this recording features the fiddlers Liam Donnelly, Tom Turkington, Bill Montgomery, Johnnie himself and his son Séan (who would later change his surname to McGuire). Séan also provides guitar accompaniment in places (which reminds me that I must get around to converting the old Richard Hayward 'Words and Music of Ireland' 10" LP on which Séan played the
uilleann pipes.
I recently received several obnoxious personal messages from a fellow member here who, at one point, enquired 'Surely you've some scratchy tape of a dead auld fella to be uploading?'. Well, I'm delighted to share this recording which, as far as I'm aware, was the first to be devoted entirely to fiddlers from The Six Counties.
Usual gratis, Floss. That's interesting what the writer of the liners says about Seán developing his own style "in which he maintains a firm pressure ion the strings without lifting the bow." I always have kept the thumb on the bottom of the frog (of the bow - this is a diversion into fiddling talk), to get a bit more volume, also the standard hold (and trad variants thereof) is just uncomfortable for me. Kevin Burke told me that Seán held the bow like that, although I see him in video holding the bow in something close to standard hold. Kevin also said, while keeping the thumb on the bottom of the frog wasn't strictly incorrect, everything else about how I was holding the bow certainly was...probably only gotten worse over the years, too.
Will provide my usual souped up track listing later, for those who want to break this up.
Years ago someone sent me some tracks from an album, "experimental" in nature I think, poetry readings or the like, with Seán playing both fiddle and pipes. Maybe it's this Richard Hayward LP? Aside from that I also have some private recordings of Seán and others from 1969, where he plays both instruments. Good piper, very "traditional" like his Da's music - nothing Heifetz-esque. Whatever that would sound like on the pipes. Liam O'Flynn can do that sort of music, the duet recordings he made with Séamus Ennis's daughter Catherine playing the pipe organ, Purcell pieces and the like.
Anybody like to hear Seán and others in 1969 - McPeake Family, Leo Rowsome? Probably the rhetorical question of the year for session.org...these are wholly private recordings I obtained personally, so I think it'd be on the level.
01 - The Red Haired Boy Hornpipe - Tom Turkington
02 - Tom Talks About His Fiddle Playing - Tom Turkington
03 - The Devil Among The Tailors - Tom Turkington
04 - The Mason's Apron - Tom Turkington
05 - Talk About Previous, Scottish Tunes, & Following Tune - Tom Turkington
06 - The Laird O' Drumblair (Strathspey & Reel) - Tom Turkington
07 - Brave Rodney's Glory Set Dance - Tom Turkington
08 - The Three Sea Captains Set Dance - Tom Turkington
09 - David's Delight Reel (Composed By Tom Turkington) - Tom Turkington
10 - Over The Hills To Monrush Jig (Comp Turkington) - Tom Turkington
11 - Smith's Favourite & The Tailor's Twist - Tom Turkington
12 - The Blackbird Set Dance (2 Fiddles) - Tom Turkington With Sean McGuire
13 - Reavey's Reel & Roaring Mary - Sean McGuire
14 - The Bridge of Athlone, The Banks - Sean McGuire
15 - Haste To The Wedding, Astley's Ride & The German Beau - Sean McGuire
16 - The Foxhunter's - Sean McGuire
17 - The Sailor's Bonnet, Kiss The Bride & Roaring Mary - Sean McGuire With Tom Turkington, Bill Montgomery, Liam Donnelly & Sean McGuire Senior
18 - The Bashful Bachelor, The Showman's Fancy & Dunphy's - Sean McGuire With Tom Turkington, Bill Montgomery, Liam Donnelly & Sean McGuire Senior
19 - The Flax In Bloom, The Milestone & The Dairy Maid - Sean McGuire & Bill Montgomery
20 - The Sligo Maid & Reavey's Reel (The Hunter's House) - Sean McGuire & Bill Montgomery
21 - The Boys Of The Lough & The Shaskeen Reel - Bill Montgomery With Sean Junior (Gtr)
22 - Tobin's Favourite (Jig) Sean McGuire With Eamon O Connor (Step-Dancing)
23 - Planxty Drury (Set Dance) - Sean McGuire With Eamon O Connor (Step-Dancing)
It's "Sean McGuire" instead of "Séan Maguire" because this is how I have him IDed in all the tracks I've digified, making it simpler to cue up his music with a software media player. If you wish to change it back it's a simple enough matter with any text editor.
Removed all the "(talk bef)" stuff as well; tracks 14 and 15 were reversed, also added a couple of titles. "The German Beau" is a real kick, sounds like something ceolachan would have put in the tune database here. Ah, figures, Aidan Cossey contributed it and ceola of course had some added info: http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/1545 Aidan's memory was jogged by the tune's presence in, what else, one of Josephine Keegan's books.
Thanks again, FtT. I'm starting to worry that I'm going to miss one of these posts. You're quickly becoming the source of some of my most precious recordings.
Kevin, your question might be rhetorical, but I'll give you a firm yes.
Ah, "The Three Tunes." He plays at least 5 there, though, a couple of jigs or 6/8 marches, before going back into Haste to the Wedding/Astley's Ride/Leslie's Hornpipe. What are those middle tunes?
OK then! Field recordings made by CE Young in 1969: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ozjxjznzmzy He does a bit of MCing, and plays the Northumbrian pipes in duet with Francie McPeake on the Rowan Tree. Francie also plays Silent Night on the Irish pipes. Wonderful stuff from all involved.
Séan also plays something he titles "The Canadian Barndance." This is a medley recorded by Cape Breton fiddler Winston Fitzgerald under the title "Southern Melodies": first, a tune the Stripling Brothers of Mississippi called the Big Eyed Rabbit, then the Polo March. These are transcribed in the WF book Paul Cranford put together, and can be heard on the LP "Winston 'Scotty' Fitzgerald & His Radio Entertainers." The same medley was also recorded by another Cape Breton fiddler, Joe MacIssac, who composed the Seamus MacManus waltz recorded by the Maguire brothers of Sligo on their Humours of Lissadell LP. They left out Joe's jews harp and harmony saxophone backing, however...
Thanks Tethers. Wow, great to find that mountain road (the burnt cabbage?) has 4 four parts...
That Molloy and Peoples stuff is a bit of a tease though... where did you get it?
Fedorastain, I do indeed possess a copy of recordings of unreleased Molloy/Peoples duets which I think originated from out-takes of the Molloy/Peoples/Brady album. However, the sound quality is atrocious and impossible to rectify by even a highly effective programme such as CD Architect. I put up a recording under that name on my MediaFire page when I realized how easy it was to crack the MediaFire site. I've removed the file now, but am still wondering what the 106 downloaders make of 'Something Kind of Ooh'!
Kevin, thanks for another great track listing. The recording you mentioned is almost certainly the Hayward/McGuire one to which I referred above and I'd foresee no problem in making it available, as it's long out of copyright. As for Séan's name, I once asked him directly about its spelling. By that time he'd lost the power of speech, but took out his pen and, with a flourish, signed 'Séan McGuire' on a copy of an album I'd just purchased.
Ciarán, there are several ways of converting cassettes to MP3 files. The older, which I still use, involved the purchase of a small device manufactured by Terratec, called a Phono Pre-Amp Studio. This came with a programme called Sound Rescue. The Pre-Amp connects between your cassette deck (via said deck's output leads) and your computer (via the USB port). The Sound Rescue programme downloads the music files in real time and converts them into *.wav format. That format can then be edited to reduce tape hiss or other unwanted background noise (and the tracks can also be separated, though I haven't done this with any of my uploads here). Once completed it's easy to use a programme such as Switch to convert the resulting file to MP3 format.
I've done a fair bit of dubbing over the years, too; have always had the stereo plugged into the computer's sound card, and then use a program which used to be called Cool Edit - I believe you can still obtain a free copy. It's now a commercial program called Adobe Audition. There are plenty of free audio capture programs out there, too. I'm so used to Audition I've never done any shopping around for anything better; actually that vinyl2PC kit includes two of the better known programs, Audacity and InfraRecorder.
My method involves a bit of work by hand, dunno if the last mentioned programs cut up the files for you. I think Roxio includes a audio program that does that - you just play the record and the software chops it up into little individual files for you, guessing where the tracks end and begin. I do all that work myself.
"I recently received several obnoxious personal messages from a fellow member here who, at one point, enquired 'Surely you've some scratchy tape of a dead auld fella to be uploading?'. Well, I'm delighted to share this recording which, as far as I'm aware, was the first to be devoted entirely to fiddlers from The Six Counties. " -----
Don't misquote me. i wasn't being that disrespectful to the tradition.. Just making the (valid if sarcastic) point that the tradition evolves, and that you're only permitted to slag off musicians for being disrespectful musicaly to the tradition if you're prepared to slag off most of the 'traditional' players of the past 50 years. Hence the comment about only being allowed to pontificate if you only listen to gramaphone records and no, for that matter i didn't refer to 'dead old guys'.
Upload - The Mason's Apron
Upload - The Mason's Apron
Taped in Johnnie Maguire's house in Belfast in 1952 by Peter Kennedy, this recording features the fiddlers Liam Donnelly, Tom Turkington, Bill Montgomery, Johnnie himself and his son Séan (who would later change his surname to McGuire). Séan also provides guitar accompaniment in places (which reminds me that I must get around to converting the old Richard Hayward 'Words and Music of Ireland' 10" LP on which Séan played the
uilleann pipes.
The link to the download is here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=d827119229fd164cd2db6fb9a8902bda.
You can find more details of the recording here: http://www.folktrax-archive.org/menus/cassprogs/375belfast.htm.
I recently received several obnoxious personal messages from a fellow member here who, at one point, enquired 'Surely you've some scratchy tape of a dead auld fella to be uploading?'. Well, I'm delighted to share this recording which, as far as I'm aware, was the first to be devoted entirely to fiddlers from The Six Counties.
# Posted on August 16th 2009 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
as always, thanks for taking the time to make this available to all of us. your effort is greatly appreciated!
# Posted on August 16th 2009 by sarahc
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Fabulous stuff; thank you.
# Posted on August 16th 2009 by Jerry O'Donnell
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Thanks Floss - I can't imagine how I'd ever have a chance to hear these if you hadn't taken the time to upload them.
# Posted on August 16th 2009 by airport
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Yes, thanks for putting in the time and effort on all these recordings, and sharing them with all of us. It's really appreciated.
# Posted on August 16th 2009 by Mike C
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Go raibh míle maith agat!
# Posted on August 16th 2009 by fidkid
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Usual gratis, Floss. That's interesting what the writer of the liners says about Seán developing his own style "in which he maintains a firm pressure ion the strings without lifting the bow." I always have kept the thumb on the bottom of the frog (of the bow - this is a diversion into fiddling talk), to get a bit more volume, also the standard hold (and trad variants thereof) is just uncomfortable for me. Kevin Burke told me that Seán held the bow like that, although I see him in video holding the bow in something close to standard hold. Kevin also said, while keeping the thumb on the bottom of the frog wasn't strictly incorrect, everything else about how I was holding the bow certainly was...probably only gotten worse over the years, too.
Will provide my usual souped up track listing later, for those who want to break this up.
Years ago someone sent me some tracks from an album, "experimental" in nature I think, poetry readings or the like, with Seán playing both fiddle and pipes. Maybe it's this Richard Hayward LP? Aside from that I also have some private recordings of Seán and others from 1969, where he plays both instruments. Good piper, very "traditional" like his Da's music - nothing Heifetz-esque. Whatever that would sound like on the pipes. Liam O'Flynn can do that sort of music, the duet recordings he made with Séamus Ennis's daughter Catherine playing the pipe organ, Purcell pieces and the like.
Anybody like to hear Seán and others in 1969 - McPeake Family, Leo Rowsome? Probably the rhetorical question of the year for session.org...these are wholly private recordings I obtained personally, so I think it'd be on the level.
# Posted on August 16th 2009 by KLR
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Flossie--thank you thank you thank you, very much. It's great!
# Posted on August 16th 2009 by John Galt
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
01 - The Red Haired Boy Hornpipe - Tom Turkington
02 - Tom Talks About His Fiddle Playing - Tom Turkington
03 - The Devil Among The Tailors - Tom Turkington
04 - The Mason's Apron - Tom Turkington
05 - Talk About Previous, Scottish Tunes, & Following Tune - Tom Turkington
06 - The Laird O' Drumblair (Strathspey & Reel) - Tom Turkington
07 - Brave Rodney's Glory Set Dance - Tom Turkington
08 - The Three Sea Captains Set Dance - Tom Turkington
09 - David's Delight Reel (Composed By Tom Turkington) - Tom Turkington
10 - Over The Hills To Monrush Jig (Comp Turkington) - Tom Turkington
11 - Smith's Favourite & The Tailor's Twist - Tom Turkington
12 - The Blackbird Set Dance (2 Fiddles) - Tom Turkington With Sean McGuire
13 - Reavey's Reel & Roaring Mary - Sean McGuire
14 - The Bridge of Athlone, The Banks - Sean McGuire
15 - Haste To The Wedding, Astley's Ride & The German Beau - Sean McGuire
16 - The Foxhunter's - Sean McGuire
17 - The Sailor's Bonnet, Kiss The Bride & Roaring Mary - Sean McGuire With Tom Turkington, Bill Montgomery, Liam Donnelly & Sean McGuire Senior
18 - The Bashful Bachelor, The Showman's Fancy & Dunphy's - Sean McGuire With Tom Turkington, Bill Montgomery, Liam Donnelly & Sean McGuire Senior
19 - The Flax In Bloom, The Milestone & The Dairy Maid - Sean McGuire & Bill Montgomery
20 - The Sligo Maid & Reavey's Reel (The Hunter's House) - Sean McGuire & Bill Montgomery
21 - The Boys Of The Lough & The Shaskeen Reel - Bill Montgomery With Sean Junior (Gtr)
22 - Tobin's Favourite (Jig) Sean McGuire With Eamon O Connor (Step-Dancing)
23 - Planxty Drury (Set Dance) - Sean McGuire With Eamon O Connor (Step-Dancing)
It's "Sean McGuire" instead of "Séan Maguire" because this is how I have him IDed in all the tracks I've digified, making it simpler to cue up his music with a software media player. If you wish to change it back it's a simple enough matter with any text editor.
Removed all the "(talk bef)" stuff as well; tracks 14 and 15 were reversed, also added a couple of titles. "The German Beau" is a real kick, sounds like something ceolachan would have put in the tune database here. Ah, figures, Aidan Cossey contributed it and ceola of course had some added info: http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/1545 Aidan's memory was jogged by the tune's presence in, what else, one of Josephine Keegan's books.
# Posted on August 16th 2009 by KLR
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Thanks again, FtT. I'm starting to worry that I'm going to miss one of these posts. You're quickly becoming the source of some of my most precious recordings.
Kevin, your question might be rhetorical, but I'll give you a firm yes.
# Posted on August 16th 2009 by Marklar
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Ah, "The Three Tunes." He plays at least 5 there, though, a couple of jigs or 6/8 marches, before going back into Haste to the Wedding/Astley's Ride/Leslie's Hornpipe. What are those middle tunes?
# Posted on August 16th 2009 by KLR
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Oh, and thanks Kevin for the work you've done on getting us the track listings.
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by Marklar
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Another great addition Floss. We are in you debt for making these available. There is some great fiddling here. An absolute delight.
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by bigyabby
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
OK then! Field recordings made by CE Young in 1969: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ozjxjznzmzy He does a bit of MCing, and plays the Northumbrian pipes in duet with Francie McPeake on the Rowan Tree. Francie also plays Silent Night on the Irish pipes. Wonderful stuff from all involved.
Séan also plays something he titles "The Canadian Barndance." This is a medley recorded by Cape Breton fiddler Winston Fitzgerald under the title "Southern Melodies": first, a tune the Stripling Brothers of Mississippi called the Big Eyed Rabbit, then the Polo March. These are transcribed in the WF book Paul Cranford put together, and can be heard on the LP "Winston 'Scotty' Fitzgerald & His Radio Entertainers." The same medley was also recorded by another Cape Breton fiddler, Joe MacIssac, who composed the Seamus MacManus waltz recorded by the Maguire brothers of Sligo on their Humours of Lissadell LP. They left out Joe's jews harp and harmony saxophone backing, however...
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by KLR
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Wow, thanks again! Keep up the good work guys.
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by Marklar
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Thanks very much Floss.
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by Martin_BC
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Thanks also Kevin
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by bigyabby
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Thanks Tethers. Wow, great to find that mountain road (the burnt cabbage?) has 4 four parts...
That Molloy and Peoples stuff is a bit of a tease though... where did you get it?
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by fedorastain
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Thanks again
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by David50
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Amazing stuff. Many thanks for making this available!
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by Pontus Adefjord
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Brilliant...
Although just curious how you managed to get this from tape to mp3 format, Floss the Teathers?
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by Ciarán.
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Wow, thanks, Floss! Very very much appreciated.
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by fuzzygreen
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Thank you very much, Floss.
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by Ramiro
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Another great download. Thanks very much.
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by sashiko calico
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Thank you so very much for all this great music!!
All the best!
Peace,
Ed
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by ejsant
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Thanks yet again.
Best wishes,
RR
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by Dragut Reis
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Well done and thanks a bunch.
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by gam
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
this great stuff! thanks for making it available again.
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by Dont
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Thanks again for all the thanks.
Fedorastain, I do indeed possess a copy of recordings of unreleased Molloy/Peoples duets which I think originated from out-takes of the Molloy/Peoples/Brady album. However, the sound quality is atrocious and impossible to rectify by even a highly effective programme such as CD Architect. I put up a recording under that name on my MediaFire page when I realized how easy it was to crack the MediaFire site. I've removed the file now, but am still wondering what the 106 downloaders make of 'Something Kind of Ooh'!
Kevin, thanks for another great track listing. The recording you mentioned is almost certainly the Hayward/McGuire one to which I referred above and I'd foresee no problem in making it available, as it's long out of copyright. As for Séan's name, I once asked him directly about its spelling. By that time he'd lost the power of speech, but took out his pen and, with a flourish, signed 'Séan McGuire' on a copy of an album I'd just purchased.
Ciarán, there are several ways of converting cassettes to MP3 files. The older, which I still use, involved the purchase of a small device manufactured by Terratec, called a Phono Pre-Amp Studio. This came with a programme called Sound Rescue. The Pre-Amp connects between your cassette deck (via said deck's output leads) and your computer (via the USB port). The Sound Rescue programme downloads the music files in real time and converts them into *.wav format. That format can then be edited to reduce tape hiss or other unwanted background noise (and the tracks can also be separated, though I haven't done this with any of my uploads here). Once completed it's easy to use a programme such as Switch to convert the resulting file to MP3 format.
The second method, which involves far less hassle, is to purchase something like this - http://www.vinyl-2-pc.co.uk/ or maybe this - http://www.amazon.co.uk/ADS-Instant-Music-Cassette-Ripper/dp/B00067TMGA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1250527564&sr=8-3. Both of these examples are far cheaper than purchasing one of those USB turntable/cassette player concoctions (and the former includes various lengths of cabling).
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
lovely - thanks so much!!
# Posted on August 17th 2009 by clementine 72
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
I've done a fair bit of dubbing over the years, too; have always had the stereo plugged into the computer's sound card, and then use a program which used to be called Cool Edit - I believe you can still obtain a free copy. It's now a commercial program called Adobe Audition. There are plenty of free audio capture programs out there, too. I'm so used to Audition I've never done any shopping around for anything better; actually that vinyl2PC kit includes two of the better known programs, Audacity and InfraRecorder.
My method involves a bit of work by hand, dunno if the last mentioned programs cut up the files for you. I think Roxio includes a audio program that does that - you just play the record and the software chops it up into little individual files for you, guessing where the tracks end and begin. I do all that work myself.
Hope that's of interest.
# Posted on August 18th 2009 by KLR
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
"I recently received several obnoxious personal messages from a fellow member here who, at one point, enquired 'Surely you've some scratchy tape of a dead auld fella to be uploading?'. Well, I'm delighted to share this recording which, as far as I'm aware, was the first to be devoted entirely to fiddlers from The Six Counties. " -----
Don't misquote me. i wasn't being that disrespectful to the tradition.. Just making the (valid if sarcastic) point that the tradition evolves, and that you're only permitted to slag off musicians for being disrespectful musicaly to the tradition if you're prepared to slag off most of the 'traditional' players of the past 50 years. Hence the comment about only being allowed to pontificate if you only listen to gramaphone records and no, for that matter i didn't refer to 'dead old guys'.
# Posted on August 19th 2009 by TheHappyCamper
Re: Upload - The Mason's Apron
Since I was not quoting from your message, TheHappyCamper, I can hardly be misquoting you!
# Posted on August 19th 2009 by MacCruiskeen