East Clare Melodeon?

[rh1]

I was having a look at Mary MacNamara’s site last night and read this on http://www.marymacnamara.com/index3.html

@Mary MacNamara

To some extent the East Clare style may have been affected in the last 100–130 years through the popularity of the concertina in particular, and the melodeon to a lesser degree. Up to the 1950s the concertinas used were mostly two row instruments ( as opposed to three row) and one-row melodeons as opposed to two-row. This which forced the musician to:
• play in keys such as C and F rather than the conventional keys. Much of East Clare versions of tunes are played in these keys to this day.
• compensate for the lack of options where ornamentation is concerned by use of bellows to accentuate rhythm and the use of long notes or repetition of short notes to effect a subtlemelody variation

Does anybody here know any names associated with the East Clare one-row style? Any recordings? Any current accordeon/melodeon players who are considered to be playing in an older East Clare style?

Being a melodeon hack myself i’m quite interested in finding out more about this subject as i adore Mary (and Andrew) MacNamara’s playing. She has a number of fiddlers and concertina players listed but no melodeon players.

Thanks.

[Cayden1]

I remember Martin Rochford saying the first time he ever heard an accordeon was when Tony MacMahon’s father took him to Ennis to hear Joe Cooley durign the 40s. My impression from that was the accordeon/melodeon wasn’t very common around East Clare. Martin did say every second house had a concertina in it in his day.