Anyone know of a recording with Garret Barry’s version of the Ace and Deuce of Pipering on it? I learned it from the Chieftain’s sound sculpture piece on their #7 album, it’s in D if you haven’t heard it. The liners say it was cobbled together from various fragments players remembered; I found this reference in a bio of John Kelly: "Another important influence around this time was Nell Galvin, a fiddle player from near Kilkee. A close friend of the great Clare piper Garret Barry, she gave John Kelly five tunes that she herself had gotten from Barry, including his version of The Ace and Deuce of Piping. " I’ve a couple tapes with John Kelly but he doesn’t play it on any of them.
I have a tape of Ellen Galvin but I don’t think the Ace and Deuce is on it.
I heard Kelly play the Ace and Deuce but can’t remember anything unusual about it [ for what it’s worth, I sat in seesion with John Kelly jnr last night and a common version of the Ace and Deuce came up]
JOBM used to play a unusual version of the Ace and Deuce Willie Clancy played for RTE radio but I think that was more of a Doran version of it, not the Garret Barry one.
John Kelly did play and record several of Ellen Galvin’s tunes, The Old Tinker’s Reel [aka Delia Crowley’s]among them. Willie Clancy used to travel to Moyasta on the West Clare railroad to get tunes off Mrs. Galvin. Mrs Galvin’s hornpipe and others among them [that one is in the book under another name].
A weekend commemmorating Mrs Galvin will be held in Moyasta [which is in between Kilrush and Kilkee] during the weekend of 5 september.
I have the An Piobarie with the transcription of Willie playing Johnny Doran’s version of the Ace, and a tape of JOBM playing it somewhere. I like how JOBM (Waterford piper Jimmy O’Brien-Moran) lets on how he thinks some of these notes Willie played were, well, mistakes…What’s it they say? “Play a mistake three times and it’s jazz!”
This version seems to have a 10 note long bar in the middle I think it was. Some kind of mathmetical difficulty.
Well, the first part of this Garret Barry Ace goes kind of like this: AG FDGD FDGD ADGD FDED AEBE AEBE CEBE AEGE B2BC BAGF EAAB CAGE (3FED AG F2FD EFGA BGFE F(3D (3D (3D F(3D (3D (3D
Those (3Ds are crans…sorry, my ABC isin’t up to speed. Paddy Maloney does get the tune solo pretty much, after the rest get in the fragments of the tune. It’s a beautiful setting of the thing, and you can make a medley of the usual version, Johnny Doran’s, Seamus Ennis’s, and this one…that oughta hold them!