I have been collecting versions of Paidín O’Rafferty over the years. All of them start with something along the line of d-f-f, c-e-e etc. The exception to this format is Willie Clancy’s version in D mix where he starts the tune with (in all other versions I’ve heard) the B part of the tune. The usual A part he puts second (in this case it’s GBB FAA). This switcheroo has been followed by everyone I’ve ever heard play the Clancy version.
Well, Bobby Casey mixed up the B parts of “Rolling in the Barrel” and “In the Tap Room,” and I’ve heard an awful lot of great musicians who accidentally played the B part of Down the Broom with the A part of the Bag of Spuds. People learn the tune from those sources and perpetuate the mistake and so it goes, like the way “espresso” evolved into “expresso.”
perhaps i will be in a stark minority here, but i really cant say, personally, that there’s any ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in art at all; provided the artist(s) produces the product to their own satisfaction as they themselves have conceived, interpreted, and/or REinterpreted it…
the very fact that it’s controversial here, today; PROVES that version;s artistic validity beyond a shadow of a doubt, as far as im concerend
No right or wrong, but every tune was composed by somebody and composed deliberately rather than in some random fashion.
There are many examples of tunes where musicians will often begin with the second or third part (Trim the Velvet is a good one, many players start the tune on the third part), and it could be that Clancy was doing that, or it could be that he just got mixed up and someone recorded his mixed-up version.
Vincent Broderick’s tune The Coachman’s Whip is another good example – Patrick Street recorded it backwards (starting with the B part) and everyone played it that way for years, whereas Broderick actually composed the tune the other way 'round. No harm done, really, but sometimes it’s an eye-opener to learn how the tune was originally meant to be played by its composer.
Speaking of such things … Louise and Michelle Mulcahy have a jig set on their “Reelin’ in Tradition” recording where they play “Hughie Travers’” followed “What Would I Do If the Kettle Boiled Over?”. Anyway, they throw in a bonus revisit of “Hughie Travers’” B part before going on to the C part of “What Would I Do …?” to very cool effect. So basically, they make “What Would I Do” a 3-part jig.
Here’s my point (yes, there is one ): I THINK I remember reading somewhere (maybe in the liner notes, which are Lord knows where?) that this is not entirely uncommon in Kerry, and I THINK I recall the author citing “Paidin O Raffertaigh” as another example of a tune where Kerry players might swap or add parts in a similar fashion.
Anyone else heard of this, or have I been putting too much Splenda in my Barry’s again?
I’d be surprised to hear it was a Kerry thing, Cathy. I see it done all over, Willie being a good example. There’s a great recording of him playing a reel with two parts, and then throwing in a third part (both versions being relatively common) before moving on to the next tune. Also, he had additional parts to Frieze Britches, but didn’t always play them.
As far as neither right nor wrong, that’s not true. There are definitely right and wrong ways to play Irish Traditional Music. There are tons of right ways and tons of wrong ways, and sometimes the right ways are even contradictory. But of course, this is taken in the context of Irish Traditional Music… if you do too many things “wrong” then you won’t be playing it anymore. Haikus are a great analogy: If you add or remove a syllable, it’s no longer correct. But there’s still great scope to be artistic within the framework of a haiku.
How many versions of P O’R have you got Tom? I think I’m up to four, with a fifth on the horizon. Then there’s the 8 or 9 part one in O’Farrell’s, and Chris Langan’s 9 parter that’s different again (and meant for the big pipes).
I’ve seen it done elsewhere, too, but I think the main reason I didn’t question the Kerry association is that Kerry has such a strong dancing tradition, and I thought it might make sense that some of these tunes were adapted on the fly for the dance sets. Sort of an EP dance version, if you will … but I’m TOTALLY in speculation territory there.
I’m laughing, though – a brief glance at my iTunes library shows as many ways to spell Paddy/Paudeen/Padigin/Paidin O’Rafferty/O’Rafferty’s/ORaffertaigh’s/O Rafferta’s as there are to play it!
However, in O’Neill’s the two parts are reversed. I know one local fellow who insists on playing it in the O’Neill’s fashion (which, BTW, stands everyone else on their heads at sessions), for it is in his makeup to exercise conservative deference to precedent; IOW, if it’s the older, of course it’s the better. And I do find it hard to dispute the sentiment, as the curiosities and revelations of early sources are a delight to me as well. But I’ll be hornswoggled if I don’t disagree with him hands-down about this reel in this case; while it’s almost a commonplace in ITM tunes for the B section to often be in a higher register, I think that that tendency should not be blindly followed as a set-in-stone guideline to justify the order of sections (which is his other reasoning for the practice, precedent aside), especially when to me a section in the upper register sounds as if it should be the one that starts the tune, and the other as if it should rightly follow, just like the example above. “This is all just because that’s the way you first learned it,” you say? Not a chance.
So, I say O’Neill - and the other prehumous fella aforementioned - got it dead wrong. Now there’s hubris for you.
Just my two cents’ worth:
I suppose you could be guided by how close you want your version of Paddy 'O to the sung version. 'Course there’s no harm or foul inherent in leading with the chorus before the verse.
On a tangent: Nano I learned you Nightcap tune as “The Drunken Police Car”. Wonder where that came from.
Nano Good Morning to your Nightcap needs to be played your way and it needs to follow Farrell O Gara’s in my opinion
but I always suspected Coleman reversed the parts as its such a cool switch that way. He did other things like it as he
was his own man.
Its like Tansey switching around Andersons, I always prefer it that way. They are their own men by virtue of being the masters.
Aha! That’s right. Yes, I heard of that name for it not so long ago myself. A name to raise an eyebrow and a smile, to be sure.
Continuing the tangent and speaking of tune names and precedent, a search shows the progressive history of the naming of Morrison’s Jig: Morrison’s from Carmody’s, from Maurice Carmody’s Favorite, from The Stick Across The Hob. Beyond that the trail apparently goes cold. Then there’s the improbable name The Cry Of The Celtic attested for it too, as I just now found out, but that must be on some mood music CD you might buy at a department store.
That’s right. Sooner or later one makes conscious, deliberate aesthetic choices, and when mastery does it I particularly tend to listen, if not emulate.
Good Morning to My Nightcap (for some reason I have it as “my” nightcap rather than yours) is quite possibly my favourite tune of all time. Certainly my favourite reel. And I also play it after Farrell O Gara’s too.
I play it slightly differently from those dots from the session.org (natch) but in the same order of sections. That’s because that’s the right order. If I heard someone insisting on playing it the wrong way round I think I’d have to leave the room. And then, of course, all the life would go out of the session. Poor benighted souls.
That’s why we stay in spite of all: the session must go on. So instead we shoot each other furtive, knowing looks, and maybe let slip a bit of a sigh, for despite all our resolve to remember where to end it, we fail miserably every time and cause a trainwreck. Habituation and tune hypnosis, you see. But for all that yer man sticks to his guns.
i think that some of the old players didn’t care for convention and were bold enough to play according to their own bent, the way that perhaps we don’t because we feel we have to conform to rules of standardisation that are laid down - i find ennis quite eccentric in this regard the way he would play a part of a tune an extra time round and didn’t strictly follow the normal order of parts
