Pat Mitchell wrote in The Dance Music of Willie Clancy that:
“…Willie, although hearing all this talk of piping, did not get to see a set of pipes in action until he came across Johnny Doran playing at the Milltown Malbay races in 1936.”
“Willie was immediately fascinated by Doran’s playing, but though I remember him telling me that when he first heard Johnny rolling the ‘E’ with the chanter off the knee he thought it was out of tune. This was in 1967- over thirty years later- and he was still shocked at the idea of himself thinking Johnny Doran could do any wrong.”
Pat goes on to explain how Willie would follow JD from place to place if his travels where within bicycle range.
The statement on the ‘E’ roll is an interesting one. Until he started to interpret Doran to an extent Clancy had obviously worked to a different intonation, yet he heard the greatness of Doran’s style and was drawn to it regardless. He was willing to suspend his accepted tonality to appreciate and incorporate facets of Doran’s style. Through accepting the stylistic context of Doran’s initially wild sounding off-the-knee toning he transcended the rigidity of tonality into the realms of the ancient human endeavour to express the self. Of course very little of what Doran did musically was wild, it was brilliantly controlled and considered.
This open mindedness and ‘open ear-edness’ is a common feature of great players where truly great, supremely expressive material is accepted from many available sources and interpreted and later assimilated with diverse other factors into a coherent personal style.
Regards,
Harry.