I shuffled the pile of old fRoots Magazines that sits in the smallest room the other day and today in a contemplative moment I reread an appreciation that Joe Crane* wrote following the death of Paddy Tunney in 2002.
Which sent me digging through old compilations looking for the few tracks I might have of his singing.
I find the 90s Globestyle compilation of older Topic LPs called Hurry the Jug, which has Tunney singing Sean O’Dhuibir A Ghleanna and The Waterford Boys, as well as others by Joe Heaney, etc. I’ve played this CD a fair amount, years ago, but I’m hearing a lot more tonight.
I’m struck by something Joe Heaney does with his voice on The Rocks of Baun (yes, pipers, the song Paul Brady sings on one of Liam O’Flynn’s CDs). Heaney’s voice is as nasal and gravelly as you might expect from an old man, but then from time to time–often on the refrain “…the rocks of Baun” I can hear his throat suddenly relax as he leans on the singable 'aaahhh" vowel and adds a ghost of vibrato, and suddenly the note is ringing out like it was coming from the bell of a french horn, not a human throat at all. It’s a splendid moment.
Elsewhere I have the Joe and the Gabe LP in which Heaney sings The Boys of Mullabawn, but on this compilation it’s being sung by Kevin Mitchell, whom I know nothing about.
What strikes me in his setting is the way the the melody sweeps up in the second phrase–the rest of the song is set in ‘confortable’ baritone range but for half a line each time Mitchell’s singing at the top of his tenor register.
A discussion of opera I once read talked about why tenors often play the lead roles: its because (the author said) higher pitch is the sound of a voice under strain, and so tenor roles are often the most emotionally exposed. I don’t know to what extent that’s true, but its what’s happening here. I’m impressed with the way that the melody perfectly matches the words; in each verse, the peak of tension occurs just as this part of the strain comes round.
I goggled a bit looking for the words online to demonstrate, but I can’t find them to show you. You’ll have to take my word, or go digging through your own records.
~~
*Joe Crane was, for my money, the most consistently interesting writer in that magazine (Folk Roots/fRoots). I’d have read his account of a trip to loo with pleasure, if he’d been minded to put one to paper (sorry about the unfortunate pun I just caught on rereading). I asked the editor a year or so ago whatever happened to him, and he didn’t know–he said Crane’s pieces would arrive handwritten in the mail from somewhere near Liverpool, and give the typist fits when they went to transcribe it.
His pieces drew heavily on his life as a young irish piper who’d emigrated to England looking for work in the (hmm–60s?) and who’d seen most of the people he wrote about first hand. He clearly had a book in him, and I’d love to learn that he ever got one out.