Anyone know of any recordings by West Limerick fluter John Joe Harnett other than the short clip at https://comhaltas.ie/music/detail/comhaltaslive_562_2john_harnett/ ?
Thanks and best wishes.
Steve
If I remember correctly, O’Riada recorded him for ‘Our musical heritage’.
The comhaltas online archive lists 4 items for John Hartnett (note the spelling).
I’m confused. The Comhaltas site lists it as Harnett. Same person, different spelling or two different John Joes?
Best wishes.
Steve
Hmm. Eamonn O Riordan and Tony O Connell have a West Limerick slide they call John Joe Hartnett’s but O’Riada uses Harnett. Comhaltas uses both. My guess is you are not the only one confused.
Either way, still looking to see if there are any extant recordings. The Comhaltas archive only seems to mention him in the context of Our Musical Heritage. The only version of the track list for Our Musical Heritage lists just the tune names, not the players.
Anybody? Commercial recordings, archive records, old tapes tucked away in the attic?
Best wishes.
Steve
The duet CD by Aine and Frances O’Connor - “They Didn’t Come Home Until Morning” - makes mention of John Joe HARNETT [sic ]. There is a brief biography including the following :
“He became more widely known as a result of his appearances on “A Job Of Journeywork”, Ciaran MacMathuna’s radio programme in the 1960s. John Joe was recorded by Sean O’Riada in 1962. This recording can be found on “Our Musical Heritage” which was published by RTE in 1982”.
Thanks Kenny. Currently trying to track down a source for “Our Musical Heritage”, or at least those parts that relate to John Joe. Gumby kindly forwarded some links to brief clips (30 sec. or so) of his playing on the Comhaltas archives web pages. And I’ll have to do some digging to see whether there’s a possibility of finding the RTE recordings.
I have a copy of “They Didn’t Come Home Until Morning” and have been enjoying it thoroughly.
Very much appreciate your input—as well as Gumby’s—on this. His playing style intrigues me.
Best wishes.
Steve
I have partial taped copies of Our musical heritage, the Tommy Recks etc, but these don’t include the flute players. I bid on the omh lps a few times on ebay but never pursued them too seriously.
RTE re-ran restored copies of the radio programmes in the past ten years, they usually archive these at least for some time as podcasts. I have found a page but links appeared dead. That could bear looking into further though.
it’s this one
“John Cussen remembers” the Job of the Journeyman recording visit to “Muinte Na Tire Hall in Feohanagh on Wednesday Nov 5 1958”…where “John Joe Harnett and Sean Collins”…“played several beautiful tunes”…
http://www.limerickcity.ie/media/mlp217.pdf
And maybe
https://www.rte.ie/archives/sales/
Would at least tell you if that recording still exists ?
The job of journeywork recordiings, as well as JJH’s playing recorded by Breandan Breathnach, are held in Itma but are not accessible online
“Journeywork”, not “Journeyman”… my mistake.
I went looking for a copy of the older rollingwave entries but found nothing…at least I have some idea where various archives are now though…where they are but not nescessarily where they are accessible.
I am really not sure if everything (supposedly) available online is the better or not. Before everyone used to treasure the tapes and records they had, and listening to other’s music was fun and something of a privilege. Otherwise just own entertainment was good enough. Just now I have been looking to watch an old movie, and I can’t use playstore because without vpn only in Portuguese is allowed…so I try windows and there they want bank card details, which I don’t give out…so I look to buy a gift card to add payment to windows, and using paypal (which is not attached to any card), and the first (supposedly reputable) site I try has me fill out details and order payment, then as an unannounced final step I am asked to download them a copy of my passport… for a 15 pound gift card ! The next site I try has same up to ordering payment, and then after says payment waiting to be cleared… “make new payment ?” … then sends you emails saying cancelled.
People are fed so much media of all kinds nowadays it is maybe no wonder that missing links or access are overlooked, makes everyone sort of permanently switched on, but often it all becomes very shallow.
There’s a new CD released just last month, the track list of which apparently includes JJH’s name 3 times, which may be of interest and relevant to this discussion.
Posted here on thesession.org.
https://thesession.org/recordings/7454
I may well buy this - there are a lot of tunes on it which don’t seem to have been posted yet on thesession.org, and I always take that as a good sign.
Thanks for flagging that one. Sounds nice. Although in fairness a quick sampling of tunes with unusual names revealed very common ones with, probably, local names: eg Gooseberry boy=Brian O Lynn etc. But plenty of nice not so well-known ones too.
Here’s a link to bandcamp, where I bought it. https://diarmuidobriendonalosullivan.bandcamp.com/album/abroad-in-the-back-kitchen
In the about section they spell it Harnett, but in the track titles it’s Hartnett…
Editing to say that on this recording: https://aineandfrancisoconnor.bandcamp.com/album/they-didnt-come-home-until-morning the liner notes are pretty extensive and consistently use Harnett. So I guess that’s as definitive as you can get. I guess it’s still possible that both spellings were used by John Joe himself, though!
I’m pretty sure I have the “Our Musical Heritage” program as mp3s. Would anyone object if I posted DL links for it?
Ok, Here is a zipped file of the ORiada broadcasts “Our Musical Heritage.” Enjoy
https://www.mediafire.com/file/d0mi1m5ra1xfnae/VA+-+Our+Musical+Heritage.zip/file
Thanks for that. I only ever had an incomplete set and this nicely fills the gaps.
Not quite the full radio programmes though. A copy of the lps . A friend had tapes of the full radio programmes, I heard his tapes in 1981 or so but never managed to get a copy. At the time he said RTE had wiped the original tapes and copies were made illegally by a soundtechnician before it was done but I don’t think that’s actually true. Made for a good story though. It would be nice to have the lot, with O’Riada’s comments and opinions (I do have the book). I have some clips of him going off on pianos in traditional music, which is quite fun to listen to actually. It involves him playing a solo take of Patrck Kelly playing Banish Misfortune and then repeating it, providing a clunky piano accompaniment to it, just to make a point
On the subject of O’Riada, his grandaughter Doireann ni Glacain, has done a documentary on him, which is being heavily promoted at the minute. There was a big interview with her and her mother, Sorcha ní Riada, this morning on Miriam O Callaghan’s Sunday morning programme. I only caught a small bit of it while driving but it should be online somewhere*. If you’re into that sort of thing, ofcourse.
(*it is, it is here}
[Thread revival. - Mod]
Any chance of a fresh link? Would be most appreciated.
Which one? The MediaFire link? That’s gone. You can send an email to chaos97, who originally posted it for download. Email info is on their Member Profile
https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=13123
You don’t have enough posts yet to Private Message through the forum, so try the Yahoo email listed there.
Here’s two different links to the same files. I don’t have an account to any file sharing sites so it may not stay up long. Perhaps there are better sites that Im unaware of
https://www.mediafire.com/file/c8f9m2pmp2bpisq/VA_-_Our_Musical_Heritage.zip/file\