This might be a long shot, but maybe this will spark someone’s memory. I’m trying to find a recording of, or notation for, a tune I vaguely remember listening to on the 8-track in my 1976 Chevy Luv. I remember it as a Planxty tune, though now I cannot find it on any Planxty recording. My attempts below are my first try at putting something into ABC notation so they might be a bit clumsy.
The recording I’m thinking of starts with very a stately chanter-only phrase (about 80bpm in 2/4) beginning on high a:
Following this, the first phrase of the tune goes something like this (at about 110 bpm). I don’t remember if this is just chanter, chanter and drones, or pipes and other instruments:
AG|F2FA|GFEF|~D3A|d2de|dcBA|B4|A2Bc …and that’s all I remember.
I believe the whole thing is in d-major. It could be either a reel or a hornpipe, but I don’t remember enough of the tune to be certain. I also recall it as Liam O’Flynn’s playing, but this could be a trick of memory.
Does anyone have any idea what tune I’m half remembering? Thanks.
No, it is Planxty … The instrumental intro to the song “Johnny of Brady’s Lea” from the album “Woman I Loved So Well”, track 6.
The first part of yer tune is very similar, Ben, but then the two part ways. Of course, the main intro/fill mostly follows the song melody they’ve chosen.
What uploader? Check the liner notes. And is it your life’s mission to dump on anything Irish?
You’ve complained that Irish sessions are bigoted (your word) because they’re not like Scottish sessions. You’ve complained that Irish pennywhistle is inferior to recorder. And now an Irish re-interpretation of a Scottish song, in a forum on Irish piping, by Planxty no less, is “dimwitted”. What am I missing?
The band on the clip was Australian. And Planxty was people from all over the British Isles playing a mixture of Irish, Scottish and English music, weren’t they? (I doubt I could tell them from Fairport Convention or Steeleye Span, they all owed more to each other than any sort of tradition).
There might well be a trad Irish version of this, and if so I’d love to hear somebody like Kevin Mitchell doing it. Without a band. Folk-rock just leaves me completely cold wherever it’s from.
The only more-or-less-okay version I can find on the web is from Old Blind Dogs. I think they got the tune from Jeannie Robertson, but flattened it out into a near-monotone to fit the rocked-up arrangement and their singer’s limitations. (It does have good whistle playing, though, and gets the story across). The best version I’ve heard was from Ted Polytello, who made one cassette which I don’t have and can’t get. He had tremendous range and brought real passion to it.
Found another good one on the web. The Corries, of all people. The singing is absolutely hypnotic and the backing kept to a discreet minimum, nothing to distract you from the story.
The ballad seems to be known by a number of names, Jock O’Braidosly, Jock O’Braidislee, Johnny of Brady’s lea , Johnnie (or Johnny) of Braidieslea, Johnny Cock (Child’s 114), Johnnie o’Coklesmuir, Johnnie o’Braidslee, and perhaps more, as it only took me about 5 minutes to find these. As you would expect, there are also a number of variant lyrics. It probably made a few trips back and forth across the Irish Sea and then crossed the Atlantic a few times as well.
Does anyone know anything more about the tune that Planxty used for it?
I have a great deal of respect for Jack’s internet contributions to trad music, and I specifically welcomed him when he signed on. So I’m genuinely puzzled by the sort of attack mode I’m reading.
Jack, are you sure you’re not just confused? Planxty not Irish? From all over? A folk rock band? Liam O’Flynn not owing much to any sort of tradition?
Ausdag states (YT description) that he and his Australian mates are doing a cover of the famous Planxty setting. I don’t quite see the relevance of his location.
Lunny, O’Flynn and Moore are all from Kilkenny, and Irvine from Dublin at the time Planxty formed. No British Isles there.
As learnthegrip says, song names are fungible, and so are the melodies/tunes and words. It’s fair enough not to like one setting when you have another in your head, perhaps closer to the roots. But Planxty “dimwitted”?
And yes, I like The Corries, too, and their version.
It’s maybe a bit off topic here, but there is an interesting point in this. If you listen to great traditional singers like Jeannie Robertson or Kevin Mitchell, or the great Irish pipers, the rhythms they use are subtle, sophisticated and not at all mechanical. Now, if you strum a guitar or thump a piano or bang a bodhran, you are likely to completely lose the lilting breath-rhythms of the tradition. I dare say it was happening in Burns’ time,when the piano was coming in, and perhaps O’Carolan’s Ireland wasn’t immune to that either - maybe the split between tavern and royal court was there long before the drawing-room/bothy divide, too (damn lutenists ruining the beat!).
It’s not a question of there being a right way or a wrong way, because we can never tell how the tradition is going to evolve in generations to come. I feel it would be a shame, though, if only the thumpity-thump of the Corries survived, and the harder-to-learn rhythmic delicacy was lost.
I do get a bit exasperated by people who learn a tune from outside their tradition and play it in their way, while claiming it’s still from the culture they took it out of - e.g. playing Scottish tunes without the Scots snap, accenting Galician 6/8 tunes like Irish jigs (da-DEE-de-de, de-de instead of de-de-de- Dah-de-de). I have no objection at all to them enfolding the tune in their tradition (because that’s how we extend the repertoire, and more by borrowing than by writing, I’d guess), but to say for example, that a 6/8 pipe march played at 120-bpm with no dotted notes is a ‘Scottish’ tune is to deceive the audience.
And just so you know I’m genetically 50% Irish/50% Scottish, but culturally a Scot. I have never lived in Ireland, I grew up in Africa and in Scotland, and I now live in the wonderful and culturally incredibly rich former part of Scotland that is Geordiestan (known to its current Southern English occupiers as North-East England). And I’m Chinese by marriage, too.
Lunny, O’Flynn and Moore are all from Kilkenny, and Irvine from Dublin at the time Planxty formed.
I know it also starts with a K and that’s probably where you got confused, but the men are from Co. Kildare, (Prosperous, the name of the Christy Moore CD that got them together) with Irvine born in London although indeed living in Dub at the time.
Hop over to the RTE Player here for a lovely interview John Kelly with Andy Irvine and great archive footage, it’s up there until the 19th.
