The Longford/NYC fiddler recently passed away - RIP - and is here honored with his own recording, "Paddy Reynolds - Classic Recordings of the Irish Fiddle Legend, details at PaddyReynolds.com and available from the good folks at CDBaby. Great stuff! Very punchy, he was a lovely air player too. It’s surprising how much he and Andy McGann meshed together - alone they sound very different. You may find his version of the High Level Hornpipe interesting - apparently the earliest recording with the third part was an acetate of another New York fiddler, Sligo-born Lad O’Bierne, and it’s said Lad composed the extra part. Paddy played a lot of music with O’Bierne and plays his setting, which is quite different than what became common later.
Kevin, good stuff. Is this solo fiddling, or is it full of piano comping?
Thx,
djm
Some great tracks of the old shtuff.
Interesting to notice Paddy’s bowings lean heavily on the Sligo school of his time and do not take much from the lore around his own part of Ireland, eg Packie Dolan, Frank Quinn - both of who were well known and their unique bowing styles much in use at the time.
Today somebody like the Mc Evoy’s have much of that lore in their playing but OC N Roscommon being almost in Sligo is the flame that lights many a wild fire in the region.
Other players with that weird - to my ear anyway - trick of double downbowing style include the Sweeneys of Roscommon also but not forgetting the genius of Paddy Kiloran, because he was his own style master - and OC a Sligo man.
Much of it is solo, some tracks have Jerry Wallace, who was an excellent piano (and piccolo - not heard here) player. Other selections are backed up by Louise Barnes, who was one of those 60s/70s folkie strummers. Pokey stuff but she doesn’t intrude too much.
Quinn and Dolan are about the only old-time midlands musicians I’ve ever heard - after them it’s Paddy Moloney! Or Jimmy Dolan (piper from Longford). I wouldn’t say Quinn and Dolan sound much alike, Dolan had some very strange ornaments - his C is up there with any piper’s. I think Reynolds had this other thing in his playing that wasn’t “Sligo,” not quite as lifty? More of a driving feel? Is that Longford fiddling, then?
Vas ist das “OC”? More internetcronymns? ROTFL, BTW. INTOGUATAS.
It seems CDBaby is out of stock at the moment, but that have a helpful web tool where you can ask them to notify you when they get more in stock.
djm
Hmm, and which bit of Pakie did you think wasn’t tricky? or should I ask that about Frank Q?
Anyway no matter since in Co Cavan - not too far away from Dromard where I many a time slithered down hills on a bicycle as a schoolboy - today the steam that used be in N Longford is still trying to get out and if you care to poke about you’ll find many a trick there that was never in Longford BUT most that were!
Paddy R was indeed a mighty fiddler but, and here I must apologise for the lack of detail, he and many others in that decade were so overcome with the power of Coleman and Morrison that they let it go, worse they grabbed the Sligo lick and like Bobby Casey let their own muse wither.
But then what are we talking about? I seen not one but dozens of fiddlers in that neck of the woods who were never recorded, never mind flautists and the rest, where any of these would put a lift in tunes that the Sligo/Clare boys coundn’t imagine let alone play. But that, as they say, is another story.
You might like to check this link out, esp because you mess with the ‘contrariest’ of all instruments
http://www.johnnykeenan.com/
thats not to say the Banjo is not a close second as I only too well know…lol playing both a little tenor and a bit clawhammer as well.
PS Johnny could tear it up on the pipes as good as any you or I are ever likely to hear.
Happy september :0)