Hi,
I’m looking for recordings of Martin Rochford. Does anyone have stuff of him to trade with?
Incidentally, I’m interested to know who were the flute players that played with Rochford. I suppose Joe Bane would be one of them?
Thanks!
I knew Martin fairly well and recorded him, especially onetime in 1989 when we stayed at the house for four days. He was a great piper but it’s his fiddleplaying tht left a lasting impression on me. I have my own tapes aside also stuff recorded by other people, five or six hours in total.
As fluteplayers go I would first think of Paddy Donohue who lived closeby and was in the ceiliband Martin started with Sean Reid, Paddy Canny and the two Donohues [Paddy and his brother Jim, also a fluteplayer] back in 1943.
During his early days he spent a lot of time in East Galway at the White’s, playing there and getting tunes. He played mostly locally [at least in his later years he ventured out only so far that he could get back home to sleep in his own bed]but did go out to fleadhs. Peter O Loughlin would have been among those playing with him, JC Talty, WIllie Clancy the usual Clare crowd. In later years loads of musicians visited, as fluteplayers go I would think of Geraldine MacNamara, Kevin Crawford, Mary Bergin[who lived in Feakle during the 70s with er then husband Bruce DuVe], , Eugene Lambe, Siobhan Kelly [whose father Sea nmoloney was a close friend of Martin]. And those are only the ones I can think of at the minute. Johnny and Felix Doran were frequent visitors ofcourse. And I have one tape of himself and Micho Russell [funny enough Micho often described Martin to me as ‘a very old and very fine man’, they were born the same year]
I was talking about him with Josephine Marsh a few weeks ago, she felt the same way I did, it’s hard to believe he’s not there anymore.
I have only the haziest recollection of Martin Rochford, whom I heard playing the fiddle when a group from NPU visited the Feakle area in ould god’s time (i.e. early 1970s).
I mainly remember him for a remark which he made, and which was relayed by Noel Pocock, about the Dublin pipers of the time sounding “like someone plucking feathers out of a bantam’s arse”.
I was thinking about the question who he played with a bit more, at one point i asked him how long had he been playing the fiddle. ‘Sixty years now’ he replied and that was nearly ten year before he died. Plenty of time to play with a lot of people.
Can someone tell me what a bantam is? Can help me understand how Dublin pipers sound 
it’s a hen
It looks as if there are people out there who are as obsessive about bantams as we are about whistles, pipes etc.
Here’s an article (uncorrected typos included) about just one breed of bantam that comes from just down the road from where I live:
History
At the end of the 19th century booted bantams who looked very similar could be found in a number of West European countries. In the Netherlands we had the Sabelpoot booted bantams, Germany the ‘Federfüßiges Zwerghuhn’ and Engeland the Booted Bantams. At the start of the 20th century Michel van Gelder, who lived in the small municipality Uccle at the south-east border of Brussels, started his contribution to this collection of booted bantams.
He wanted to breed a booted bantam with a lower posture and more compact body than the available booted bantams. The new breed also had to have a rather full beard. Most authors assume that Van Gelder started with the Dutch booted Sabelpoot and the Antwerp bearded bantam. We do not know this for sure.Aside form his large breeding facility, Van Gelder had enough time to visit many large English and German poultry shows. The changes are high that he bought his starting material here. How he did it, still remain the question, but he managed to breed the Barbu d’Uccle.
Picture: Barbu d’Uccle cock. © W.Hoekstra / > www.willemhoekstra.com >From the year 1905 onwards specimens of this breed have been showed.
In Belgium this breed has known a timid popularity. In foreign countries they were extremely rare because of national competitive breeds. Unfortunately, the breed has now become very rare in the mother country also.
Appearrance (type and colour)
If we look at the ideal picture of the Barbu d’Uccle critically, we will see that the breed does not differ strongly from the Barbu d’Anvers. The difference is the booted legs and the single-comb of the Barbu d’Uccle. A very good Barbu d’Uccle must have a low posture, a short but well developed neck and a rather open tail-feathering. The tail must not be too wide and has to make a triangle on the cock as well as on the hen.
The large tail sickles should not be too long, like the Barbu d’Anvers, and they may not bend and have to end rather sharp. These characteristics are difficult to achief on a young cock. With this animals the growth of the sickles is often very fast. Older cocks show a better tail and these animals in general show a somewhat better type.
…a concert pitch hen, to be precise 
Boyd
Plucked again … :roll: