Heya,
I’m just learning The Gold Ring, and that’s pretty funny, I got all of seven parts, but there’s so many parts I just never remember which parts to play where… Also, it’s not as if they were that different, they’re all kinda similar… Any suggestion?
Um… you wouldn’t be learning the tune from sh… shhh.. shhhh… sheet music, would you? That may be part of your problem. Listen to the thing a couple of hundred times and it will all start to make sense, or at least get engraved in your brain.
I can lend you a couple of recordings if you are without one. You do have a turntable don’t you? (Cough, splutter, Az wipes the red wine off the monitor.)
BTW some players don’t play the last part, which seems to have been grafted on by someone other than the person who developed the other variations.
To make matters worse there are a couple of distinct settings that are commonly played, and even entirely different tunes by the same name…
But this is a real piper’s tune. I think they had fun in the old days making up their own variations on a tune, which is how a lot of these tunes with multiple parts came into being. We live in an era of ever-increasing standardization.
Steve, you’ve piqued my interest. Do you know of a good rendition available on CD or cassette? (I have a turntable, but vinyl is hard to find nowadays)
Thanks,
Bruce
Bruce, the only recordings I have of this tune, both on vinyl are on Matt Molloy’s (eponymous) first solo record, and on Chieftains Ten (was this released in North America under the title Cotton-Eyed Joe?). I’d think both of these recordings would be easily available on CD.
On the sleeve notes to Matt M’s record it says that he plays the version associated with Willie Clancy. From memory (I really need to get a new stylus) Matt M doesn’t play the last part I alluded to, but the Chieftains do, and apart from that the versions are very close, as I recall.
Unfortunately none of the recordings I have of Willie Clancy, Séamus Ennis or any other piper include this tune. Surely Peter Laban would know if any piper had dared to record this famous piece. Peter?
My favorite version is by Liam O’Flynn on his CD The Piper’s Call.
Yes Steve?
Willie Clancy on the Pipering of Willie Clancy should be a definitive one, Ennis played it a lot but I am not sure it’s one of the commercial recordings, Tommy Keane recorded that version too I think, one of the other Gold rings, An Fainne oir ort is on one of the Noel Hill recordings
Thanks for the info, Folks. The search is on for a couple of the citations, but I’ve dusted off my Cotton Eyed Joe-10 cassette. Should have remembered, since this is where I learned one of my very first tunes, Garrick’s (sp) Wedding.
Thanks again,
Bruce