i noticed recently that frankie gavin contributed whistle and fiddle to voodoo lounge by the stones and wondered if anyone else has come across musicians of his ilk on unusual recordings
i suppose i could also mention kate bush using spillane, o’flynn, lunny, john sheehan but most of you probably know that
Altan are on Dolly Parton’s “Little Sparrow” album, though I don’t recall being able to hear them very well.
Mark Knopfler does a fair bit of that. Collaborating with The Chieftains, and having Liam O’Flynn, Donal Lunny and a bunch of other legends I forget on some of his recordings, like Golden Heart.
Kathryn Tickell has recorded with Knopfler, and she’s on a number of fellow Geordie Sting’s records.
Seamus Egan played flute on ‘Dancing in the Parlor’, by old-time American 5-string-banjo player (extraordinaire) Stephen Wade.
Back in the 1990s Eileen Ivers was a member of Hall and Oates’s touring band. Recently I also saw her on David Letterman’s show playing in the group Sting put together for his latest album. Presumably she’s on recordings by these bands as well.
As for the argument on whether or not Eileen Ivers is a trad musician, I’m not going there.
Paddy Keenan tells of being invited to audition/record with the Beatles in London in the 1960s. He mentions it briefly on the liner notes to one of his albums but I’ve heard him go into more detail about it in interviews.
i also noticed yesterday that paddy moloney plays pipes with mike oldfield on a record called 5 miles out
AHA! bagpipes seem to be the one instrument Mike Oldfield cannot play! finally we may have a wepon against him!!
runs off screaming to the laboratory
The Cure’s “How Beautiful You Are” has fiddle and an accordian, but the musicians are uncredited. I’ve always wondered who they were.
Not Irish, but sort of related – Thomas Dolby’s album, Astronauts & Heretics, has Cajun musicians (fiddle and accordian) on a number of tracks (the ones recorded in New Orleans). I saw Kevin Burke play some Cajun-style once.
For a while Paddy Moloney had the Chieftains in mutual log-rolling mode, where (I suspect) he or the whole band would agree to guest on someone else’s rock’n’roll or country album, and instead of getting paid they’d record a track with the star for use in a Chieftains project. He got through a long list of performers (from Mick n’ Keef to Emmylou and beyond) that way. I’ve long suspected that lights went off when the band or their record company saw the sales and airplay they got by recording Irish Heartbeat with Van Morrison, and for the next decade that’s what every new Chieftains release consisted of.
There’s always the old joke that goes
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To record with the Chieftains.
Kathryn Tickell’s Northumbrian pipes are also, strangely enough, featured in the score for the Spike Lee film “25th Hour” starring Ed Norton…
Breton piper Ronan Le Bars (from Pennoù Skoulm) played with singers such as Stéphane Eicher or Claude nougaro.
see for instance : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MaNTGSu_24
PJ Crotty on Murray Head’s “Say It Ain’t So” (1975)