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[smiley]

A really interesting documentary on the late Joe Cooley of Peterswell, Co. Galway presented by Tony MacMahon has just been uploaded to youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwDxFDQe6q0

At 13min 30sec  Fiachna Ó Mongáin says [on the translated subtitles] "I came to the conclusion that the music doesn't need to be very fast for it to have good rhythm ..." and then he plays the High Reel to demonstrate this. Even with Tony MacMahon's voice overdubbed you can still get a good idea of his lovely style based on Cooley - I assume he's playing a C#/D box.

[Tufty]

Around 17 mins they state that he played a D/D sharp. Watching the demos they are playing mostly on the inside row.

[Stiamh]

Around 17 mins they state that he played a D/D sharp. Watching the demos they are playing mostly on the inside row.

I think every Irish box player on this forum knows that, Tufty, and it's what we (or I, at any rate) keep saying when questions are asked about C/C# and D/D# tunings: the overwhelming majority of Irish box players play semitone boxes inside-out, even when this means that tunes come out a semitone sharp, or flat.

This goes back a long way:  John Clifford, husband of fiddler Julia, is remembered mainly as a piano accordion player, but he played a D/D# inside-out back in the 1940s (IIRC), forcing his pal Denis Murphy (brother of Julia) to tune his fiddle up a semitone. And Jackie Daly remembers Sliabh Luachra players playing C/C# boxes as though they were C#/Ds, probably in the 1950s.

[triskel]

... the overwhelming majority of Irish box players play semitone boxes inside-out, even when this means that tunes come out a semitone sharp, or flat.

Indeed so, though Joe Cooley was also well-able to play outside-in when "concert pitch" (D) was needed. (I have this from musicians in Ireland that he played with.) His only C#/D was the silver-grey, but D/D# was his preference.

This goes back a long way:  John Clifford, husband of fiddler Julia, is remembered mainly as a piano accordion player, but he played a D/D# inside-out back in the 1940s (IIRC), forcing his pal Denis Murphy (brother of Julia) to tune his fiddle up a semitone.

You take me back to lunchtime sessions in the Irish Centre, Camden Town, back in the '70s, when I'd sometimes chat with John. He told me he bought a 3-row box in London, to try and get the right keys for band playing, but (it was probably B/C/C# and) he couldn't get on with it, and piano accordions were all the rage at the time so... 

And Jackie Daly remembers Sliabh Luachra players playing C/C# boxes as though they were C#/Ds, probably in the 1950s.

I know C#/D players who still like to play a C/C# sometimes, like Brendan Begley or Conor Connolly. In fact, when they used to play for the set dancing in Mick Hughes' Bar in Dublin together, poor Dermot McLaughlin never knew if he needed to have his fiddle tuned to D, down to C#, or up to Eb, depending on the box Brendan turned up with. 

[triskel]

A really interesting documentary on the late Joe Cooley of Peterswell, Co. Galway presented by Tony MacMahon has just been uploaded to youtube.

It's wonderful to get to see that there are more clips of film that have survived from 1973! 

[Stiamh]

The "little touch" that Tony Mac demonstrates starting at 17:30 is interesting. Charlie Harris comments that it "completely twists [the phrase]... turns it upside down..." I suppose it might do in box-playing terms but it's actually a standard element of Sligo fiddling in particular - playing what might be noted as (3gfe (3fed instead as {g}fe {f}ed - and barely sounding the grace note.

I've only found two points in the scale where you can do this on the box all in one direction: here on C#/D on the pull and B/C on the push. 

[Stiamh]

A really interesting documentary on the late Joe Cooley of Peterswell, Co. Galway presented by Tony MacMahon has just been uploaded to youtube.

It's wonderful to get to see that there are more clips of film that have survived from 1973! 

Yes, I was surprised to see the dancing. Perhaps that and what we have seen before is all there is?

[Tamba]

Many thanks for posting that Smiley, I really enjoyed watching it, I have decided to run away from home and live in Charle Harris' workshop!

[AnnC]

  just checked my old pc and found several "tapes" worth of Joe Cooley recordings, I think they came from a link published in the International Concertina Association's  " Concertina World" magazine several years ago. An amazing player 

[triskel]

... I have decided to run away from home and live in Charle Harris' workshop!

 

I've spent time there, and slept beside it - but never in it... 

Only, I'll warn you, it does flood there the odd time!

[KLR]

The Joe Cooley Tapes.  More JC than you can shake a stick at.

Cue him playing the Pretty Girls of Mayo up - he plays the D/D# outside in, and keeps the basses going.    Or the fingerboard glissando at the end of My Darling Asleep.  Most box players just push buttons, this man was inspired.   

A box playing friend who learned music from Jeremy Kammerer always plays Adde fdAG in bar 2 of My Love Is In America.  Jeremy used to point out little wrinkles in Cooley and Keegan's settings like that.  Musicians in the old days so often had their own take on tunes.

[smiley]

Thanks for reminding me about the Cooley Tapes KLR, but I couldn't find the Pretty Girls of Mayo when I browsed through the various tapes I have saved - any chance you could share the mp3 clip? Has anyone researched all these tape recordings and made a comprehensive listing?

BTW I came across Joe playing the Atholl Highlanders in G on "Tapes 8,9 &10 from CW" - so now those recalcitrant D/G players who won't play it in A can say they're just playing Joe Cooley's version   

[richard.fleming]

I usually play C#/D but recently bought a D/D# and I'm already wondering why I didn't try it before. You can play it like a C#/D and it's an Eflat box, and you can play it from the outside in which so far, seems pretty straightforward for a C#/D player. An awful lot of tunes can be played on the outside row, the rest need 'accidentals' from the inside row which is fairly instinctual if you already play C#/D.  Joe knew what he was about alright.

[KLR]

It's at the tail end of the track yclept "The Jolly Tinker w Keegan" from Tape 6.  Cathy Whitesides didn't know titles for a good few of the tunes, our own Stiamh stepped in with the missing ones which is available on the site as a text file I think, but the file names stayed the same.

[triskel]

It's at the tail end of the track yclept "The Jolly Tinker w Keegan" from Tape 6.

That's why he'll have been playing in D then, with Kevin Keegan being a (great) B/C player (also from East Galway) who he often played with... (Kevin was from Ballinasloe and died in San Francisco five years to the day after Joe Cooley. He'd toured America with the legendary Aughrim Slopes Ceili Band, and when they left the country he stayed behind to start a new life there.)

The photo was taken by Joe Cooley's wife Nancy, in their San Francisco apartment, the day the young Sean Keane travelled across America to meet Joe, who called Kevin to come over and join them - there might have been a tune, or two, played too...