(12-06-2004) Labour of Love Tells the Story of Irish Music -- Belfast Telegraph

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Labour of Love Tells the Story of Irish Music

By Neil Johnston
njohnston@belfasttelegraph.co.uk

06 December 2004
The all but forgotten formative years of today's vibrant Irish music scene have long deserved to have their story written.

And now, courtesy of two of Belfast's most prominent music writers and commentators, the job has been done at last.

They are Colin Harper and Trevor Hodgett, whose monumental work, entitled Irish Folk, Trad & Blues: A Secret History, has just been published to widespread acclaim.

A kind of family tree of the Irish music dynasty since the late '50s and early '60s, the book has been several years in the writing, and the result of what has obviously been a labour of love for the two authors is nothing short of a literary tour de force.

Exhaustively researched, it is 420 pages long and packed with more than 100 archive photographs, many of which have never been seen publicly before.

The book traces the musical origins not only of the big names - Van Morrison, Rory Gallagher, Paul Brady, Henry McCullough, U2, Christy Moore, Liam O'Flynn, Planxty, the Bothy Band etc - but also emphasises the importance of influential trail blazers and pioneers like Horslips, Sweeney's Men and the Belfast blues pianist the late Jim Daly, who is categorically described by Hodgett as "Ireland's greatest ever blues musician".

Twenty years ago, Hodgett and Daly visited the USA together, and the writer recalls the pride he felt, as a Belfast man, when Jim, completely unknown, asked if he could sit in for a few numbers with the resident band in a Chicago blues club - and brought the house down.

"Watching my home town hero blow away a Chicago blues club audience and band is one of my most cherished musical memories," he writes. "I can still hear in my imagination the band leader, Big Daddy Kinsey, announce: 'Brother Jim Daly from Eye-er-land.'"

But the authors record the bad times as well as the good, and a famous example was the treatment meted out to Van Morrison and his colleagues in Them when they went on tour round the province in the mid '60s and found that provincial Northern Ireland was not quite ready yet for their ferocious brand of R&B.

Guitarist Billy Harrison recalls in particular what he described as the "disastrous incident" in Cookstown, Co Tyrone.

"They threw pennies at us and we collected the money off the stage, which annoyed people even more. They got incensed, things were said on both sides, and the police had to escort us out of town.

"But we reckoned the band sounded as good as the Rolling Stones. There wasn't another white man in Britain could phrase like Van."

The veteran Ulster guitarist Henry McCullough provided some diverting and illuminating insights from his long life on the rock n' roll road.

His career began in the showband era with outfits like the Skyrockets - "I was the only Protestant in it" - which he left to join another Fermanagh band, Gene & and The Gents, who were also Enniskillen based.

The Gents, he recalled, had a unique selling point in that their lead singer was a black South African who, in rural Ireland at that time, was something of a novelty.

"Can you imagine it down in Mayo or somewhere - here's this guy flying round singing My Boy Lollipop!".

McCullough went on to world fame, first with Joe Cocker's Grease Band, with whom he played at the historic Woodstock festival, and then with the Paul McCartney band Wings.

Not many people walk out on Macca, but McCullough did in 1973 during rehearsals for the Band On The Run album.

"I had a row with McCartney over what to play and where to play it, and it was quite severe. 'You'll ......... do this', like 'I'm the boss.' 'We'll see about that, you .....'

"And I just packed my guitar, stuck my amp in the car and set sail. And that was my stint in Wings done."

They made it up later, though, over a half bottle of whiskey, a couple of joints and a 'golden handshake' cheque from Paul to Henry for £5,000.

On the Irish traditional music front, the seminal importance of groups like Sweeney's Men, Planxty, The Bothy Band, Horslips, Clannad and Altan is amply covered, as well as the contribution of individual musicians like the Uilleann pipers Paddy Keenan and Liam O'Flynn, fiddle players Martin Hayes and Kevin Burke, and stringed instrument specialists Arty McGlynn, Donal Lunny, Andy Irvine and Johnny Moynihan.

Talking to case-hardened veterans of the folk scene like these yielded the authors many a good yarn, such as the one told by O'Flynn when he was asked what it was like to be burdened with the responsibility of continually being described as "a legend".

It reminded him, he said, of what the great Co Clare piper Willie Clancy told a foreign TV crew when they went to interview him in Miltown Malbay.

"So, Mr Clancy," they asked him, "where did you get your piping from?"

To which Willie gave them the deadpan reply that his mother was a plumber!

There is loads more in that vein in this endlessly fascinating volume, which succeeds in being both entertainingly and authoritatively written.

It is required reading for anyone interested in the music that really matters in Ireland and the background from which it emerged. The two authors are to be congratulated on what is undoubtedly a major achievement.

Irish Folk, Trad & Blues: A Secret History, by Colin Harper and Trevor Hodgett is published by The Collins Press at £20.

--Belfast Telegraph
 
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