Category: Irish Trad

Tags: Folk, Trad, Irish, Session, Music, Gaelic, Ireland, Galway, ytstretch169

http://www.setdancingnews.net/wcss/wcsst.htm Tony Mac Mahon & Barney Mc Kenna play one of my favourite reels "The Wise Maid". Made popular by the late Joe Cooley a great box player from County Galway.(The original is in my favs. played by the great man himself just a month before he died.) Joe Cooley (1924-73) THE great Irish novelist John McGahern once said that he expected his characters were waiting for him to die off before taking on lives of their own. The accordeon music of Joe Cooley has taken on a life of his own since his death in 1973. Joe Cooley was born into a musical family in Peterswell, near Gort, in south County Galway, in 1924. Both his father and mother played the melodeon and most of his brothers played music. He began to play around ten years of age. In his late teens he worked in the Midlands before moving to Dublin in 1945 where he played with The Galway Rovers Ceili Band. In Dublin he met box player Sonny Brogan, later with Ceoltoiri Cualann, and Johnny Doran. But as the famous piper travelled a lot in counties Galway and Clare, Cooley in his youth would most likely have heard Doran or his brother Felix playing at local fairs and sports events. He was one of the earliest members of the Tulla Ceili Band when, as the St Patrick's Amateur Band, Tulla, they won the ceili band competition at Féili Luimní in 1946. He played with the Tulla on their first broadcast for Radio Eireann in 1948. At the end of that year he left the band to work on the buildings in London. His place was taken by Paddy O'Brien, the innovative accordeonist from Portroe, Co Tipperary. Joe Cooley rejoined the band when he returned from England towards the end of 1950. One wonders at the spectacle of Paddy O'Brien and Joe Cooley playing together on the same platform. In 1953 both men competed in the All Ireland competition in Athlone. After a recall by the judges, Paddy O'Brien was placed first and Joe Cooley second. He often played with Galway fiddle player Joe Leary, travelling, as accordeon player Tony MacMahon described it, "on dusty, icy or rainy roads on a motorcycle, the fiddle slung over Cooley's back, the accordeon tied to the fuel tank." Tony MacMahon who was a pupil of Cooley's, recalled the times he visited their family home: "The New Custom House," he wrote at the album's sleeve notes, "brings me back to my schooldays, when first Joe came to our house in the Turnpike in Ennis to play. He charmed my parents, family and neighbours with tunes like this one, which he played with great taste and discernment." In 1954, first Joe Cooley and then Paddy O'Brien left for the US. Before he left, the other musicians presented Joe with an accordeon as a farewell gift. Joe's brother, Seamus, played banjo with the Tulla, went on a US and made a recording with them. He left the band in 1958 while on tour and stayed in the US. While in New York he was involved in the Joe Cooley Ceili Band and the Joe Cooley Instrumental Group. He moved from New York to Chicago and finally to San Francisco. He told one interviewer that he met the Cronins in Boston. In America he married Nancy McMahon from Killenana, Co Clare. The Kerry accordeonist and writer, Maidhc Dainín O Sé*, worked in Chicago in the 1950s. In his biography, A Thig ná Tit Orm, he mentions one Sunday afternoon visit with his brother Sean to Hanley's pub in Chicago. There he met Joe and Seamus Cooley and a host of musicians. [My translation]: "Joe Cooley was there and a cigarette between his lips, his fingers weaving through every tune. His head was thrown back and his heart and mind were lost in the music. Among the musicians there was a man called Mike Neary. A middle-aged man with a sweet, gentle style on the fiddle. His sister Eleanor was there and her name was given as the piano player. I was listening to Sean naming them and trying my best to take in the music at the same time. On drums was Billy Soden, another man who came over with a ceili band. "Then another man sat in their company. Sean said it was Kevin Keegan who had been playing in the Aughrim Slopes Ceili Band until recently. When he was in the form, he'd knock sparks out of most musicians. There were two brothers from south Galway, Bertie and Tommy McMahon, one on the banjo and the other on the fiddle. If I could number all the musicians, I'd say there were at least 25 musicians in the pub that afternoon. Every one of them would have a place in a band back in Ireland, they were such good musicians." He added that they would play four or five tunes, one after another, for about half an hour. Joe Cooley made several trips home. On one visit Ciaran Mac Mathuna recorded him in the Dublin home of Bridie Lafferty. She played the piano with the Castle Ceili Band. Also on that recording he is reunited with fiddle player Joe Leary. He returned finally to Ireland in the...

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