The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #21800 Message #4207967
Posted By: The Sandman
05-Sep-24 - 11:16 AM
Thread Name: Folk song collecting. Good or bad?
Subject: RE: Folk song collecting. Good or bad?
Neil Boyle (1889-1961) born 26th. November, 1889 to Paddy Boyle and Nancy Sweeney at Easton, Pennsylvania; died at Dungloe on the 8th. August, 1961. It was another family of Donegal fiddlers, the Dohertys, who insisted that Peter Kennedy should do everything possible to make a recording of ”Neily“ because of his quite exceptional style. In the first place, he learned much from his grandfather, the famous Padraig McSweeney; secondly, because he claimed to have learned from ”the little people“, and thirdly, John, Michael, and Simie Doherty told us that he had written a number of his own compositions [including The Moving Clouds on this recording], which were now sought after by other fiddlers but jealously guarded by ”Neily“ himself. Although he had previously made a number of 78 rpm records for Regal Zonophone and many broadcasts, in the first place Neily refused to record. However he finally agreed to talk about ”The Present State of Irish Music“, and learning from the ”wee folk“, and in so doing, started to illustrate his talk. In this way Peter succeeded in making this remarkable recording. Because the house had no road access, Peter needed to use nearly half a mile of microphone cable in order to operate his tape machine from the car batteries, using the car horn as a signal. On playback, Neil was pleased with the result and gave his permission for publication….”