A possibly forgotten side of her trip to Ireland is the fact she hauled around a taperecorder and recorded the people she visited.

I was aware, through Pat Mitchell's book 'The Dance Music of Willie Clancy' of recordings she had made of Willie.

A friend in San Francisco, with whom I swapped a fierce amount of recordings during the nineties, at some point realised how he passed her house on his way to work and decided to call in and ask about the recording.

Rita made him welcome and allowed him access to her garage where her tapes were stored. They took the place apart to retrieve what they could find and Rita allowed the tapes to be taken away for copying.

What emerged was a wealth of music, Tommy Potts on superb form at home, Willie Clancy playing the pipes and whistle, all competitions at the Oireachtas of 1963, her travels with Sean 'ac Donncha, Martin Byrnes, Séamus MacMahuna and others, the visits to the Keane family (and the nine year old Dolores doing her party pieces) and much more.

A lot of time was spent identifying the musicians and singers on the tapes (and still more than a few remain unnamed) and eventually copies were left at ITMA.