unreleased Irish 78s

Subject: unreleased Irish 78s
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 14 Mar 21 - 10:06 AM

I live on the coast of Galloway, and BBC Scotland's Sunday morning programmes are such crap these days that I've reverted to RTE radio while drinking my tea on Sunday mornings - LW 252 finds it loud & clear here and further afield- nb RTE do have an archive.

John Bowman's programme at 08.30 covered Delia Murphy a few weeks ago.
This morning he included an item about Harry Bradshaw's discovery of a cache of recordings made by Bill Stapleton in the 40s and never released.
These include the earliest known recordings of Willie Clancy and Sean McGuire & there will be two CDs later in the year, as well as an unknown stride piano player & some early Val Doonican!

Subject: RE: unreleased Irish 78s
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 14 Mar 21 - 10:44 AM

As far as I know Stapleton had a studio in Moore street during the late forties. He released at least two 78s by pipers, one by Felix Doran and one by Tommy Reck.

Tommy didn't know this was released, or at least he said so. He said he went to the studion, did his but got 25 for his trouble and never heard back.

We were at a friend's house during the aftermath of a piper's meeting in 1989 and were listening to the 78 when Tommy came down for his breakfast. He was amazed, and, I believe, quietly chuffed with it.

It's interesting, and wonderful, more of the material has been unearthed.

Willie Clancy was recorded by Paddy Killoran on a wire recorder during the late forties, supposedly, until now, the earliest record of his piping. The hunt for that recording is still ongoing.

Killoran arrived in Clare with two wire recorders, plugged the first one in and blew it up, it was used to a 110 electrical network, and not the Irish 220. Undeterred he plugged in the second, with the same result. Some of the local lads had to improvise a transformer and managed fix the things. Tapes from later Killoran visits to Ireland do survive, including a duet of him playing 'The Humours of Lissadel' with a twelve year old fluteplayer, Matt Molloy.

Subject: RE: unreleased Irish 78s
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 14 Mar 21 - 01:15 PM

The story of the unheard Michael Coleman recordings ITMA recently published fit nicely under the thread's title as well.

There is stil;l a lot of stuff out there, more or less hidden from the public eye.

Subject: RE: unreleased Irish 78s
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 15 Mar 21 - 07:30 AM

The programme Jim was referring to is here:

John Bowman 14 march