Lately I've been fairly obsessed with Tommy Potts.
I know tg4 did a documentary about a decade ago, Cérbh É? Tommy Potts. Does anyone know where I might find a copy of that? TG4 seems to make it available now and then but access is spotty in the US. There doesn't seem to be a DVD for sale anywhere
Tommy Potts film?
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PB+J
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Mr.Gumby
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Re: Tommy Potts film?
They regularly recycle these things, it will come up again.
I went through a Potts phase some twenty years ago through a cache of home recordings, some of them very intense. It is interesting how he remained outside the mainstream but influenced quite a few people intensely at one time or another, a whole pocket of Clare fiddlers got touched and today Liam O'Connor can uncannily channel him at times. But O'Suilleabhainn turned him into a bit of a private industry, the whole Litany of the Saints of it: I remember someone asked Seán Potts when he was compiling a CD of recordings of Tommy if he had to ask Meehawl's permission to publish it.
At some point someone put up a number of recordings from the 1940s, I forget who the fiddler was, that had some tunes very close to Potts' treatment of them. The thing was, they were recorded well before Potts was supposed to have formed his approach. Never quite managed to find out where they fitted in the story.
RTE item on Potts' death
I went through a Potts phase some twenty years ago through a cache of home recordings, some of them very intense. It is interesting how he remained outside the mainstream but influenced quite a few people intensely at one time or another, a whole pocket of Clare fiddlers got touched and today Liam O'Connor can uncannily channel him at times. But O'Suilleabhainn turned him into a bit of a private industry, the whole Litany of the Saints of it: I remember someone asked Seán Potts when he was compiling a CD of recordings of Tommy if he had to ask Meehawl's permission to publish it.
At some point someone put up a number of recordings from the 1940s, I forget who the fiddler was, that had some tunes very close to Potts' treatment of them. The thing was, they were recorded well before Potts was supposed to have formed his approach. Never quite managed to find out where they fitted in the story.
RTE item on Potts' death
My brain hurts
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PB+J
- Posts: 1307
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- Tell us something.: I'm a historian and the author of "The Beat Cop:Chicago's Chief O'Neill and the Creation of Irish Music," published by the University of Chicago in 2022. I live in Arlington VA and play the flute sincerely but not well
Re: Tommy Potts film?
Mr.Gumby wrote:They regularly recycle these things, it will come up again.
I went through a Potts phase some twenty years ago through a cache of home recordings, some of them very intense. It is interesting how he remained outside the mainstream but influenced quite a few people intensely at one time or another, a whole pocket of Clare fiddlers got touched and today Liam O'Connor can uncannily channel him at times. But O'Suilleabhainn turned him into a bit of a private industry, the whole Litany of the Saints of it: I remember someone asked Seán Potts when he was compiling a CD of recordings of Tommy if he had to ask Meehawl's permission to publish it.
At some point someone put up a number of recordings from the 1940s, I forget who the fiddler was, that had some tunes very close to Potts' treatment of them. The thing was, they were recorded well before Potts was supposed to have formed his approach. Never quite managed to find out where they fitted in the story.
RTE item on Potts' death
Martin Hays sounds a lot like him. What I like is the alone quality. I’m sure other people played like that at times, when they were alone: his tunes sound like dance music for an imaginary crowd. They don’t sound out to please