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I had mostly avoided his band recordings too because to be honest they at first seemed to me to be exactly the kind of inauthentic and vulgar American Irish thing I dislike.
I wouldn't call it that, some of the songs are a bit mawkish but the band stuff, well, it's band stuff but fine in its own right.
Didn't Morrison play/record Dem Golden Slippers? I sort of hear Goodby Pat, Goodbye Mick with it but that may just be brainfog. I don't recall Junior playing that sort of thing but people would lift stuff off those 78rpms just because it was there and they heard it. FWIW, I have a recording of Johnny Doherty playing Colonel Bogey at a gig, just as an indication people just played stuff, whatever it was, because it was catchy and/or popular. Or Willie Clancy playing 'Champagne Charlie' and more than a few pipers taking it up without knowing what it was.
But that banjo/music hall stuff was ofcourse particularly strong with the Flanagans, and some of McKenna and Gaffney stuff. (see also
Bradshaw and Small on McKenna)
Some of those stories about players like Killoran really bring them to life and I always got a great buzz out of meeting people who had first hand accounts. There was one occasion taht I wrote about here when it happened, where I walked into Michael Gleeson's shop in Kilrush and found a box of old-ish stock nickel Feadógs on the counter (it was the start of the schoolyear). I tried a few (and bought one) but while I was doing that Michael started talking to me, once he placed me (I played for the sets in his brother's pub every week, first in the band with Junior and the old crowd, later, as they increasingly fell away, with Jackie Daly and whoever turned up) and came out with all these stories about Killoran's first visit to the area in 1948. Killoran bringing two wire recorders to record people with, plugging in one and, it not being built for the local 220 V, blew it up, and then doing the same to the next one. Michael explained how they eventually improvised a workaround improvised transformer that got the machines working again (the recordings were lost somehow, despite thorough research. They included Junior and Josie Hayes in their prime and the first recordings of Willie Clancy, fairly new to the pipes). That was only one of them, but it was great just to walk into a shop and coming out again with all that.
I don't know how much of the minstrel stuff made it to Ireland. It definitely made to London

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