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I agree sometimes the accompaniment is head scratchingly bad--on some of the Coleman tunes you wonder if both the piano played AND the piano had been drinking. But a lo of those 78s show a distinct style thats a sign of people listening to each other.
Geoghan and Muller (and a few others) did OK. I was listening to some of the Morrison/Ennis duets earlier this week after perhaps not hearing them for twenty years. Some of these weren't too bad at all, certainly not worse than I remembered them. 'Whitey' Andrews did nice work as well. And Eleanor Neary ofcourse. Some other cases there just was a piano player and they has one unrehearsed go at it, for better or worse. It's mixed bag.
One of my favourite piano bits on the 78s is the piano solo introduction of the Blackbird, I think it was Dan Sullivan and his band, very much of its time and place.
There's one of Liam Walsh and a fiddleplayer. At some point one of them forgets a repeat and goes on to play the second part while the other continues with the first. They don't correct this and just keep going, as they continue they line up briefly for one part and then go out of sync again. No re-takes for them.
On the other hand there are a few Tom Ennis ones that were re-done and then both released. I remember a friend of mine nearly having a fit when listening to a new 78 he had just bought, one that he already had and knew well, and suddenly hearing the regulator come in where they had never before. Turned out they were the same set of tunes but different matrix numbers from the same session. Almost identical except for some some tiny bits but they really throw you when you know one version well and then listen to the other without expecting it.
But there are some nice surprises as well, there are a few sides of the Old Ireland Quartette, James Cawley, Frank O Higgins,who were also in the Fingal Trio with James Ennis, Seamus' dad, buthere they team up with Billy Andrews and they have a cello to back them. I loved that sound when I first heard it, Cawley had that puffing bicycle pump style of flute playing, Andrews whacking the regs. Lovely stuff, especially their Flogging reel.
There was also, a bit later on, a sort of thing where flute players re-recorded classic McKenna sets, there's one set of 78s, Buck from the mountain/Greencastle among them, that have flute, bass (or a guitar) and drums played with brushes for backing, almost jazzy, a little combo working in the background. I liked those for their unusual sound (even if the fluteplaying is no patch on McKenna's).