The lyrics to both songs (Tipperary and Golden slippers) are about leaving friends behind: the narrator in both is going on a journey and saying goodby. In Golden slippers he seems to be on his deathbed though. Both tunes make light of sorrow, although I would bet that Golden slippers as originally performed was meant to be performed in a more nostalgic/sad way than it is today.

One of the most striking things about African American and Irish American commercial music in the minstrel show era is the longing for the vanished past or the faraway home. Starting with Moore probably, but then Stephen Foster: the singer can be interchangeably longing for Old Erin or the Old Plantation. That interchangeability extends to stereotypes. Paddy and Sambo often had exactly the same traits, comic language, evasion of work, good natured foolishness, pre-modern attitudes, ragged clothes.

There's a ton of Irish American music about longing for the old sod sung by people who would never have returned to Ireland, because they did well in the US and had opportunities denied them in the old country. O'Neill often gets nostalgic but though he had more than enough money to live as a squireen or maybe even a squire in Ireland, he never does more than one visit. Lots of African Americans made a living singing songs about the dear old south at the very moments when spectacle lynchings of African Americans were common: no way in hell would James A. Bland have gone down south. The nostalgia/longing piece is really interesting.

"Fluters" is available for download at https://ceolalainn.breqwas.net/download ... ld%20Erin/

No liner notes though.

Best wishes.

Steve

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"Do not resent growing old. Many are denied the privilege."

Thank you!

These tracks will probably of interest as well: James Morrison & Tom Ennis, from the Topic lp not all tracks but a few of them anyway. They show Morrison's appraoch to arranging duets duets nicely. I always liked these (this sort of thing was my listening and tune learning fodder during the early and mid eighties), even if Tom Ennis is not the greatest. He manages to sound very upbeat and cheery most of the time. As I said earlier, the Mike Carney duets are top notch, especially the Ravelled Hank of Yarn/Duke of Leinster. The Shanachie lp 'The pure genius of..' is worth looking up as well.

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I have the Morrison and Ennis. The Shanachie record is hard to locate. I still can't find "James Morrison: the professor." Worldcat says the library of congress has it but the LO seems to disagree.

BTW "Golden Slippers:" The earliest recording I've seen is 1894 by Silas Leachman, who O'Neill mentions as the guy who claimed to have written "turkey in the straw." O'Neil clearly thinks this is nonsense. Leachman was made a Chicago Alderman it seems almost entirely on the basis of his singing voice. Bland allegedly wrote it in 1879 or so: he lived in England for twenty years.

Goodbye Mick references "Castle Garden," which was the entry port for immigrants to NYC before Ellis island, from about 1845 to 1890. So that puts Goodby Mick possibly the same time as Golden Slippers but also possibly earlier.

I see the lp come up on ebay, perhaps a few times a year. In fact one sold two weeks ago for $8.50 (but at least you can read the notes on the back cover in the photograph included with the listing). I remember buying it in the Claddagh record shop in Dublin, a very long time ago (and feeling moderately old now for it).





You'll find the entry for the fluters on the blog that originally put these online : here and while not a copy of the notes, at least it offers an index.

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Thanks again!

You're in luck. Look what I found (hiding in plain sight) : James Morrison.zip

I lifted it myself, download is clean, no index or notes but each track/file is named.

Interesting to hear him play the whistle, with McKenna playing the flute. Never heard that one before. On the other hand, Rambles through Ireland is deeply cringeworthy (they're at the Darling Girl as I am writing).

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I am in luck! Thank you very much!

It was great to hear "Golden Slippers" paired with "wreck of the old 97 (99)." "Wreck" is often described as the first "country" tune in American music history, or at least the first commercially successful one. The Singer on the original, Vernon Dalhart, was a classically trained opera singer who switched to first "coon songs" in a black accent and then "hillbilly" songs in a country accent. Reportedly the guitar on the original is played by Frank Ferara, a native Hawaiian who helped to make the Lap Steel guitar popular and central to "country" music. Interesting that Morrison chose to play that.

Most of the business of this thread is done I suppose. For some light entertainment, here's one I just pulled out of a box (I was actually surprised to find quite a few items I had apparently picked up, stored away and promptly forgotten about. Note Muller getting equal credit.

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Very Cool!

For what it's worth I think it's possible Morrison picked those songs. Morrison seems to have been a pretty together guy and I don't think we assume he was helpless in the hands of the record companies. Irish Americans were certainly listening to both those tunes and if you could sell them a copy of those tunes along with other more traditional pieces why not?

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).

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Here's a paper entitled " When Paddy Picked Up the Banjo: Afro-Celtic Creolisation, the Flanagan Brothers and the origins of the Irish banjo"
and another linking Scottish Trad with American ragtime.

Best wishes.

Steve

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"Do not resent growing old. Many are denied the privilege."

Thank you, already read both!