Irish

Recorded in Ireland and Irish-America, 1890s–1940s

These sides come from Irish traditional players who recorded in America across the 1920s and 1930s, and from a handful of later sessions that reach into mid-century. At the centre stand three fiddlers who left the same district of south Sligo for New York: Michael Coleman of Kilavil, James Morrison of Riverstown, and Paddy Killoran of Ballymote, born in the first years of the century. The Irish Traditional Music Archive groups them as the Holy Trinity of Sligo fiddle masters; Coleman’s playing, in particular, helped define the music in America through those decades.

The repertory is dominated by dance music. Reels appear on twenty-nine of the published sides, hornpipes on eighteen, and jigs on sixteen, with a smaller count of airs, a few polkas, and the odd march or set. Killoran is credited on sixteen sides, Coleman and Morrison on ten each; Tom Ennis likewise holds ten, and joint sides by Ennis and Morrison pack reels and jigs into the short span of a single disc.

Paddy Cronin is heard on nine sides, some from 1950, while Leo Rowsome, Liam Walsh, Michael Gallagher, the Flanagan Brothers, and others fill out the remaining shelves. Of the published sides, most fall inside the familiar pre-war window; a minority are classed as later-era or left unclassified, without changing the weight of the dance tunes that carry the collection.