For the first post of the new year, we are happy to share a few recently-digitized music clips of Irish fiddle legends Andy McGann and Paddy Reynolds from 1960s New York. The audio selections in this blog post are from reel 3, side 1 of Joe Lamont Irish Music Recordings in Burns Library’s Irish Music Archives.
Andy McGann (1928-2004) was born in New York to parents from County Sligo, Ireland. He grew up listening to local Irish radio programs, and began learning fiddle at the age of seven from Catherine Brennan Grant, who had studied with renowned Sligo fiddle player Michael Coleman. Andy was also a violinist in his high school orchestra. His father and Coleman had known each other in Ireland before coming to New York, and in the early 1940s Coleman became a frequent visitor to the McGann home in The Bronx. He taught Andy many tunes and the two played music together informally until Coleman’s death in 1945.
Paddy Reynolds (1920-2005) learned his first tunes growing up in County Longford. His early musical inspirations included his mother, Mary Ann Quinn Reynolds, who played violin; his aunt Ellen, a singer and lilter; and 78 rpm fiddle recordings of Michael Coleman and Paddy Killoran. In the late 1940s, after working in County Donegal and leading the Four Provinces Ceili Band, he left Ireland and settled in the The Bronx, in the same neighborhood as Andy McGann and the legendary Sligo fiddle player James ‘Lad’ O’Beirne.
By 1950, Andy and Paddy had begun to form what would become a long-standing musical partnership. In the 1960s they were core members of the New York Ceili Band, and over time each would also perform and record with other musicians. In 1976 the pair released their classic fiddle duet album accompanied by guitarist Paul Brady. They can also be heard on the 1991 Green Linnet CD of the Boston College Irish Fiddle Festival.
Some of the music presented below also includes New York native James (Jim) Mahon, who learned piano accordion in Ireland in the late 1950s/early 1960s and became active in New York Irish music circles around 1963. In 1976 he played piano accompaniment for All-Ireland fiddle champion Kathleen Collins on her debut Shanachie Records album.
To figure out when the music on reel 3 was recorded, the top of Lamont’s tracklist page provides a clue: “Burke McGann Dolan Record” is a reference to A Tribute to Michael Coleman, the 1966 LP dubbed on the first half of the tape. The date of this Shaskeen Records album suggests that the second half of the tape could have been recorded in 1966 or perhaps slightly later.
The open-reel audiotapes in Joe Lamont Irish Music Recordings combine live instrumental music—much of it from New York City in the 1950s and 1960s—with dubs of 78 rpm and LP discs. To listen to the unpublished music on reel 3 side 1 please use the links below.
Lamont Collection Audio Clips
Reel 3, side 1, audio clip 1 (36:35 to 41:44)
- Andy McGann, fiddle, Paddy Reynolds, fiddle, and James Mahon, piano accordion
- Fly by Night (hornpipe)
- The Beeswing (aka the Bee’s Wing) composed by James Hill (hornpipe)
- The Belles of Tipperary (reel)
Reel 3, side 1, audio clip 2 (41:44 to 53:06)
- Andy McGann, fiddle and Paddy Reynolds, fiddle
- Pretty Peg (aka Bill Clancy’s Delight) (reel)
- A version of Old Tipperary (aka Sean Tiobrad Árann) (jig)
- The Broken Pledge (reel)
- Glencolmcille (reel)
- Never Was Piping So Gay, composed by Ed Reavy (reel)
- Eileen Curran (reel)
- Dowd’s Favourite (reel)
- Laington’s (aka Dillon Brown) (reel)
Reel 3, side 1, audio clip 3 (53:06 to 55:29)
- Andy McGann, fiddle, joined by James Mahon, piano accordion
- Tom Ward’s Downfall; Reel of Mullinavat (reels)
Reel 3, side 1, audio clip 4 (55:29 to 01:03:24)
- Andy McGann, fiddle and Paddy Reynolds, fiddle
- The Boys of Ballisodare (reel)
- The Humours of Lissadell (reel)
- Maudabawn Chapel, composed by Ed Reavy (reel)
- Flaherty’s (aka Lad O’Beirne’s) (hornpipe)
- Tyrone Among the Bushes (hornpipe)
- The High Level, composed by James Hill (hornpipe)
About the Joe Lamont Collection
Each audio clip in this blog post is from Audio file 99564_0000 (reel 3), Joe Lamont Irish music recordings, IM.M145.2005, John J. Burns Library, Boston College. The library-assigned reel number (in this case, “3”) appears in a small square at the upper right of each tracklist page.
Because the first 36 minutes of the tape (00:00:00 to 00:36:35) were dubbed from a commercially-published recording, that portion of the tape is not presented here. The four audio clips above comprise the tape’s unpublished audio, from 00:36:35 to the end of the tape at 01:03:24. Listeners might notice occasional imperfections that originated on the tapes, such as abrupt beginnings and endings, variation in sound quality and volume, and inconsistencies in tempo or pitch.
An emigrant from Co. Derry, Joe Lamont (1905-1972) began working for the New York City Transit Authority in 1927. As a fiddle player he was actively involved in establishing clubs for Irish musicians in his adopted city. He brought his reel-to-reel tape recorder to live events; he also used it to dub sound discs onto reels. His personal collection of 60 open-reel tapes was donated to Burns Library’s Irish Music Archives by his nephew James Lowney. Boston College Libraries digitized and described the collection as part of a 2018 Recordings at Risk digitization grant project.
Further details about the collection can be viewed by downloading the collection’s finding aid and viewing additional blog posts from the Joe Lamont collection. For feedback during the preparation of this blog post we are grateful to Billy Hardy and to Séamus Connolly. For rights reasons, the music in this post is only offered for streaming rather than downloading. If you have questions, comments, or additional information to share with us, we invite you to contact the Library.
— Elizabeth Sweeney, Irish Music Librarian, Burns Library
Sources Consulted
- Collins, Daniel Michael. Liner notes. Andy McGann & Paddy Reynolds. Andy McGann and Paddy Reynolds. Shanachie 34008. CD reissue of LP. 1994.
- Hitchner, Earle. Liner notes. A Tribute to Michael Coleman. Joe Burke, Andy McGann, and Felix Dolan. Green Linnet GLCD 3097. CD reissue of LP. 1994.
- McGann, Andy. “Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin interviews Andy McGann,” accessed January 5, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9bcfMh25ME
- Meade, Don. “The Music Master of Dromard: Paddy Reynolds, 1920-2005,” accessed January 3, 2022, https://comhaltas.ie/music/treoir/detail/the_music_master_of_dromard
- Mullins, Patrick and Rebecca Miller, producers. From Shore to Shore. Kingston, NY: Cherry Lane Productions, 1993. Accessed January 6, 2022, https://www.folkstreams.net/films/from-shore-to-shore
- Reavy, Ed. Selected Compositions of Ed Reavy. Philadelphia: J. Reavy, 1971.
- The Session, https://thesession.org
- Stewart, Jean. Liner notes. Traditional Music of Ireland. Kathleen Collins. Shanachie 29002. CD reissue of LP. 1994.
- “Tyrone Among the Bushes,” The Séamus Connolly Collection of Irish Music, accessed December 17, 2021, https://connollymusiccollection.bc.edu/document/446
- Vallely, Fintan. “McGann, Andy.” In The Companion to Irish Traditional Music, edited by Fintan Vallely. Cork: Cork University Press, 2011.
irish music archives @ burns library 
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