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Sleeve Notes
Jimmy Crowley has been a constant in my musical life especially in my early days when I wandered about the Beautiful City wide-eyed and in wonder at the Cork makers of music. Jimmy, I remember, was nearly always present at those great early sessions at the Phoenix Bar, the "O' Donoghue's" of Cork along with his band Stokers Lodge, Mick Daly, Mick "Tana" O'Brien; Ger Shine and the Willises who went on to form the seminal Coppinger Stang. They all invoke the golden sound and reverie of the magical seventies in Cork and those wonderful late night sessions at the Café Lorca especially spring to mind.
As a songwriter, I must say that Jimmy's song My Love is a Tall Ship is as fine a song of its kind as ever I've heard and I have often wondered why it hasn't been taken up and covered for it should be.
Some Things Never Change was a title I came up with for Jimmy's third album, his first adventure with electric music. Jimmy has been a collector and protector of old ballads, a writer of new ballads in the old style with undisputed authenticity. As well as selling broadsheets on the streets of Cork, pedalling his self-penned, topical ballads, he also has a great reverence for the classical pop songs of the sixties and seventies reflecting the broad span of influences on his music.
Jimmy McCarthy, Co. Wicklow, March 06.
The Fox and The Hare — On its first hearing, this sounds harmless enough but closer study discovers misogny and murder most airy. John O'Connell from Baile Mhuirne sang me the song, most likely an English folk song that found its way to Co. Cork, It is to be found in The Oxford Book of Traditional Verse.
The Banks of Sullane — I learned this beautiful pastourelle from Rachel Ní Riada from Cúil Aodha in the County Cork. To my knowledge the Sullane is one of the few masculine rivers in Irish (Abhainn an tSuláin) and it has inspired artists like Rachel's father Sean Ó Riada who set the piece to an orchestral arrangement.
The Killeens Hunt — Killeens, a village between Blarney and the northside of Cork city has an echo of sadness in its original name: An Chillín, meaning a small churchyard; a place where stillborn unbaptised children were buried. A hare-rich, verdant countryside, it still is regular ground for the Fairhill Harrier Club for the winter sport of hunting.
Sean O'Callaghan, the Shakespeare of the Northside, wrote the song and was present on that fateful day when the hare, making her escape, at the fall of evening, addresses the hunt thanking them for the day's sport and looking forward to their company in the future. I collected it from Sean's brother the late Hadda O'Callaghan in the middle seventies .
An Invitation to A Funeral — There are haggards of Fancy Ball comics like this in the oral song tradition especially in the North. They often deal with excessive eating and drinking and unconventional dress: songs like Lannigan's Ball, The Irish Jubilee and The Coal Quay Market. I learned this from Finbarr Boyle at a singing festival in Beleek in the County Fermanagh in the late seventies.
Summer Madness — Echoes of magical sixties' summers in the seaside village of Crosshaven, Co. Cork and the adjacent bays of Graball, Church and Myrtleville. Declan's guitar solo here is one of my favourites of all time.
Ain't Every Chap Doing It But You — Learned from my old friend Tony Holleran from the County Galway, a master of school and of the comic muses or 'black-pudding' songs as he calls the genre. Tony is a fine songwriter and tradition bearer and organised the famous Tom McHale folk club in Athlone and Mrs. Flannery's Folk Club at Bolgers' Hotlel, Tullamore, where many folkies cut their teeth.
Postcards — My first love song written during an estrangement from my first love Evelyn. The memory of the heady, scented lanes of Carne, Co. Wexford where we spent a happy cycling holiday e'er we were wed and a few beautiful postcards she had sent me piqued the pangs of seperation.
Dear Old City by the Lee — This famous song beats a demented path up and down the streets of Cork City calling on characters old and new at every corner. I suspect the hand of Sean O'Callaghan but it seems hard to prove this beyond doubt. In 1965 James N. Healy in his Ballads from the Pubs of Ireland was equally at a loss as to its authorship.
The Holy Ground — I had always looked upon this, one of the Clancy Brothers party pieces as a potboiler until one day some muse persuaded me to pluck a slow legao and the sentiment of loss and parting assumed a more poignant pleatau as I added a major seventh and a few minors.
If I Didn't Have A Dime (To Play The Juke Box) — Gene Pitney had a hit with this in 1962. It was covered by Tom Dunphy of the Royal Showband, one of first musicians in Ireland to switch to bass guitar. I tried to put the same steam into this as I'd put into Barbera Allen; they're first cousins any way. Rockin' Jerry one of Cork's great natural resources and a mine of information on early rock and roll and popular music told me he remembered hearing this and Johnny Will on Miss Bailey's juke box in St. Lukes, Cork.
Johnny Will — Pat Boone had a hit with this in 62 in the States. It was Declan Sinnot who suggested I should record it as a single in the spirit and as a follow-up to The Jukebox. I had great fun working with Delcan's Dwane Eddie style guitar and Pat Mac (Namara's) wonderful flamboyant accordion.
The Boys of Fairhill (Neo-reggae version with The Electric Band) — The Electric Band's only single (B side had Mandy's lovely song, So Scared) and this neo-reggae version of Cork's second anthem took us into the top twenty. The early quatrains were composed by Sean O'Calllaghan and induce the soporific quality of a pastourelle while the verses about 'recent' heroes like Christy Ring and Katty Barry were added later to the heady Cork stew which never goes off the boil. Sorry folks, I ran out space the lyrics of this one, but ye should know if by now!
Apologia
In a synthesis of joy, frustration, justice and trepidation I choose to embark on the project of the reissue of my first three albums, all originally on the Mulligan label. The frustration was fused by middle age, growing older and wiser and seeing and hearing neither sight nor sound of my early work on general radio broadcasts or in any record store for twenty years. Mulligan records must be congratulated for seeing enough originality in me in 1976 to ask me to record "The Boys of Fairhill" and subsequently "Camphouse Ballads" and "Somethings Never Change". I shall forever be grateful to Micheál Ó Domhnaill, Séamus Ó Néill and Nell Ní Neachtain for that early kickstart and for Micheál's patience as producer in shaping the arrangements as well as being the official 'trainer' of the Stokers Lodge team: he certainly got us into a musical shape we never reached before. However, every representation legally and personally to procure copies of contracts, royalties or masters or to forge a licencing or re-possesion arrangement with Freestate has proved negative after all those years.
Armed with two sets of pristine vinyl copies of each title and adding a few bonus tracks to Somethings Never Change from my electric days, I headed North to Enniskillen and there with the capable hands and impeccable ears of Robyn Robbins at Mid-Atlantic studios, I set about saving what I could and transposing it into the digital realm. Robyn worked assiduously to mute (almost!) every glitch, crack and scrape, reducing vinly noise, inducing contemporary breath while ever faithful to the original aural spirit and philosophy. I thank him for his patience and skill. I thank Niall Tóibín, Niall Toner and Jimmy McCarthy for their kind, hearty prefaces to the second editions and to Dermot Canniffe for the extensive new artwork and design he has decorated the music with.
Finally, special thanks to Darby Crowley, my brother, for breathing new life into the project and helping with representation.
Jimmy Crowley,
An Fheothanach, Corea Dhuibhne, Co. Chiarraí, Aibreán 06
