MICK JOHNSON Beverley Feely wrote the following [July 10, 2001]: I am very sad to report the death of a fine fiddle maker and player in the North of England, Mick Johnson. Known as "Big Mick" to those who knew him, he was killed in a road accident in Greece a few days ago. I knew Mick as a lovely man, with an energetic style of fiddle playing, and a fantastic powerful singing voice. In the seventies he played with the Liverpool Ceili Band, and in subsequent years was well known for his playing at festivals and sessions in the North of England. He dealt in musical instruments, and was a violin maker with an excellent reputation - many great musicians (traditional, classical and other genres) play his excellent instruments. I bought my first flute (the one I still play) from Mick, and my husband Michael bought a flute and fiddle from him over the years. If you wanted a traditional instrument he was the man to supply it - his integrity meant that he would find you just what you wanted, and it would be in good condition and at the right price. Those of us who knew him, even those like me who hadn't seen him in a number of years, will be moved deeply by his loss. Such a large beautiful tree should shake the ground when it falls. Beverley.feely@dkit.ie
P.JOE HAYES The following tributes were published in the Irish American weeklies,
the Irish Voice and the Irish Echo by writers most of you recognize.
Goodbye to a Soulful Master
Cormac MacConnell
Irish Voice
" They played P. Joe into paradise this afternoon. His daughter Helen sang
his favorite song Kilmartyr, echoing through the old chapel." ON the morning
they came to bury P. Joe Hayes, the fiddler out in East Clare, the cherry
blossom trees of this new summer were still able to hang on to all their
blossoms despite the gentle tuggings of a warm breeze. It was a beautiful day
of birdsong as lively as the best reels the old fiddler ever played, of
waters running full of grace notes, of the spire of the church in Feakle
seeming to reach almost all the way to Heaven. Nobody can bury their old
comrades like the Irish musicians. I've seen them do it again and again down
the years. It was magic in Connemara when they laid down the Carna Blackbird,
Joe Heaney, on a wild sean-nos bed of music. It was magic again when they
buried Micko Russell in Doolin, Tommy McCarthy in Miltownmalbay, all the
great others. It was no different when they buried P. Joe Hayes the fiddler
today (May 8) in the week before the cherry blossoms of this May will begin
to fall down on Clare. I met Fr. Brendan Quinlivan afterwards. I could not go
to the funeral myself, as I was on the air. Fr. Brendan was one of the
clergy, the professionals of dyings and buryings, and he was still enthused
by it all. "I hope that when my time comes they send me away the same way as
they sent P. Joe to heaven today. It was great, beautiful, traditional, way
beyond what they call soul. There was music all the way. They even danced a
set at the cemetery in Kilclaren, the whole Tulla Ceili Band playing, the
birds singing in time." P. Joe was one of the founder members of arguably the
greatest ceili band ever in Ireland. He was 80 years old and he had been ill
for a while past but, until very recently, he had been playing every
Wednesday night in Pepper's great pub in Feakle, close to his home in
Maghera. "The Tulla was the band that some German musicmaster refused to
allow on Radio Eireann in the early days because, he said, their music was so
flawed they needed to practice more before they would be at broadcast
standard! The Tulla is the band that is a living legend, manned and musicked
by living legends amongst their peers. The Tulla is the band that never
changed its style; that is, say the set dancers, the best of them all for
dancing to, what with the lift and rise of its music. All-Ireland champions
many times, played all over the world, and the only band of all," reflected
Brendan Quinlivan, "that would have to milk the cows when they came home from
a gig!" They played P. Joe into paradise this afternoon. His daughter Helen
sang his favorite song Kilmartyr, echoing through the old chapel, sweet as a
thrush, and there was not a dry eye in the benches when she was finished. And
that was good too. And those benches were filled with the heads and shoulders
and sobered and saddened bulks of his friends and neighbors from all over the
world. Here and there a face of a Chieftain, or someone from a famous trad
record sleeve, gently in the center of it all the face that acousticates the
voice of Irish music, Dr. Ciaran MacMathuna. Irish music was not near as
fashionable as it is now when Ciaran first went to Maghera, to a merry and
musical house, and recorded P. Joe and the Tulla Ceili Band. And all the
others whose skills went into the surf of the great modern wave of Irish
music's nearly tidal popularity on every shore. Martin spoke. This is the son
who marries the traditional skills of the father with an individuality and
soul that is all his own. Listening to him play -- and I had them in the
studio once playing together, gifted father, gifted son -- is always to be
able to discern that the foundations upon which he erects his improvisations
and magnetic variations are the foundations that were laid down in his
fingers and head for him by his father, long ago, just as obviously as Denis
Cahill's strings foundate him now. P. Joe had a great respect for tradition,
said Martin Hayes, and that tradition, surely, is just an Irish title for
what others call soul. Music then, singing, dancing, praying, tears,
birdsong, church bells, cherry blossoms, blue skies, and the Hayes family and
their friends sent the fiddler away just the way he would have loved. In the
studio of Clare FM, at about the same time, I called him what I have always
called these great old ones -- "the fragile china cups in the cabinet of our
culture." I played P. Joe on the crest of two or three reels. The airwaves,
maybe the feyness of the time, seemed to put a kind of ghosted extra echo on
it. As he was playing a reel called The Windy Gap you could almost see him,
fiddle under the arm, passing away through all the windy gaps of this world
towards a place where there are a lot of good musicians waiting to meet him.
His chair in Pepper's pub will not be sat upon again. But it will be there
when the music begins again. And, we know, not truly empty either . . . Irish
Voice
Trad Beat Remembering P.J. Hayes
© 2001 Irish Echo Newspaper Corp.
May 16-22, 2001
By Earle Hitchner
In 1957 at Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, the
Tulla Céilí Band, led by fiddler P.J. Hayes, finally overtook their main
rival, the Kilfenora Céilí Band, to win first prize in the senior céilí band
competition. The Kilfenora had won the previous three straight years, making
the Tulla's victory in this perennial clash of Clare titans all the sweeter
after so many runner-up finishes.
In March 1958, the Tulla came to the U.S. for a two-week tour as
reigning All-Ireland champions, and one of their performances was at New York
City's Carnegie Hall. Also on the bill were Irish-American songstress Carmel
Quinn and Pat Boone, then a hugely popular American singer in white-buck
shoes who had amassed more than 50 hit singles and had his own network TV
show from 1957 to 1960.
"Pat Boone was dressed to the nines and really looked like a star,"
recalled Eyrecourt, Co. Galway-born button accordionist Martin Mulhaire, who
had played with the Tulla on that stateside tour. "I was very impressed,
having just arrived in this country, and I said to P.J., 'Gee, I cannot
believe that the Tulla will be on the same stage as the famous Pat Boone.'
And P.J. said, 'Who's Pat Boone?' And I said, 'P.J., you never heard of Pat
Boone?' And he said, 'I haven't a clue who he is.' Then I said, 'I can't
believe that,' and P.J. replied, 'Well, I'll tell you one thing -- I'll bet
he never heard of me either.' "
Over the phone from his home in Queens, N.Y., Mulhaire let out a ripple
of laughter at the memory. "P.J. had a very wry sense of humor and could be
quite witty and droll," he said of his former friend and bandleader, who died
at age 80 from complications of Parkinson's disease at his home in Maghera,
Caher, Co. Clare, just before noon on May 6.
A 55-year commitment
A founding member of the Tulla Céilí Band in 1946, P.J. Hayes was their
leader from 1952 onward, taking them to All-Ireland senior titles in 1957 and
1960. (After 1962, they retired from competition.) This extraordinary
half-century of service and dedication kept the Tulla afloat when many other
céilí bands had struggled or sunk from sight.
"Even if the Tulla had never entered a competition, they would have
achieved the same amount of fame," believes Mulhaire. "It was P.J.'s guidance
that made the band last. He had a very diplomatic way of dealing with things.
He got the job done, but you never realized he was doing it."
That was as true in 1996-97 as it was in 1958. The Tulla Céilí Band had
recorded "A Celebration of 50 Years" (Green Linnet, 1996), marking their
golden anniversary, and in November 1996 they performed at the Green Linnet
Irish Music Party weekend in Monticello, N.Y. The following May, the band
made an unforgettable appearance at the Washington, D.C., Irish Festival in
Wolf Trap, Vienna, Va. Joining them on stage were two distinguished alumni:
Martin Mulhaire and flutist Mike Preston, who was born in Ballymote, Co.
Sligo, but later lived in Crusheen, Co. Clare.
"I was never as happy as when I joined the Tulla again in the Catskills
and at Wolf Trap," Preston said by phone from his home in the Bronx. He was a
member of the band from 1952-62, the year he immigrated to America. "P.J. was
a great leader, very decent and kind."
Mulhaire's recollection of that Wolf Trap appearance is as warm as
Preston's. "When we were picking out tunes to play together, P.J. would ask
everybody if they were happy with them. Somehow you never felt he was the
leader or the boss, even though he was. At Wolf Trap, I thanked him for
keeping the band alive, especially with all the people who came through it
over the years. He just smiled at me and said, 'Why do you think my hair is
so white?' "
In his liner notes to "A Celebration of 50 Years," P.J.'s son Martin
wrote that the Tulla "was the first example of participatory democracy I had
ever encountered. Nothing was done and no choices made that went against the
wishes of any individual musician. Everything . . . required collective
agreement."
Peadar O'Loughlin, a flutist who played in the Tulla from about 1957-65,
also emphasized the diplomacy and kindness of P.J. Hayes. "He never did
anything mean; he didn't know how," the 71-year-old musician said from his
home in Kilmaley, Co. Clare. "It was a good bunch of lads in the Tulla. They
were on time, and they did what they should, all because of him. P. Joe
believed he was part of the best band in the world."
Preston mentioned another, more private side of Hayes -- his
spirituality. "When we got in the car for a trip to, say, Dublin, we'd say
the rosary. You had to bring your rosary beads when you went with the Tulla
on a long journey. We said it aloud in the car."
Money was never a priority for band members back then. "We used to get a
pound a person," Preston said. "Then it came up to two pounds, and if we went
to Sligo, we might get about three pounds ten." The distribution of money was
as egalitarian as the band itself. "If P. Joe got a penny for playing the
night," O'Loughlin recalled, "you got the same thing."
2 seminal recordings
During their swing through New York City in the winter of 1958, the
Tulla Céilí Band cut an album, "Echoes of Erin." Originally released by
Dublin Records, it was done in just four hours. "We had to get out of the
studio because a rock-and-roll band was due in after us," Preston said.
Among the dozen tracks on the LP was one solo: "Cottage Groves/Sally
Gardens" by Martin Mulhaire on button accordion. "For whatever reason, the
record company needed three more minutes of music, and because the band had
already gone back to Ireland, they stuck me in there with a drummer and piano
player," said Mulhaire. "I remember nervously watching the minute hand on a
big studio clock going around."
Mulhaire, who had decided to stay in New York City, couldn't listen past
the first track of the LP when it came out. "It tore the heart out of me," he
said. "My life had taken a whole new turn."
For those lucky enough to own copies of the Dublin LP or subsequent
Shamrock release, the music performed by Tulla touring members Mulhaire,
Hayes, Preston, Séamus Cooley, John Reid, John O'Shaughnessy, and Dr. Bill
Loughnane represented céilí-band music at its pinnacle. It remains a coveted
classic and collectible.
A year later, fiddler P.J. Hayes and fellow Tulla Céilí Band members
Paddy Canny on fiddle and Peadar O'Loughlin on flute joined Bridie Lafferty
on piano to record in Dublin. That pioneering LP was entitled "All-Ireland
Champions -- Violin: Meet Paddy Canny & P.J. Hayes" (Dublin Records), and
O'Loughlin remembers the difficult circumstances under which it was made.
"We were unrehearsed, we knew very little about recording, and we had
one hour to do the whole thing," he said. "Then we had to leave before
finishing, so the next day we had to find another studio in Dublin to
complete the record. We made it for the big sum of 40 pounds. That's 10
pounds each."
It's regarded as one of the greatest albums of Irish traditional
instrumental music ever made. "That recording will always be a benchmark,"
said Ennis-based button accordionist Paul Brock, who knew Hayes since the
early 1950s. "It exposed people to the beauty of East Clare music, to the
gorgeous tune selections on it, and to the musicianship of those four players
in full flight and in total sympathy with one another. It was a defining
moment in Irish music."
Lasting legacy
"A real slice of history has gone," observed Boston button accordionist
Joe Derrane after hearing of Hayes's passing. Derrane had met him and his
wife, Peggy, twice in New York's Catskills. "It's a big loss to the music."
Besides the three recordings mentioned earlier, Hayes has left us with
other Tulla Céilí Band albums, a 1990 duet with his son Martin called "The
Shores of Lough Graney," and guest appearances on solo releases by Martin and
East Clare concertinist Mary MacNamara. There's also "The Irish Folk Fest
From Wolf Trap," a videocassette and CD soundtrack produced in 1998 by PBS-TV
affiliate WLIW, Long Island, N.Y., that spotlights the Tulla at the 1997 D.C.
festival.
The legacy of Hayes is inextricably bound up with the wide influence he
exerted as gentleman, fiddler, and bandleader. Only in recent months did
illness finally prevent the octogenarian from performing with the Tulla and
at sessions in Peppers Pub, Feakle.
"We don't stop playing because we get old. We get old because we stop
playing." Those words were spoken more than half a century ago by a different
cultural icon, American baseball pitcher Satchel Paige. P.J. Hayes would have
understood.
On May 8, a funeral Mass was said for him in St. Mary's Church in
Killanena, near Maghera, after which he was buried in Kilclaren Cemetery. The
Tulla Céilí Band played at both the church and the gravesite. Hayes is
survived by his wife, Peggy, his sons, Martin and Pat, and his daughters,
Anne-Marie and Helen.
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