Customer Reviews

The Lark In The Morning

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Mixing the "whack fol diddly eye day" type of mouth music making when a singer imitates an instrument, ballads about cuckoldry, spousal drowning, slow poisoning, and "false young men" who lead fair maidens astray, and finally simple instrumentals, this 1955 recording sounds great. Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Pentangle, and many other folk and folk-rock listeners of the 60s adapted quite a few of these songs into more contemporary sonic settings, but the purity of these field recordings by Diane Hamilton also captures a moment now lost--singers and players in their native habitat of the Irish rural house one night. Not only the Makems and Clancys, by the way. The mastering of this allows you to hear the catch of breath, the second's hesitation as a woman's voice joins the man's in starting the verse, and the tiny slip in the lyric that betrays an all too human touch lost in the studio of many more elaborate attempts since then to recapture the simplicity here.

This version with a rural photo on the cover, from Tradition Records, does not reproduce as does a more recent re-issue the original look of the album with Louis deBrocquey's handsome cover art-- or the skimpy liner notes-- of the original issue, but the songs remain the same. See Liam Clancy's memoir "Mountain of the Women" for much more about Diane Hamilton (Guggenheim!) and his checkered relationship with her, as she came to Ireland to record folk singers for this, the first issue on her Tradition label.

If you only own one recording of traditional Irish music this should be it. In 1955 Dianne Hamilton, who was a Guggenheim heiress and an accomplished musician in her own right, travelled to Ireland to record traditional performers. One of her first ports of call was the Clancy household in Tipperary where she met Liam Clancy. She inveigled Liam to join her on the rest of the trip and when they reached Armagh they sought out singer Sarah Makem. Liam thus made friends with her son Tommy and the rest, as they say, is history. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem went on to be famous and made a great many recordings both together and separately, but on this CD you can not only hear them in the first bloom of their careers, but you can hear where they got their gift (and many of their songs) from, as their mothers, Joan Clancy and Sarah Makem make appearances too, together with singer Paddy Tunney, fiddler Padraig O'Keefe and others. The refreshing thing about this recording is that most of the songs are unaccompanied, so you get the unadulterated and uncommercialised sound of the pure Irish voice soaring through the songs. Most of the recording was done in pubs and living-rooms. At the end of one recording session everyone said they should not leave without recording Thomas Baynes. A shy man who had been quietly drinking in the corner was with some difficulty talked into singing. What emerged was arguably the greatest version on "Barbara Ellen" ever recorded. If you appreciate Irish music you must have this CD.

Being a great fan of "The Clancy Brothers and Tommy makem", I must say that this album has been one of my favorites. From what I have heard, these songs that were recorded on this CD were once lost and forgotten. But they were re-recorded and I have to say that this album is an excellent choice for Irish Music lovers.

this is a lovely collection of early Irish music. Not really the Clancy Brothers, but friends and family, and a nice CD added to our Celtic collection