Irish Folk Dance Music: for Violin, Flute, Guitar, Banjo and Accordion / Compiled and Arranged by Jerry O’Brien. Roxbury, Massachusetts: E. O’Byrne DeWitt’s Sons, 1952
Accordion player Jerry O’Brien, a native of Kinsale, Co Cork, came to Boston in 1921, and as accordionist with the recording group O’Leary’s Irish Minstrels was a leading exponent and teacher of Irish music in the city. In 1928 he also made one solo 78 rpm recording for the Columbia company of New York before the Great Depression of 1929 brought most Irish-American recording to a halt. In a period of rising prosperity after the Second World War he began recording solo again, this time for the Irish-American Copley label of Boston, and also in duet with a young local star pupil Joe Derrane. The Copley label had been set up in 1948 by Justus O’Byrne DeWitt, son of an Ellen O’Byrne DeWitt who had been involved in the recording industry in New York since 1916. O’Brien also designed for the company the O’Byrne DeWitt Irish Professional Accordion.
The success of O’Brien and Derrane’s Copley recordings, and their repertory, gave rise to two Boston book publications by E. O’Byrne DeWitt’s Sons, both compiled by Jerry O’Brien and with a repertory heavily influenced by gramophone records. The first was his accordion tutor and tune book of 1949, also available on the ITMA website at the link below, and for which James Morrison’s 1931 tutor for the Globe accordion (see below), an instrument which O’Brien had played, was doubtless an exemplar. This is O’Brien’s second publication, a tune book of 1952.
This tune book, though advertised as being suitable for several instruments, is heavily influenced by the expressive possibilities and repertory of the two-row accordion in D and C sharp, i.e., one of the two ‘press-and-draw’ systems used by accordion players in the Irish tradition. That system (sometimes known among players as the ‘outside-in’ system) is now virtually obsolete, but it is still played by a very loyal minority of players of the Irish accordion. Prominent current players include Joe Derrane of Boston, whose music is featured in the book. The music and music repertory embodied in Jerry O’Brien’s books is, however, still very much alive in the Irish tradition today, thanks largely to its successful revival by the group De Danann in the 1980s.
These tunes were set from a copy of Jerry O’Brien’s tunebook kindly donated to the Irish Traditional Music Archive in 1995 by dancer Ed Reavy Jnr of Philadelphia.
Nicholas Carolan, Treasa Harkin & Jackie Small, 23 May 2013
