Jackie Daly & Seamus Creagh (1977)

This is considered a classic, recognised as such immediately on release in 1977. Daly and Creagh met in Cork, or more precisely, in the grounds of St Ann’s Hydro which was a faded, deteriorating, set of buildings on a hill overlooking Blarney.

In 1844 the Hydro was founded by Dr Richard Baxter who wanted to establish Victorian Roman baths with carefully tended gardens, tennis courts and Romanesque architecture. In collaboration with David Urquhart, a diplomat obsessed with hydropathy, the Turkish baths were built in 1856 and were the first in Britain, replete with marble floors and stained-glass windows. The baths closed in the 1950s but the family owning the site rented out the various houses on the land and in the 1960s it became best known as a haunt for artists and musicians, an early alternative community.

“It was an amazing time,” recalls Daly. “The people who owned the land — the Quigleys — were into having artists and musicians there. They had dozens of cottages and they gave them all to musicians and artists for 10 shillings a week.

Both Jackie Daly and Seamus Creagh were renting there and they quickly identified a possible partnership. There were some hurdles to overcome first. Creagh had previously been playing electric guitar in showbands around Westmeath and, unlike Daly, he was not steeped in Sliabh Luachra musical traditions. There was, though, a second problem that Daly recalled:

“When I met him first we got on like a house on fire but I told him, I can’t play with you. He said ‘Why not?’

“Well, I said, ‘Your music is perfectly in time but your foot is completely out of time and I can’t play with that’.

He never again stamped his foot. He just packed it up on the spot. It is impossible to play with somebody if their foot is out because it throws you off, but his timing [in his music] was incredibly good, it was beautiful.

Daly almost understates the case here. Creagh’s timing was uncanny and when the two played together the melody line was seamless. It was also obvious that Creagh had immediately fallen in love with the music and together he and Daly brought something fresh to the tradition.

The opening track, ‘Jim O’Keeffe’s/The Newmarket’ makes that clear from the start. The tune is played first by Daly, then by Creagh and finally both together with Colm Murphy backing them on bodhrán. Daly’s first notes recall the teasing, tribal rhymes of the playground. There might be technical details to point out here about the musicianship but the real impact lies in the energy of the playing, the handing over of the chant from Daly to Creagh and then a group rendition. It wouldn’t be a surprise if we discovered they had rushed outside after recording it to smash some windows.

Despite the anarchy lurking in the tunes, Seamus Creagh reveals a lyrical streak on the third track, ‘The Enchanted Valley’ that opens up the album to alternative dimensions. Late in the record he follows up this achievement with ‘The Tailor Bán’, a song of two roguish friends – slowly sung but unsentimental, outlining another version of nomadic sexual pandemonium.

Jackie Daly went on to record another classic record as a duo – Eavesdropper with Kevin Burke in 1981. It’s interesting to compare it with this earlier effort. Creagh and Daly sounds raw and incredibly sparse on their album compared to Eavesdropper which on several tracks expands to include bodhrán, flute, piano and guitar. The same core energy of the accordian/fiddle persists but it has expanded now to fuel an amplified field of sound.