Tom Busby’s jig

the tune was composed by the great american irish piperof same name who died within the last couple of years,i just think that is worth noting

This tune appears on Terry Bingham’s CD on track 8, it’s played after the Goat on the Green and the set is called Charlie Harris’…

First tune here……
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is0XNXE2xQg&feature=sub

play video

Far as I know Tom didn’t compose this, it’s much older than he from the sound of things. Also Willie Clancy played much the same tune, but with the Es in the 1st octave and cranned. It’s in the DMWC book, gan ainm. On the recording he also played it on the whistle, in A, for recordist Pat Mitchell’s edification.

I heard some group play this a mile a minute; they could have gone through it about 20 times in the time Tom would have played it once. As he put it in an article in the Piper’s Review, referring to the tempos modern musicians liked, "The Hammers of Hell." ;)

I didn’t make that first comment. There’s much in it that’s proof of that… Weird! I wonder if it is a remainder from the person who had lifted my alias using a capital ‘i’ for the ‘L’ ~ ceoIachan = ceoiachan… I would have never said "i just think that is worth noting", and despite my usual screw-ups I’d have started with a Capital, capitalized American, and not said ‘Irish piper’ but ‘uilleann piper’. Curious… I would have also said something about the music, such as returning with my own take on it…

Hmmm, it does link back to my details. Curious and weird, but not my comment…

And I’d have finished with a full stop/period…

@ Kevin, I think Willie’s gan ainm is a different tune, although similar, it’s quite easy to play them in a set and not get them confused. Willie’s gan ainm seems to be a jig version of Drowsy Maggie or the Reel with the Beryl, or some such.

ceol - maybe you were logged out and someone cracked your password? Conspiracies abound! Or you were a bit tankered that day? It does read like something one would fumblingly type after hitting the bottle hard, eh? ;)

Nico - hadn’t noticed the resemblance to Drowsie Birl, will file that bit of info away. Those tune correspondences are intriguing, occasionally I take a crack at "composing" something "new" by switching 6/8 and 4/4. Like, oh, I’m listening to the Flogging reel at the moment. Will go see if that makes sense as a jig here.

I still think Tom and Willie’s tunes are just variants of the one melody, too. Maybe you could play them back at the same time? I liked that paper on Paddy Canny where the author built up the big Venn diagram of how much overlap there was between Paddy’s and Coleman’s playing of Lord MacDonald.

The B parts are very different, so I don’t think they’re the same at all. I definitely don’t think you could play them together.

Then again, you couldn’t play the Cordal and Winnie Hayes’ at the same time, and they definitely are variants… so…

…(and getting even further off topic), but on the subject of variants- Nico, good ear on the link between The Cordal & Winnie Hayes’. I never really noticed the relation between those two- I always thought of Winnie Hayes’ as the "evil twin" of "Old Tipperary" (there must be a ridiculously long-winded discussion about this somewhere in Mustardville, but I just thought it was worth a quick mention…)-Jay

This reminds me of the phrasing of The Hag With The Money.

We play it together with the Cordal jig.

Here’s the setting Jack Talty recorded solo on his great recording with Cormac Begley An Fir Bolg. He titles it "Tom Busby’s," and it’s essentially the same setting as No. 57 (Unknown) in Pat Mitchell’s "Dance Music of Willie Clancy." Other than the first phrase going down rather than up, the main differences from the other settings already posted here are in the opening of the B part (rising D chord vs rolled A) and the endings of both parts.

Apparently this was first printed as an untitled jig in Stephen Grier’s music manuscript collection (c. 1883, book 3, No.118 p. 42). It was later printed as an untitled jig in Breathnach’s Ceol Rince na hÉireann IV (1996, No. 27), where he says "Brosnahan’s Frolic’s" is the name for the tune in County Kerry. This setting is similar to X:4 with the melody going down to E instead of up to e in the A part and differs from the other settings in minor ways but seems to be the same tune to me.

I typically play a version learned from a Joe McHugh Album that is very similar to X:2. Really love how simple and driving this jig is.