"NOTES AND COMMENTARY" ON FOLDER 23 TUNES
with thanks to the Fords, Pete (RIP) and Brendan
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

#23001
COLLIGAN BANK (jig)
%
The River Colligan runs through Mary Ellen Dooley's home town 
of Dungarvan.

#23002
COMERAGH HEATHER (reel)
%
The Comeragh Mountains are to Waterford what the Galtees are to Tipperary!

#23003
DOOLEY'S DELIGHT (reel)
%
This tune has a name but no composer is shown, although what looks like "DC" 
is on the back of the page. Pete Ford thinks it probably stands for "Des 
Conroy".

#23004
EDDIE DOOLEY'S #1 (reel)
%
This tune is in Eddie's handwriting but has no title.

#23005
FLOWERS OF KILRUSH (hornpipe)
%
Kilrush is a parish a north of Dungarvan. Andy Murphy's family owned 
a greengrocer's shop there for many years. "Maybe they should have 
called it 'The Cauliflowers of Kilrush'," Eddie once said to Mary 
Ann after playing the tune while the Fords were visiting. "She didn't 
crack a smile," Ford told me.  " 'That's a ridiculous name for such 
a lovely tune,' she said." "The Murphys never had much in the way of 
a sense of humor," Eddie explained to Ford later on. "It was plain 
Eddie loved his wife dearly," said Ford, "but in all the years they 
were married, he could never make her laugh!"

#23006
T:KILDERRIHEEN REEL
%
Eddie's mother Margaret Fallon was from this parish (pronounced 
kill-dra-HEEN).

#23007
T:LITTLE BRIDGE (jig)
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A tune of Des Conroy's. At the top of the manuscript page appears this 
note after "Conroy": "no name from him - Margaret says Little Bridge", 
evidently meaning that Eddie's daughter christened it after a landmark 
in Cappoquin.

#23008
T:LOOSE CHANGE JIG
%
The manuscript for this tune was badly damaged by the Brooklyn rodents 
who made their homes in the Dooleys' garage. The title and measures 
7-8 and 9-12 are my contribution to the preservation effort.

#23009
T:MERRY MEETING (reel)
%
Although not frequent travellers, Ford recalls that Eddie and Mary Ellen 
did attend one of the Comhaltas conventions in the 1990's, probably the 
one in Tarrytown NY in 1995. The untitled manuscript has "CCE conv..." 
scribbled across the back but the date and place are unreadable due to 
dampness.

#23010
T:MICK MURPHY'S PUB (reel)
The damaged manuscript has "one of P..." scribbled on the back but the sheet 
is torn (or nibbled) right after the "P". Curry was a fiddler from the south 
Waterford area who could write music; he visited the Dooleys in Brooklyn a 
number of times and Ford says he always had a few sheets of blank music paper 
in his fiddle case "in case the inspiration strikes me!". There are a dozen 
or so of his tunes in his distinctive drafting style (featuring backwards 
note-heads) in the first envelope.
%
Mick Murphy was Eddie's father-in-law and his pub was close to Helvic Head, 
a picturesque peninsula south of Dungarvan (the same Helvic Head commemorated 
in "Mr. O'Farrell's" jig of the same name).

#23011
T:MILL BASIN JIG
%
Named for a neighborhood in Brooklyn not far from the Dooleys' home in Flatbush.
Mary Ellen's sister and her family lived there for many years.

#23012
T:MONASTERY STONES (hornpipe)
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The title refers to Mount Melleray Abbey, a Cistercian monastery founded in 
1833 that's situated on the slopes of the Knockmealdown Mountains along the 
road between Cappoquin and Dungarvan. According to Pete Ford, Eddie's uncle 
Frank worked as caretaker at the mona-stery for many years and often employed 
young Eddie as a kind of unofficial apprentice. Ford recalls Eddie talking 
about his uncle and the days at the monastery with great fondness, and was 
not at all suprised that Eddie had dedicated this tune to the memory of his 
time there.

#23021
T:MOONEY'S FOR A PINT (jig)
%
See note to "Parkview Lads" below.

#23013
T:NINETEEN SATURDAYS (reel)
%
The manuscript for this tune has "one of Andy's" in Eddie's handwriting on the 
back, but there's no title. I christened it "Nineteen Saturdays" in fond memory 
of a Saturday session at the "19th Hole", a pub in Hyannis (Cape Cod) that hosted 
us for a few years.

#23014
T:OCEAN PARKWAY JIG
%
Named for a Brooklyn landmark, a 5 mile "boulevard" between downtown Brooklyn 
and the ocean.

#23022
T:PARKVIEW LADS (reel)
%
The old Parkview Tavern in Brooklyn's Park Slope was a favorite "watering hole" 
for Eddie and his pals, according to Pete Ford's son Brendan. "My dad said Eddie 
wasn't much of a drinker, but he never objected to a night out now and then. I 
don't think the Parkview was ever what they'd call nowadays a 'session pub', but 
somehow Eddie and the other musicians frequently managed to find one another for 
a tune in the back room, usually on Sunday evenings after Mass and dinner. The 
pub partners were from Galway and Mayo and never objected to a tune or two (or 
more). I think Eddie told my dad that one of them - Mooney or Garvey, he didn't 
recall exactly which one - played the flute.  Wives were always welcome but 
usually - and wisely - seemed to have something else going on. The musicians 
always enjoyed hearing new tunes by Eddie or Andy Murphy or Des Conroy - known 
collectively as 'our composers". Some of those tunes - sadly not all - are 
preserved in Eddie's manuscripts. "Eddie often spoke lovingly of "the bunch' 
in later years," said Ford. "I was still a kid in high school, but I remember 
Eddie and my dad talking about Jimmy Stewart, Tommy Ward, Tommy Greene, Davey 
Glynn, a bartender named Vinny Bowen . . . and many more that I can't remember. 
Great memories and always lots of laughs. Eddie called these guys 'the salt of 
the earth'" - high praise indeed, according to Ford.

X:23015
T:PUSS IN BOOTS (jig)
%
According to Pete Ford, the Dooleys had a cat of whom they were particularly fond, 
all the more because the cat herself seemed to love traditional music and always 
seemed to be in the area when tunes were being played. Ford couldn't remember the 
cat's name - "she was a tabby, must have weighed twenty pounds, used to sit on 
the back of the sofa purring like crazy whenever there was music going" - but he 
was delighted when examining the manuscripts to see that Conroy - evidently not 
a big cat lover himself - had commem-orated her! (Note: this is one of the few 
of the manuscript pages that survived its sojourn in the Dooleys' garage in 
pristine condition, undamaged by mice. Coincidence?)

X:23016
T:SUNDAY IN FLATBUSH (hornpipe)
%
Not the most romantic name for a lovely tune! According to Ford, Eddie and Mary 
Ellen never missed 10 AM Sunday Mass regardless of how late Eddie had been out 
the night before. "They liked Holy Cross Church because the assistant pastor was 
a Waterford man," Ford told me. "His father had played football with Eddie years 
back." "Terrible dirty player the father was, but the son is grand," Eddie told 
Ford (Mary Ellen was of course out of the room at the time).

X:23017
T:SUNSET CLOUDS (polka)
%
The manuscript shows a ? after the title and "Paddy - polka" underneath.

X:23018
T:WATERFORD QUAYS (reel)
%
Evidently Conroy, whose mother's family were from Waterford city, made his way 
south from his Kerry birthplace and worked as a longshoreman in the port for 
a few years before emigrating to New York. According to Pete Ford, "He said it 
was brutal work and he didn't miss it at all. It made working for the gas 
company seem like a vacation!"

X:23019
T:WHITETAILS' VISIT (hornpipe) 
%
This is one of the few of Eddie's own tunes that are "gan ainm" - there's what 
appears to be a name of some sort but it's been partially erased (most of Eddie's 
manuscripts are done in pencil) and partially scribbled over. At the bottom of 
the page is a note in a distinctively feminine hand - Mary Ellen's? Margaret's? - 
that says "piano tuner", possibly some sort of gentle reminder to Eddie.

X:23020
T:WORKING MAN'S FRIEND (reel)
%
This is the first tune I've come across that Eddie attributes to Con O'Shea, 
a fiddler from The Spring area of Dungarvan. Pete Ford led me to believe that 
there would be a number of others. O'Shea, who was not familiar with music 
notation, would call Eddie and play his tunes over the phone while Eddie taped 
them. Ford recalls one such taping session during which the tape got hopelessly 
jammed. "Eddie was trying his best to get the machine working while he was 
yelling at O'Shea - an older man who was hard of hearing - to stop playing for 
a minute," Ford told me. "It took Eddie at least five minutes to straighten out 
the tape and I don't think O'Shea missed a beat the whole time. Naturally he 
wasn't too thrilled about having to repeat the performance - he kept asking Eddie 
who the hell was going to pay the phone bill!" "The man owns half the parish," 
said Eddie to Ford later, "and he's worried about a few pounds on his phone bill. 
He's a terrible miser but begod he writes beautiful tunes!" (There's no record 
of Eddie offering to reimburse Con, but they were fast friends until Con died 
in 1977.)