'There's great satisfaction in hearing your own tunes played': Jackie Daly turns 80

Irish Examiner

18-06-2025

Jackie Daly, accordion legend, composer, Gradam Ceoil recipient, and renowned joke-teller, may already have the honour of putting the Lucrative into Sliabh Luachra, if only as one of his vast collection of puns.
But as the Kanturk native celebrates his 80th birthday this weekend, now ranked among his proudest achievements is the title of the Man who put the Planxty into the Sliabh Luachra tradition.
Steeped in the music of the Cork-Kerry border, whose tunes he first learned from fiddle master Pádraig O'Keeffe's past pupil Jim O'Keeffe, Daly has long made his own mark on the area's tradition as one of the finest purveyors of its polkas and slides, airs, reels, hornpipes, and jigs.
In a career playing and recording with Dé Danann, Buttons & Bows, Arcady, and Patrick Street, and with duet partners including Séamus Creagh, Kevin Burke, Máire O'Keeffe, and Matt Cranitch, Daly's broader musical credentials on both accordion and concertina are impeccable.
When public performances were curtailed during covid lockdown, his talents as a composer flourished and a trickle of new tunes became a torrent, culminating in the 2022 publication of The Jackie Daly Collection of 227 original works.
Between the jigs and the reels are four planxties, reflective of the Irish harp melodies associated with Turlough O'Carolan, described by Daly as 'a little bit classical'.
'They never seemed to be part of the Sliabh Luachra tradition, so in my collection there's four of them and one of them is getting popular now – it's called Planxty Luachra,' he says.
Among his musical accomplishments thus far, he adds: 'At the moment the one I'm most proud of is the planxty because it wasn't done before.' Considering the possibility that in another 80 years academics might pontificate on the origins of this Sliabh Luachra 'planxty tradition', he quips: 'I don't know if they will or not. We'll harp on that later.
'But I love the slides and polkas. There's three [self-composed] polkas - The Cat on the Half-Door, Pauline's Panache, and Joe Burke's – that have got popular now and a lot of people are playing them together. There's great satisfaction in hearing your own tunes played.'
Beyond his new compositions, Daly has been helping to shape traditional music for decades through his arrangements, ornamentation, and reinterpretations of existing tunes, many becoming so well known that they are now themselves the standards.
'I should bring out another collection,' he says. 'There's lots of tunes that are not in the book because of the fact that I put extra parts to established tunes. They've become popularised as well, so in the future maybe I'll do something about that.'
Already mulling the title of such a volume, he tells a tale of how a Sligo-Leitrim version of the tune The Bucks of Oranmore once earned the disapproval of musician John Kelly. 'Connie Connell was playing it in Dublin and John Kelly said to me 'what's that?'. He said 'Jackie, The Bucks should not be interfered with.' So I'm thinking of calling my book 'Jackie Daly and the ones he interfered with'.' All joking aside, in interpretations of tunes Daly respects the tradition and if he adds anything to the tune it's always in context, according to his long-time collaborator, fiddle player Matt Cranitch.
'On the recording that he did with Dé Danann on The Mist Covered Mountain, the set of reels The Cameronian and The Doon - and The Doon is a well-known Sliabh Luachra tune - every single note on that is a workshop in musical integrity,' says Cranitch.
'When an ornament is put in, they have incredible effect and meaning and this kind of thing doesn't happen by accident. It happens from his lifetime of music and the genius of the man himself.'
Daly's lifetime in music is a world tour of festivals, concerts, and sessions from America to Japan, from Kanturk to his current home in Miltown Malbay, Co Clare, and of friendships and acquaintances, famous names, and fond memories.
In four 'fantastic' years from 1978 with Dé Danann 'we played a lot in America and bluegrass festivals where they'd never heard Irish traditional music before and it went down a bomb,' he recalls.
He went on to perform at 'a big festival in Milwaukee, one in Chicago, in Boston, lots of them, and the Catskills I did 13 years on the trot. I've even done a few tours of Japan.' Of all his collaborations, however, Daly acknowledges accordion-fiddle duets are his 'favourite kind of music' as the instruments 'go so well together'.
Influential in popularising C#D, rather than B/C accordion tuning, he says: 'I was the first person to start tuning my box 'dry', as they call it; not using an awful lot of tremolo on it, so it fits in better with the fiddle - and some people even find it hard to differentiate between the fiddle and the box with that kind of tuning.'
Eavesdropper, his 1981 duet album with Kevin Burke, earned great critical acclaim and his eponymous 1977 album with Séamus Creagh is for many people one of the seminal recordings of Sliabh Luachra music.
Though a native of Westmeath and a former showband electric guitarist, he and Daly were both into the same things – 'music and music and music' – and Creagh fell in love with the Sliabh Luachra style.
Séamus Creagh and Jackie Daly provided one of the seminal recordings of Sliabh Luachra music. Picture: Domhnall Ó Mairtín
Daly, a fitter by trade, had joined the Dutch merchant navy at 18. 'I was also in Denmark in the late '60s and unfortunately I had a bad experience,' he says. 'I met my wife in Denmark when I was doing a training course and we got married but she passed away a year after. And that's when I packed up my work as a fitter and sold my house in Little Island.
'I started busking on the street and shortly after that I met Séamus Creagh and we took off together, which was great.'
Regular fixtures together at The Gables and The Phoenix in Cork, Daly also recalls other gigs in far-flung corners. 'Lovely weekends when we'd play in Dingle on Saturday nights and Sundays we'd do Sherkin Island.' Creagh had taken on the job as the local postman on the Co Cork island.
Though profoundly affected by the loss of his wife, her death also 'made me see that you should be doing the things that you love - and I loved music since I was a child', says Daly.
Still doing what he loves, between gigs with Cranitch in Beara, Kenmare, and Ballydehob, Daly was back in Miltown Malbay last week, where he plays Friday sessions with fiddle player Eileen O'Brien.
In Kerry, what Cranitch terms Daly's 'fiddle sensibility' derived from his early O'Keeffe influences, ensures 'when World Fiddle Day happens in Scartaglin every year he has a position of honour among all the fiddle players in the sense that he's considered to be part of that tradition'.
This year, that connection was celebrated in Scartaglin with a tribute to Daly in advance of his 80th birthday this Sunday, his tunes taking centre stage with a new generation.
'They had a concert in my honour,' he says. 'All the musicians went up - a lot of them were young people - and played tunes of mine. It was beautiful to sit there and listen to them.'
Jackie Daly is joined by Matt Cranitch, Eileen O'Brien, and Paul de Grae at the Gleneagle, Killarney, on June 27; support by Teorainn. See: gleneaglearena.ie
Jackie Daly is joined by Matt Cranitch (left), Eileen O'Brien, and Paul de Grae at the Gleneagle, Killarney, on June 27
Jackie Daly: Question of Taste
Current reading?
My Oedipus Complex by Frank O'Connor. I love his writing. He was a very intelligent man and had a beautiful way of expressing himself. I read an awful lot and I go to the library every week.
Current hobbies?
I do crosswords all the time. I had a brain haemorrhage about 30 years ago and I was told that if you keep your mind busy, that's good. I do Sudoku as well. I had three aneurysms but I think my memory has improved slightly over the years and I still have the names of all the tunes.
Current listening?
I listen to any music that I consider to be good, but pop music I hate. The Beatles were good. Myself and Alec Finn took Hey Jude and made a hornpipe out of it and Alec got a letter from McCartney saying it was the best version of it that he came across. It's beautiful as a hornpipe – it's so melodic.
What's important in your life right now?
The news these days is bad. But I love going for walks and I do meditation. I love meeting people, talking to people - and yes, telling jokes.