Coppers and Brass
(1977)

[Topic 12 TS 315]

Produced by Tony Engle

Dick Gaughan : Guitar
Tom Hickland : Piano

The tracks recorded on this album are :

• Coppers and Brass;
• The Gander in the Pratie Hole;
• O'Keefe's;
• The Foxhunter's;
• The Flowing Tide;
• The Fairies' Hornpipe;
• The Oak Tree;
• The Music in the Glen;
• Planxty Johnson;
• Gurty's Frolics;
• The Spey in Spate;
• The Hurricane;
• Alan MacPherson of Mosspark;
• The Jig of Slurs;
• The Thrush in the Storm;
• The Flogging Reel;
• Ask My Father;
• Lads of Laoise;
• The Connaught Heifers;
• The Bird in the Bush;
• The Boy in the Gap;
• MacMahon's Reel;
• Strike the Gay Harp;
• Shores of Lough Gowna;
• Jack Broke the Prison Door;
• Donald Blue;
• Wha'll Dance wi' Wattie

There is stave notation available for the following tunes:

Bird in the Bush; Coppers and Brass; Jig of Slurs; Music In The Glen; Strike the Gay Harp; Shores of Lough Gowna;;

The rest will be added as time permits.

I've frequently been asked why I took the approach I did on this album. It has to be placed in historical perspective.

Most musicians playing traditional Irish and Scots music at that time didn't take the guitar very seriously; if you produced a guitar in a session you'd be expected to provide accompaniment to the 'real' players.

A few of us had been trying to change this but there really weren't very many guitar players had the tenacity to keep banging their heads against what appeared to be a locked door. Paul Brady, Tom Gilfellon and myself had been chipping away for years without making much of a real breakthrough and in 1977, I decided it was time to stop knocking politely at the door and try kicking the damn thing down instead.

There was a long history of releases of solo musicians playing traditional tunes in the format of featured solo instrument with simple piano accompaniment so my adopting this format for Coppers and Brass was a slightly tongue-in-cheek attempt to place the guitar as a solo instrument within this tradition.

Techniques have developed a lot since those days and the crudity and experimental nature of some of the playing makes me cringe on the rare occasions I ever hear any of it these days but I'm still glad I did it. I think it played a small part in breaking down some of the prejudice against guitar and in helping to create space for others to explore the versatility of the instrument.

Albums tracks list

If you simply want a quick listing of which tracks were on which album, this is where to look.

All tracks

If you know the name of a track and want to find out which album it was recorded on, you'll find it here.

The following links are to other websites and I am not responsible for what you might find there. Sites do change without warning and it is impossible for me to keep checking that links go where they should.