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http://www.accordions.com/news.aspx?d=29-Jul-2016&lang=es&s=12082
http://www.accordions.com/news.aspx?d=29-Jul-2016&lang=es&s=12082
29-Jul-2016
by Rob Howard
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 Video: Excerpt from "As Played by Joe Derrane (1995)", a documentary about accordion player Joe Derrane of Randolph, MA. Produced by Frank Ferrel. Edited by Julie Eddy. Part of the Massachusetts Folk Arts Archive.Joe Derrane, the son of Irish immigrants, is widely regarded as one of the greats of Irish traditional music. Born and raised in Boston, Massachessetts, his father played the button accordion and his mother the fiddle, and at the age of 10, young Joe began playing a one-row diatonic button accordion, taught by Jerry O'Brien, an immigrant from County Cork, Ireland. By the age of 14 Derrane was performing at house parties on the thriving Boston Irish scene. He switched to a 2-row D/C# accordion, and soon became a leading musician in the Irish dance halls, which in the late 1940s led him to playing on radio broadcasts and making records. He was much admired for his lively, accurate and highly ornamented playing. By the late 1950s the Irish dance halls locally were closing down, so Derrane switched to piano accordion and formed a band to play for weddings and functions, moving away from Irish music and instead playing popular selections as well as Italian and Jewish traditional music. In the mid-1970s Derrane moved to playing the electronic organ. He retired from music in 1990. In 1993 Rego Records reissued some of Joe Derrane’s original 78 rpm recordings from the 1940s on a CD, ‘Irish Accordion’. These recordings generated considerable interest, and Derrane began playing the button accordion again and was invited to perform as a special guest at the 1994 Irish Folk Festival in Washington, D.C. His virtuosic performances (accompanied by Felix Dolan on piano) were greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm and acclaim, and Joe Derrane embarked on a second career as a button accordionist. He subsequently recorded two solo albums, ‘Give Us Another’ (1994) and ‘Grove Lane’ (2010), and four collaboration albums with other players, appeared on radio and TV many times, including ‘The Pure Drop’ on Irish TV RTE. He was the subject of a documentary by Frank Ferrel, ‘As Played By Joe Derrane’, and on another broadcast by Irish-language station TG4 as part of its ‘Sé mo laoch’ series. Joe toured Canada, Switzerland and the Netherlands, and appeared with The Chieftains at the Boston Symphony Hall. In 1998 Joe Derrane was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann for his contribution to Irish traditional music. Joe Derrane, married with grandchildren, died on July 22nd 2016 in Randolf, Massachessetts, at the age of 86. |