P Joe Hayes playing with his son Martin.

IT HAS been said of him that he was “as comfortable in Carnegie Hall as in the mart at Scariff”. P Joe (Patrick) Hayes was born in Maghera, in the parish of Killanena, Co Clare, on March 8, 1921. He came from a farming background and spent all his life in the Maghera area. His mother, Margaret Hogan, played the concertina.
He began learning the fiddle at the age of 11, taught by Pat Canny of Glendree, a near neighbour and father of the fiddler Paddy Canny. There was a gramophone in the Hayes household and they listened to the fiddle playing of Coleman, Killoran and Gillespie. P Joe and Paddy were to play house dances together in the following years around Killanena, Feakle and Tulla.
Both P Joe and Paddy were also founder members of the Tulla Ceili Band in 1946. With them in the band then were Theresa Tubridy, Bert McNulty, Aggie White, Jack Murphy, Jim and Paddy Donoghue and Joe Cooley. Sean Reid joined a year later and after he stepped down in the early 1950s, P Joe took over as leader, a role he held for five decades. Paddy Canny was a member of the band for 21 years.
The Tulla Ceili Band achieved All-Ireland honours at three Fleadh Cheoil, recorded six albums, toured America seven times and Britain 14 times, endearing them to countless thousands of Irish exiles. In 1958 they played Carnegie Hall. The band received the keys of the city of Chicago in 1987. In 1947 they recorded for Radio Eireann in Dublin – 50 years later were on Telifis Eireann’s prime slot, The Late Late Show.
Back in 1958, in New York, they made an album Echoes of Erin, recorded in just four hours and released on the Dublin Records label. Joining P Joe and Paddy Canny on that LP were Martin Mulhaire, Mike Preston, Seamus Cooley, John O’Shaughnessy and Dr Bill Loughnane.
Others to play with the band at one time or another included accordionist Paddy O’Brien (Nenagh), Bobby Casey, Martin Talty and Willie Clancy. In the 1980s P Joe’s son Martin Hayes played regularly with the band.

Benchmark album

In 1960 P Joe and Paddy Canny recorded an album in Dublin, Irish Champions – Fiddlers, regarded by many as a benchmark LP of traditional Irish music. It was released on the Dublin Records label and accompanying them were flute player Peadar O’Loughlin and Bridie Lafferty on piano. It was re-released by Shanachie as a CD in summer 2001.
Martin Hayes said of that album: “It was one of those kind of quirks of faith because both Paddy Canny and my father had literally grown up learning together. My father was a few years younger than Paddy, so he learned mostly from Paddy. But it was like two teenagers working on this together. So even though they played quite differently they were very sympathetic to each other musically.
“On the record, like anything else, sometimes there’s a magic moment in recording music when everything flows. I mean, many musicians have these magic moments, but unfortunately it’s not always in a studio and it’s not always in the right place. But whatever it was, the sound was right, the atmosphere was right, the pacing, everything. It just happened that they were caught probably playing music at their best.”

Local rivalry

One of the features of Fleadh Cheoil All Ireland in the 1950s was the intense rivalry between the Tulla and their Clare neighbours, the Kilfenora Ceili Band. In time both bands were to take the coveted title three times.
Come the ballad boom of the 1960s, the ceili bands were eclipsed by the emergence of ensemble groups like the Chieftains, Planxty and the Bothy Band. In the 1970s the band’s fortunes were revived with the growing popularity of step dancing.
P Joe is featured on all the Tulla Band’s recording and has a solo track on the 40th. Anniversary cassette. In 1990, he recorded a duet cassette with son Martin The Shores of Lough Graney and has featured on a number of other recordings, including the first Mary McNamara CD.
As a band leader he approach was gentle and even-handed. Son Martin observed that the Tulla “was the first example of participatory democracy I had ever encountered. Nothing was done and no choices made that went against the wishes of any individual musician. Everything . . . required collective agreement.”

Milking cows

Apart from his music, P Joe was a farmer. It was not unusual for him on returning from a distant engagement at 7 am to immediately go out, still in his collar and tie, and milk the cows. He used to enjoy going to the country markets where he loved to talk and tell stories. Another passion was Fianna Fail politics. He stood unsuccessfully in the 1979 County Council elections. His father, Martin, had been a member of District Council and son Pat was subsequently elected a local representative.
Through thick and thin, he always remained true to the tradition, according to broadcaster and writer PJ Curtis. “He was a gentleman and a gentle man, but he was also a force in music, though he didn’t push his music on anyone. He played his music from the heart, and his son Martin has taken on that.”
A deeply religious person, Martin commented at his funeral that Wednesday night trips to Pepper’s pub in Feakle to play music were as sacred to him as his trips to Sunday Mass.
On the band’s 50th anniversary in 1996, they played as guests of President Mary Robinson in Arus an Uachtarain while the Clare Association in Dublin named P Joe as Clare Person of the Year.
P Joe married Peggy McMahon from Crusheen and they had four children, Martin, Pat, Anne Marie and Helen, a noted singer who released an album, Today, Tomorrow and on Sunday in 2008. In later years he had suffered from Parkinson’s and Addison’s disease. He died at his home on May 6, 2001.

PJ Hayes Memorial Weekend – Feakle – 1st-3rd May, 2010

Discography
Irish Champions – Fiddlers, P Joe Hayes, Paddy Canny, Peadar O’Loughlin and Bridie Lafferty 1959
Echoes of Erin, Tulla Ceili Band, Dublin Records, 1958