Joe Derrane

Joe Derrane was born in Boston on March 16, 1930, and by the age of 14 he was playing at Irish house parties, locally known as “rackets” and at dances. He learned to play first on the melodeon from Jerry O’Brien, originally from Kinsale, Co Cork.

While a senior at Roxbury Mission High School in Massachusetts, Joe recorded the first of what eventually became sixteen 78-rpm records that changed the course of Irish-American accordion music. These recordings, made in the late 1940s, featured Joe on the button accordion performing with a combination of ornamentation, rhythm, power, and polish that became legendary in the Irish-American community. Joe went on to play piano accordion in ballroom dance bands eventually performing a more eclectic repertoire.

Due to a long absence from playing the button accordion, most aficionados of Irish music assumed that he had passed away or was too old to play, especially considering the skill and maturity exhibited on those 1940s recordings.

The first time Bobby Gardiner heard his playing was on a jukebox in a New York coffee-house. “I couldn’t believe what he was doing on the accordion. It sounded like he was playing a continental musette system, he has such great technique, and he plays the selections in such a measured way, he’s brilliant.”

In 1993, Rego Records reissued his recordings on CD – Irish Accordion -  and Joe made a triumphant return in 1994, performing now on the button accordion at the Wolf Trap festival in Virginia. At that event his children, now in their thirties, heard him play button accordion for the first time. A record contract with Green Linnot records followed.

Accordionist Billy McComiskey said of the performance: “It’s really great just to see him. I didn’t realise he was still alive. I knew he was really, really good, but I didn’t know he was that good.”

Since then, Joe Derrane has toured internationally, made numerous recordings, and was named the “Best Male Musician of the Decade (1990-2000)” by the Irish American News. Even with these accolades, he makes an extra effort to teach young accordion students and to conduct instructional workshops in all parts of the country.

In 2010, at the age of 80,  he released the album Grove Lane, named after where he lives, accompanied by John McGann on guitar.

He received a National Endowment Awards Fellow in 2004. His Longford-born wife Anne (nee Connaughton) died aged 77 on July 18, 2008.

• Irish Accordion (1993, resissued 1995) (singles from the 1940s)
• Give Us Another (1995)
• The Tie That Binds (1998)

• Return To Inis Mor (1996) Joe Derrane and Carl Hession.

• Ireland’s Harvest (2002), Joe Derrane, Frankie Gavin and Brian McGrath.

• Irish Accordion Masters (1996), Joe Derrane and Jerry O’Brien.

• The Boston Edge (2004), Joe Derrane, Séamus Connolly

• The Man behind The Box (2005)

• Grove Lane, with John McGann, Compass, 2010.