Feast of music and singing planned for Paddy Killoran Festival in Ballymote

The CCÉ Paddy Killoran Festival 2022 will be held on the weekend of September 16, 17 and 18 in Ballymote. Events will include a concert, music session trail and singing session. Paddy Killoran was born on September 21, 1903 and grew up in the townland of Emlaghgissan near Ballymote. His father Patrick played the flute and his mother Mary, the concertina but the young Killoran was also influenced by local fiddle master Philip O’Beirne, who had earlier tutored Michael Coleman. As a teenager, Killoran was a volunteer with the Ballymote-based 3rd Battalion of the south Sligo Brigade of the Irish Republican Army during the war for independence. In 1925, Killoran emigrated to New York City where he lodged with James Morrison in his Columbus Avenue apartment on Manhattan’s West Side. A 1927 newspaper ad for “Morrison’s Orchestra” offered “Irish music by P. Killoran and J. Morrison, celebrated violinists,” giving 507 West 133d Street in west Harlem as the contact address. Killoran soon launched his own career as a soloist and bandleader. A publicity photo of Killoran’s quartet circa 1928 includes button accordionist D. Casey, tenor banjo player Richard Curran and second fiddler Denis Murphy. By the next year, Killoran was performing on a weekly radio program sponsored by the Pride of Erin Ballrooms, located at the corner of Bedford and Atlantic Avenues in Brooklyn. At the Pride of Erin, and later at the Sligo Ballroom at 125th

Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem, Killoran’s “Irish Orchestra” provided music for Irish dancing, while Jack Healy, another Ballymote native, led a group for “American” dancing.

Healy, as a singer and tenor sax player, also performed and recorded with Killoran’s group, the membership of which over the course of the 1930s included fiddler Paddy Sweeney (another Sligo native), fiddle and clarinet player Paul Ryan, Ryan’s brother Jim on the C Melody sax, pianists Eileen O’Shea, Edmund Tucker and Jim McGinn, button accordionists Tommy Flanagan and William McElligott and tenor banjo/tenor guitar player Michael “Whitey” Andrews. Killoran’s band was variously billed as his “Pride of Erin Orchestra,” “Radio Dance Orchestra,” “Sligo Ballroom Orchestra,” “Lakes of Sligo Orchestra” and “Barn Dance Boys.” The group was a popular choice for county association functions, particularly those of Sligo and Roscommon. In 1932, he led a band that accompanied Cardinal O’Connell of Boston to the Eucharistic Congress in Ireland, and briefly billed his group as the “Pride of Erin Eucharistic Congress Orchestra.” He would regularly perform at Irish beach resorts on the Rockaway peninsula and in East Durham in the Catskill Mountains.

Uniquely among the major

New York Irish musicians of the pre-World War II era, Killoran continued his musical career through the 1950s. He issued new recordings, including duets with flute player Mike Flynn and some fiddle-and-viola duets with Paul Ryan, and led an active dance band. Age and illness eventually forced him to retire, and in 1962 he turned over leadership of the band, a fixture at the City Center Ballroom, to button accordionist Joe Madden

The CCÉ Paddy Killoran Festival 2022 will be held on the weekend of September 16, 17 and 18 in Ballymote.