Bill O'Sullivan's: A Song History

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“Bill O’Sullivan’s” is a polka associated with the Sliabh Luachra tradition in Ireland, and the tune indexes file it under the shorter form “Bill Sullivan’s.”[1][2] It is a 32-bar tune in two repeated parts, normally in A major, though irishtune.info notes that some players take it in G and some reverse the order of the parts.[2] Other names include “Mickey Chewing Bubblegum,” “Denis Murphy’s” and the Irish “Liam Ó Súilleabháin,” and both indexes also list it under the Irish title “Baile an tSamhraidh.”[1][2]

Color photograph of a road winding through a steep rocky mountain pass in County Kerry

Pass of Ballaghbema, County Kerry, Ireland, photochrom print, between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900. Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication. A County Kerry scene shown for the region; it has no connection to the tune.

Both indexes credit the tune to Terry “Cuz” Teahan, and irishtune.info dates it to 1915.[1][2] Teahan, a concertina and single-row accordion player from Cordal, Glountane, in County Kerry, emigrated to Chicago in 1928 at the age of 23 and died in 1989 after six decades in that city’s Irish music community.[3] According to Philippe Varlet, cited by the Tune Archive, he wrote the polka while still a pupil of the fiddler Pádraig O’Keeffe, who went on teaching it after Teahan left.[1] The Archive explains the name as that of a local player who made the tune popular, and adds that Teahan’s original third part fell out of use in Ireland.[1] The Tune Archive gives no further details about Bill Sullivan himself.[1] L. E. McCullough transcribed a setting from Teahan, and the tune is printed in McCullough’s Complete Irish Tinwhistle Tutor (1987).[4] Niamh Ní Charra included it on her 2012 tribute album Cuz, and the Musical Traditions review observed that, apparently, “not many people realise he wrote” it.[2][5]

The earliest recordings indexed by irishtune.info date from about 1977, among them Jackie Daly and Séamus Creagh’s album and Jimmy Doyle and Dan O’Leary’s Traditional Music from the Kingdom of Kerry.[2] Kevin Burke recorded it on If the Cap Fits (1978), having learned it from Jackie Daly.[1] It also appears in Terry Moylan’s collection Johnny O’Leary of Sliabh Luachra and in Paul Deloughery’s Sliabh Luachra on Parade.[2] The name is easily confused: irishtune.info indexes two different polkas called “O’Sullivan’s” and “O’Sullivan’s Polka,” the first of them recorded by Pádraig O’Keeffe in 1949.[6][7]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Bill Sullivan's".
  2. irishtune.info (Alan Ng): "Bill Sullivan's Polka" (tune #152).
  3. Irish Traditional Music Archive: "The Rogues' Gallery [comp. Niamh Ní Charra], polka".
  4. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Micky Chewing Bubblegum".
  5. Musical Traditions: "Cuz - a tribute to Terry 'Cuz' Teahan" (review by Rod Stradling).
  6. irishtune.info (Alan Ng): "O'Sullivan's" (tune #1485).
  7. irishtune.info (Alan Ng): "O'Sullivan's Polka" (tune #2566).