Butlers Of Glen Avenue: A Song History

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The Butlers of Glen Avenue is a double jig in G major, built in the usual two repeated parts, composed by the England-based banjo player Tony "Sully" Sullivan.[1][2] Sullivan named it for his friends Maire and Johnny Butler of Glen Avenue, Blackley; Johnny led the Manchester Céilí Band.[2] The earliest printed source indexed for it is Sullivan's own collection, Sully's Irish Music Book, from 1979.[1][2]

Early wooden banjo with a gourd-like round body covered in skin and a long plain neck, standing upright

William Esperance Boucher, Jr., Banjo, wood, gourds, sheepskin, ca. 1840. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). An early American banjo, shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.

According to Sullivan, it came to be called "Christy Barry's Jig" after a well-known Irish musician recorded it without knowing its true title or author, and Gerry O'Connor's album Journeyman credits it to Christy Barry.[1][2] Other titles attached to it include Sully's Fancy, Rogha Sully and Briege's Boston Jig.[1]

Recordings from the 1990s and 2000s include concertina player Chris Droney's The Fertile Rock, Kevin Crawford's 'D' Flute Album, Pádraig Rynne's Bye a While, Gerry O'Connor's Journeyman, and a version with Christy Barry himself on whistle.[1] Josephine Keegan included it in her tune collection A Drop in the Ocean, and more than 140 members of the irishtune.info database list it in their repertoire.[1]

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Sources

  1. irishtune.info: "Butlers of Glen Avenue (The)".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Butlers of Glen Avenue".