WELL-KNOWN fiddler and journalist Martin McGinley will give a talk on another Donegal fiddler Hughie Gillespie (1906-1986) tonight (Thursday) at the headquarters of Na Píobairí Uilleann in Dublin.
The talk, which starts at 8.30pm, can be viewed live for free at the NPU website pipers.ie through their channel NPU-TV.
Hughie Gillespie is one of the most famous of all fiddlers from Donegal. He was born in Dreenan, Ballybofey, into a musical family. His father Patrick played the fiddle and his uncle Johnny was one of the leading fiddlers in the area before his death in WW1. Two of his brothers, Jim and Mickey, were well-known players.
Off to Clones for an All-Ireland Fleadh – Hughie Gillespie and Frank Kelly.
After emigrating to the United States in 1928, Hughie was soon in New York and introduced to the legendary Sligo fiddler Michael Coleman. It was a friendship which was to last until Coleman’s death in 1945.
Hughie himself recorded 20 ‘sides’ of 78 rpm records in the Decca studio in New York between 1937 and 1939. They established him as a household name wherever Irish traditional music was played. An album featuring many of these tracks was released by Topic in 1978, and again by Green Linnet in the US in 1992.
He returned with his wife Mae to Carrickmagrath outside Ballybofey in 1964 and quickly struck up a playing partnership with Crossroads fiddler Frank Kelly, a relation. That partnership was celebrated in 2021 by the release of a CD ‘The Sparkling Dawn’ featuring recordings made in the Gillespie home in 1967 by Scottish singer Geordie McIntyre.
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