Remembrances

by Dr. Richard Levine, Feb. 12, 1997

I first met Ed McDermott at a folk concert in the winter of 1968 when he was 72. My friend, Lani Herrmann, was interested in Irish music and I felt she would enjoy meeting Mac. I invited them both to my home after the concert, and this was the beginning of a relationship for all of us that was to last until he died at the age of 82 in 1977.

Mac was a thin man about 5 feet 7 inches tall, who had a deeply lined face, a full head of white hair, a soft voice and an easy smile. He still had a slight Irish accent even after many years in the United States, and the lilt in his voice was quite musical. He was rarely critical of anyone else' music unless it affected him personally. Arkansas Traveler, the fiddle tune, which was based upon an Irish hornpipe, was adapted by Appalachian musicians and played very rapidly. Hornpipes usually were played in a much slower and more stately tempo, and it deeply offended Mac whenever he heard it played the way it was usually played in the United States.

Mac told me that when he was ten years old he used to climb out of bed on the second floor of his home in a small town in County Leitrim and lie down at the top of the stairs so he could hear the fiddlers who occasionally came to visit. His father played with them and the jigs, reels and hornpipes and airs were as natural to his life and existence as breathing. His father taught him to play the fiddle and he played for dances, at ceilidhs; whenever he could get together with other musicians.

He said tht in 1915 the British shot his cousin who had been active in the IRA. Mac, who was twenty at the time, was in the next room, and that was when he decided to emigrate. He reached New York City and earned his living in the moving business.

On weekends he would play his fiddle in Irish dance halls in New York and Philadelphia. He played with the best of them--the legendary fiddlers Coleman and Morrison. He said Coleman was so drunk on one occasion he climbed into a garbage can and pulled the top over his head. He engaged Morrison to teach the fiddle to his daughter, but Morrison told him to save his money--she had no talent.

During the Thirties, he played frequently on one of the small Bronx radio stations at the far end of the dial.

His wife died and he put down his fiddle thinking he would never play again, and he went to live with his son and family in Hazlet, NJ. While working as a school crossing guard he was invited to participate in a variety "folk show" at his church, and this is when I met him.

We recorded Mac's fiddle playing that first night and later sent the tapes to Bob Beers, who was running a folk festival in Petersburgh, NY. We didn't hear from Bob but about a year later, after we got to know him personally, he and his wife stopped at our home for a visit. Mac was among those we invited over, and Bob heard him play.

Our family was planning to attend Bob's festival that summer (the Fox Hollow Festival) and we thought that Mac would enjoy it. We knew that Mac would be uncomfortable camping so I contacted Bob and asked about nearby motels, whereupon Bob told us that Mac could stay at a school where other performers were housed.

When we arrived at the festival site, we saw a list of scheduled performers and Mac's name was among them. Bob hadn't told Mac anything about this beforehand. My son, Michael, backed him up on guitar and I on concertina and it was a fine musical experience. This occurred despite a string from Mac's fiddle breaking shortly before we were to go on, and he had to borrow someone else' fiddle. It still sounded fine, and the people who heard it really enjoyed his playing.

Mac got to meet many other performers at Fox Hollow. We spent much of our time playing at the gazebo there, and during the course of the weekend many people came over. When we were leaving the festival Bob gave Mac a check for $100. At this festival many of the performers did not get paid at all, and Mac was deeply appreciative.

We ran a folk festival in Middletown, NJ and as long as Mac was alive and well, he played at all of our programs. I remember accompanying him when we played for some step dancers. We had carefully planned our selections, but Mac seemed to forget all of this once we started. He would play something entirely different and often in a different key, and I remember telling my son, Michael, to always listen to Mac and be prepared to change keys and chords at any time regardless of any practicing we did.

On one occasion Mac resided in a nursing home in Keyport, and while he was there I would regularly visit him with a tape recorder and my concertina. We would play some tunes together, then I would ask him to go through his repertoire so I could do some recording. Once he said "Dick, you should learn this one". It was a hornpipe called Woodcock Hill and he had music for it. He handed me the music and then played the first line (he always considered the written notes a skeleton--not a method for learning). I learned Woodcock Hill and when I wanted to play it with him, he only knew the first line.

He did find it difficult to call me "Dick". I said, "Mac, Doctor is not my name." He replied that it was his old country upbringing.

On several occasions when I went to visit him in a nursing home to make music, we had difficulty in finding a place to play that wouldn't disturb anyone. In a large room there, several listless people were sitting around a TV set watching it as in a trance. Mac said to just go ahead and play, it wouldn't disturb them--they wouldn't know the difference.

Mac was "in residence" at many nursing homes in the area over a period of time. At all of them nurses and attendants treated him with care and respect especially after he showed them his press clippings. He had his fiddle with him in all of these places, and he kept his newspaper clippings in his fiddle case. These were feature articles about him and his playing that appeared in the local papers. One article about him was written by John Wilson, the NY Times jazz critic, but a lover of all kinds of music. At that time he often wrote a feature article in the Sunday Times about New Jersey musicians and he paid a visit to the nursing home where Mac was staying.

Mac occasionally altered facts because he thought "it sounded better." He told John Wilson that my wife and I took him to many festivals around the East Coast in our trailer. At that time we didn't own a trailer, but Mac didn't mind shading the truth, though we actually did take him to two festivals.

To the other residents of the home and the staff, Mac was their celebrity. Knowing his connection to the folk music world, they assumed he knew Pete Seeger and they suggested that Mac invite Mr. Seeger down to Keyport to entertain them. Mac replied that Pete couldn't come--he was on a trip to the West Coast. In reality Mac had never met Pete Seeger but he wouldn't admit this to the other people.

In the early 70s I took him to hear the Celtic group, The Boys of the Lough. After the concert we met at someone's house and they all surrounded Mac and spoke to him with great respect and affection.

We took Mac to other local festivals, and he asked nothing more than playing his fiddle late at night, whiskey beside him, with many young musicians and fans surrounding him and gazing at him with awe. What amazed me was his almost total recall of tunes he hadn't played for many years--some since his childhood. One weekend he was invited to record at the Archive of Folksong at the Library of Congress where he spoke about his background and early memories, and where he played many tunes.

The connection I had with Mac led me to other pleasurable experiences. On one occasion New Jersey's public TV station was presenting a dramatization of an American highwayman in 1770 breaking into a tavern and disrupting the British officers who were dancing there. A group of actors from Princeton appeared in the roles and to provide authentic music the producers asked Mac and me to participate. I told them that the concertina hadn't been invented until about 1830, but that didn't concern them.

Mac and I put on the costumes for that period, then played the jig Teviot Bridge. We only had to play it once and it was recorded, but for a few hours we simulated playing while the actors delivered their lines (the tape we had made was running throughout). Mac said "If I never Teviot Bridge again for the rest of my life, that would be fine."

Once at the Mariposa Folk Festival in Toronto, Cathal McConnell of the Boys of the Lough was jamming with Jean Carignan, the French-Canadian super fiddler. Cathal called me into the room, and introduced me as the man who knew Ed McDermott who played with Coleman, the legendary Irish fiddler.

To me Ed McDermott was always a gentleman and he opened up musical worlds.

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