Michael Coleman

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Michael Coleman was born in 1891 near Ballymote in County Sligo, Ireland, the seventh child of a respected flute player. As a child he learned step dancing and the fiddle. In 1914 he left for the United States, where he lived with his aunt in Lowell, Massachusetts, performed briefly on the Keith vaudeville circuit and settled in New York in 1917. He married and had a daughter, Mary.

Music and breakthrough

Between 1921 and 1936 Coleman recorded eighty commercial 78 rpm records for labels such as Columbia, Victor, Brunswick and Decca. He usually played with piano accompaniment, occasionally with tenor guitar or flute. In 1944 he recorded his last tracks, which were never commercially released. He died in 1945.

Influence

Coleman was regarded as the most famous exponent of the Sligo style of Irish fiddle music, which is fast, exuberant and richly ornamented, with fingered rolls and bowed triplets. He danced and played the fiddle at the same time. His records, made in New York, reached Irish emigrants in America and also travelled back to Ireland, where they became a model for young fiddle players. In this way he determined, for a large group of listeners, how Irish folk music was supposed to sound. Other Sligo fiddlers in New York in the same period were James Morrison, Paddy Killoran and Paddy Sweeney.

Listening

• 
  Tarbolton / The Longford Collector / The Sailor's Bonnet · Michael Coleman, 1934
  Apple Music ↗

See also

• British and Irish folk music