Mick Moloney - If It Wasn't For The Irish And The Jews

(October 2009) 14 tracks: If It Wasn't for the Irish and the Jews * Along the Rocky Road to Dublin * When McGuinness Gets a Job * There's a Typical Tipperary Over Here * Mother Malone * 'Twas Only an Irishman's Dream * I Didn't Raise My Boy to be a Soldier * Sailing Off to the Yankee Land * Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly? * Faugh a Ballagh * The Old Bog Road * Maloney Puts His Name Above the Door * When You Come Back and You Will Come Back * Are You the O'Reilly?

Musician, singer, anthropologist and musical historian Mick Moloney celebrates the joyous and creative era in American popular song, from the early 1890s to the end of vaudeville and the start of the Great Depression. Mick sheds light on the unlikely cross-cultural collaboration between Irish and Jewish composers and lyricists around the turn of the 20th century that created some of the most popular songwriting and stage craft.

Each track is notable for having been created in a collaboration between Irish and Jewish lyricists and composers. Irish/Jewish Tin Pan Alley collaborations were commonplace in the heyday of vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley, and though there were doubtless the usual business break-ups and make-ups, these collaborations represent a charming story of decades of good-natured ethnic flux, competition and cooperation which left a lasting imprint on the history of American popular music.

The end result is a fascinating and highly entertaining look at a historically critical point in American music.

"No one has succeeded more in taking this once vital part of Irish-American culture out of musty archives and moldering dissertations and placing it afresh on CD and concert stage than Mick Moloney " (The Irish Echo)