Four Irish EPs of music of oral tradition are reproduced below from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive.

EP discs – ‘extended play’ microgroove recordings playing at 45 rpm – were introduced in the early 1950s by the American company RCA Victor to compete with the earlier LPs of the rival Columbia Records. The discs typically had two tracks on each side and ran for some 12–15 minutes. Material from previously issued 78s were issued on EPs, and also new recordings. Because of the relative costs involved, LPs were sometimes issued in installments on EPS. The discs were also used to break new performers who might not justify for a record company the expense of an LP. These considerations obtained also in Ireland.

Four Irish EPs of music of oral tradition are reproduced below from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive. The singer, actor and writer Richard Hayward (1898–1964) of Belfast had recorded Ulster songs, many of the Orange tradition, on 78s from the 1930s, and was still well known in the microgroove era. Eileen Donaghy (1930–2008) of Coalisland, Co Tyrone, on the other hand only came to fame in the late 1950s. She was a popular singer who mixed occasional traditional songs into her repertory, but all of her best-known songs, whatever their classification, have entered oral tradition. Ceili bands, ensembles formed first in the late 1920s, were in their heyday in the 1950s. The Tulla Ceili Band, which began life in rural Co Clare in the mid-1940s, made its first 78s some ten years later. Fred Hanna’s Ceili Band of Portadown, Co Armagh, had an urban strict-tempo style and was influenced by similar Scottish ceili bands of the period.

With thanks to record donors Vincent Duffe, Mrs Walter Maguire,& John Paul McKenna.

Nicholas Carolan & Danny Diamond, 1 October 2012