Treasure trove of Frank Gavigan manuscripts assembled as book

When he had nothing else to hand and needed to take down the notes of a piece of music he liked, anything would do musician Frank Gavigan after whom the Milltown Rathconrath branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann is named.

“In Gunning’s of Rathconrath, I even saw him write some out on cigarette boxes,” reveals Mick Foster – of Foster and Allen fame – as he recalls his former tutor.

Mick never threw out any score that the Rathconrath man gave him, but it took Mick’s wife Moyra Fraser to recognise the value of the trove, which she has now assembled and published in book form as ‘Frank Gavigan’s Favourite Session Tunes’.

“During the lockdown, Moyra – in some drawer or other – found a load of these tunes handwritten by him on some manuscript paper, and she said: ‘It’s a pity: as soon as we’re gone, these will surely be burned. Nobody will know what they are,” says Mick.

Moyra resolved that the tunes should be preserved and so she applied successfully to Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann for grant aid to help defray the costs, and local firm SJF Productions put the book together.

The book consists mainly of the manuscripts, but there are also photographs and some written material as well from contributors such as Paddy Maguire, Mick and Moyra themselves and from the ard-stiúrtheoir of Comhaltas, Labhras Ó Murchú as well as Martin Donohue from Northern Sound radio.

“The pictures are of people from around Rathconrath who were involved in music over the years or who were fans.

“He was years before his time because if he heard a tune on the radio that he didn’t know, he could write it out as it was playing, and he had no formal music education or anything like that. He was a genius, in a million ways,” says Mick.

“I would have spent at least three nights a week up in his house and he had a manuscript book and he’d write out tunes and be saying: ‘You should learn this tune’ and ‘you should learn that one’ and I’d go home and I’d be welded to these.

“I wasn’t interested in school or anything like that: his music came before homework!”

Many decades on, Mick still plays some of the tunes Frank preserved, both with Comhaltas and with Tony Allen in Foster and Allen.

Frank Gavigan, who was a cousin of Joe Dolan, lived at Balgarret with his wife Agnes Doolin and their son and three daughters.

“He was the All-Ireland Accordion Championship in 1952,” says Mick, who, just over a decade later, picked up that same honour for the first time (Mick won it three times in all). “It was him that steered me for it: he got me ready for it and told me what to play and how to play it. I’d been learning with him from when I was 12 or 13 and I didn’t win my first All-Ireland till I was 16.”

This is a significant year for Mick, who debuted on Raidió Éireann as a 15-year-old. In 1972 – a half a century ago – he recorded his first record.

“The late Richie Daly and myself made it and Larry Caffrey out of Caffrey’s in Mount Street, sponsored it.

“The late Seán Kenny who played with The Times showband produced it. We recorded it in Trend studios in Dublin. It was Seamus Casey, Joe Dolan’s manager, and Ben Dolan that set up the recording for me. It was a huge big deal at the time.”

For seven years, Mick played five gigs a week at Larry Caffrey’s. Tuesday nights were the big night for dancing.

Since 1975 he and Tony Allen have been playing together as Foster and Allen.