Connie O’Connell adds online string to his bow

I’M TELLING you that Connell is good, he’ll be heard of yet,” declared the late fiddle player Denis Murphy, one of the finest exponents of Sliabh Luachra music.

According to Murphy’s long-time musical consort, accordion player Johnny O’Leary, both men recognised a rare talent when Connie O’Connell first landed at Murphy’s house in Lisheen, Gneeveguilla in Co Kerry in 1967.

“I said to myself, there’s another Denis [Murphy] up’, when I heard Connie Connell playing,” O’Leary recalled when interviewed for an MA thesis on O’Connell’s music by Sheila Randles.