The Fitzgerald Ceili Band was known throughout Ireland and the U.K
in the 1950s, 60s and 70s and made several tours in the U.S
They were frequent performers on both Radio Eireann and the B.B.C

Richie Fitzgerald Ceili band (Richie R.I.P. February, 2007)

Richie Fitzgerald Ceili Band from Bundoran
It was about the only Ceili Band in Ireland that competed with the
rapidly emerging showbands of the late Fifties and early Sixties
Their smart uniforms might never have been as garish as those of the showbands but they were classy.
They injected an element of showmanship and stage movement and craic into their programme of the old Ceili dances like The Siege of Ennis and the Walls of Limerick. They played a lot of waltzes, like all the ceili bands did in those years, about every second set, and, cannily, they played a fair few polkas as well. Clever that because a polka was near enough in tempo and dance steps to the quicksteps popularised by the showbands and (whisper it) you could even jive to a polka and this was the peak of the jiving craze. So the Richie Fitzgerald Ceili Band, with a swash and a buckle of style, straddled both the dancing worlds and on any given night would draw as big a crowd as any showband competing with them that night in the next town or the nearest ballroom.
That was quite an achievement.
And the Jewel in the family Crown was sister Kathleen, the flame-haired singer.
Kathleen had the voice of a thrush and she sang all the popular ballads for the waltzes -

Angela Diver   plays bass and fiddle with a band called the  ‘Screaming Orphans’
which is made up of herself and her 3 sisters.
She played classical violin and piano from an early age and was taught traditional Irish music
by her uncle  Ritchie Fitzgerald  who with her mother Kathleen and another
brother Barney had a successful Ceili band in Ireland.
She now lives in the east village in New York City where the band is based out of.

From John Bairds collection
bairdart@iol.ie
 

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