WHEN it comes to ceili band history in the Banner County, people often think of only the Kilfenora Ceili Band and the Tulla Ceili Band as the primary exponents. While both are legendary for good reason, with the Kilfenora getting ready to celebrate its 100th anniversary as a band and the Tulla just celebrating its 60th, each of them were built on the abundance of great traditional musicians in their Clare localities who organized to produce great dance music for the sets.

Close on their heels in the formative years of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann in 1950s was the great Laichtin Naofa Ceili Band, named for a local saint who was favored in the Milton Malbay area. That ceili band lasted but a decade, but the recent re-release of its only recording on CD, Come to an Irish Dance Party by Comhaltas at the Fleadh Nua at the end of May, has deservingly shed some light once again on an amazing era and group of musicians.

For those who thought that the Willie Clancy Summer School established in 1972 made the West Clare village the mecca for Irish music, you would be right in that it draws in outsiders to the day-in, day-out Clare feast of Irish music and dance.

But it was also the home turf for musicians like Junior Crehan and Willie Clancy whom everyone knows, and many others in the Clare pantheon. Though they often placed behind the Kilfenora and Tulla at the fleadhs in those years, they did win the Oireachatas title in Dublin in 1959, a noteworthy pinnacle for any ceili band and perhaps a more precise achievement to celebrate according to Junior Crehan.

"It was as far as you could go in traditional music," the highest feather in your cap" said Crehan, as quoted in the liner notes provided by ceili band historian Barry Taylor.

Their music caught the attention of Dublin Records owned by Labasheeda natives Jim and John O'Neill in New York, who had an eye and ear for good traditional music and a handle on the American market at that time. They recorded the band in the Irish Club in Parnell Square, producing what Taylor maintains is the first long-playing (LP) album of an Irish ceili band in Ireland.

They used the technology at the time with limited microphones outside of a studio that managed to capture the live playing of the band without the precision of today's recording world. Still, the 12 selections render an important historical document and model for ceili bands to emulate with the popular tunes for the Clare sets played with great vigor and gra.

It is impossible to listen to it and not imagine the great rivalries and intensity of those early ceili band competitions that still dominate the fleadh scene today.

But the purpose of their music was not to please an adjudicator at a table to garner a medal or trophy, but to stir the heart and feet of the dancers who revered the country sets and dance music of rural Ireland. It didn't matter if that was in West Clare or further west in New York City. If the dancers leapt to the floor, nothing else mattered.

For Clare households like mine this music from West Clare was a source of pride, with the original cover showing the valley surrounding Mount Callan. Recorded for posterity were 13 musicians - Willie Clancy, Martin Talty, Michael Falsey, J.C. Talty, Angela Merry, Colm O'Connor Paddy Joe McMahon, Michael Sexton, Martin Malone, Junior Crehan, Christy Dixon, Paddy Galvin and Jimmy Ward, who had moved down from Kilfenora to Miltown in time to be added to the band.

The new CD was digitally remastered at Purcell Studios in Ennis and produced by Miltown Malbay native Joe O'Connor, now the CCE Reachtaire (organizer) for Clare, Galway, Kerry and Limerick, and released by the newly revamped Cois na hAbhna Archives in Ennis with the permission of Dublin Records.

It is available now at www.custysmusic.com and shortly at www.comhaltas.ie. (Also the new CD marking the 60th anniversary of the Tulla Ceili

Band is available at www. ossianusa.com as well).