Patrick (P. Joe) Hayes, who died on May 6th aged 80, was a musician and leader of the Tulla Ceili Band, which he joined in the 1940s. He was born at Maghera, Caher, Co Clare, on March 8th, 1921, son of Martin Hayes, a farmer who took a seat in the 1920 local government elections. His mother, Margaret Hogan, a concertina player, brought music to her four children Patrick (P. Joe), Mary, Philomena and Liam, who died in 1996.
He began playing fiddle at the age of 11, taught by Pat Canny of Glendree and his son Paddy, with whom he began playing for the popular cycle of seasonal house parties, dances and benefits, travelling by bicycle, fiddles slung across their backs. Both joined the Tulla Ceili Band in 1946, P. Joe Hayes taking over as its leader in the early 1950s. His organisational flair and musical sensitivity facilitated the maintenance and development of a repertoire that brought out the best in its players and produced three All-Ireland fleadh awards, six albums and seven US tours. Music for them was pleasure: they kept in touch with the locality so tightly that during the 1950s and 60s, when they might have had four engagements a week, they rarely slept away from home, often returning to base in daylight to face milking cows and saving hay.
Such was their popularity that when P. Joe Hayes led the band to Carnegie Hall, in 1958, they were seen off by 1,000 people at Shannon Airport.
Playing dance halls in Britain further cemented their popularity, embodying in them the identities and emotions of thousands of forced emigrants.
Just as enduring from this period is the respect he commanded among traditional musicians for his and Paddy Canny's influential All-Ireland Champions LP (1960). Recorded with Kilmaley fiddle and flute player Peadar O'Loughlin and Dublin pianist Bridie Lafferty, it is regarded as exceptional, stylistic playing of traditional music.
Tributes to him are generous and respectful: "self-effacing, shy", "as comfortable in Carnegie Hall as in the mart at Scariff". It was said that any aspiring musician, no matter how inexperienced, could be sure of a welcome from him. This was made flesh by his wife Peggy, herself with deep and wide family music connections and interest: "Few names in Irish music have not graced the floor of her kitchen".
For P. Joe Hayes the music of the locality and nation were bound up with people and lifeprocess, spirituality and religion, and with the art of farming. Politics was a passion. He was secretary of the Killanena Fianna Fail Cumann until the early 1980s, standing unsuccessfully for a county council seat in 1979.
Earlier this year he was made patron of the Feakle Music Festival, which is associated with the memory of Dr Bill Loughnane, a former TD. The Tulla Ceili Band played for so many FF functions that it was dubbed "The Fianna Fail ceili band".
P. Joe Hayes was educated at Dooglawn National School in his home parish. In 1986 he received a Willie Clancy Award for 50 years' service to traditional music and his band granted a Telecom National Entertainment honour. In 1986 he was given the key to the city of Chicago, the Tulla band playing for the turning on of Christmas lights there, and in 1997 he and the band were celebrated by the city of New York in a "Tulla Band Day", an event broadcast on national television. Also in 1997 he was Clareman of the Year.
He preferred the local, generously and with great spirit, taking his music all over east Clare. He passed it on too at the Willie Clancy school, and since the 1980s was present at practically every Wednesday night session in Pepper's bar at Feakle, "as sacred to him as Mass on Sunday".
He is survived by his wife Peggy; sons Martin and Patrick; daughters Annamarie and Helen and sisters Mary and Philomena.
Patrick (P. Joe) Hayes: born 1921; died, May 2001