Joe Burke (keyboardist)
Joe Burke (born 1939) is a noted Irish accordion player.
Joe Burke was born in Kilnadeema, south of Loughrea in Co Galway. He reportedly began playing at age four. In the fifties he bought an accordion in Waltons of Dublin for £5. He still owns it. He won the All-Ireland Senior Accordion Championship in Thurles in 1959 and again in 1960 in Boyle.
In 1955 he joined the Leitrim Ceile Band, which included players such as Ned Coleman, Oliver Roland, Sean McGlynn, Paddy Doorley, Jack Derven, and Mick Darcy. Later the band was joined by the legendary flute player Paddy Carty.
Burke continues to perform, and to influence accordion music, as one of Ireland's top accordion players. For example, he joined Cajun player Marc Savoy and jazz accordionist Art Van Damme, while representing Ireland at the 1989 and 1992 International Accordion Festivals, in Montmagny, Quebec.
A Manchester Frank Sinatra-soundalike singer also called "Joe Burke" is frequently confused with the accordion player, particularly on websites sellings CDs.
Read more about Joe Burke (keyboardist): Discography
Famous quotes containing the words joe and/or burke:
“This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than apes. True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and, unlucky and worst of all, that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations—wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)