[Jim Clarke]
Longford-born fiddle player James Clark partnered the eponymous piccolo player George White in operating a bar and restaurant on 60th Street near Columbus Avenue in the mid 1930s, where Paddy Sweeney served as musical director. Clark led a varying group of “Irish Entertainers” who played for the “Smiles and Tears of Erin” program, first on WHOM and later WLWL, a station run by the Paulist Fathers from their church on 59th Street. Clark, who died young at the age of 50, made only a handful of now-rare recordings, but they included some of the finest fiddling of his era, as evidenced by “Dowd’s Favorite,” a three-part reel on which he was accompanied by George White’s wife Eileen on the piano.