Biography
While ensembles like the Phoenix blues duo Doo Rag employ an actual cardboard box as their instrument, the designation “box player” in Irish music refers to a performer on the button accordion, otherwise called the box accordion. The recordings of this Dublin artist mark a significant advance in the evolution of Irish box style. Less widely recalled today than figures such as Michael Coleman, he never traveled to America, where Irish music found its strongest foothold. Nevertheless he maintained a steady schedule of broadcasts and issued a sequence of 78-rpm discs throughout the 1930s. Commercial solo documentation of the instrument within Ireland was confined to this single musician, whose exceptional skill justified the limited output. Technically accomplished, he maintained exact rhythmic placement at all times and avoided unnecessary ornamentation. Unlike certain Irish musicians whose reputations flourished more strongly overseas, his popularity and widest circulation occurred inside Ireland itself. Older fiddlers, among them John Clifford, continue to perform the setting of “The Green Fields of America” they first heard on his inaugural 78. Reissues preserve his work extensively, notably the Topic anthologies Irish Dance Music and Past Masters of Irish Dance, while further selections appear on Folkways and Rounder compilations. Scottish accordionist and instrument dealer Peter Wyper, encountered during Grogan’s youthful residence in Glasgow, exerted a decisive influence; from him the younger musician acquired the distinctive cross-row fingering technique. So proud was Grogan of this mastery that several carefully staged studio portraits show him deliberately exhibiting the method.