Complete John McCormack collection released by Cork collector
A Cork collector of classic music has collaborated with one of the world’s top restoration engineers to produce the complete recording legacy of legendary Irish tenor John McCormack.
Youghal-born Jeremy Meehan, a UCC mature student office administrator now living near Ballincollig, worked with Philadelphian restoration genius Ward Marston to produce The John McCormack Electric Edition, a 16-CD collection spanning all known recordings by the singer.
Costing over €30,000 to produce, the labour of love includes new restorations of 57 of McCormack’s recordings made on cylinder and disc in 1904.
Grammy-award winner Marston notably restored the first known stereophonic record from 1932. Among his restorations are works by Caruso and campaign speeches by US presidents Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt.
Born in Athlone in 1884, McCormack is often described as Ireland’s greatest ever singer and was, in his day, the equivalent in classical terms, of Elvis or the Beatles. He made over 600 recordings across opera, Irish folk, religious music and songs from Russia, Germany, Italy and France.
He settled in America where his friends included the likes of Errol Flynn and John Barrymore.
McCormack was awarded the title Papal Count by Pope Pius XI in recognition of his work for Catholic charities. He died in 1945.
Jeremy Meehan met Ward Marston, who is blind, online in 2012 when the American was selling four of McCormack’s 1904 cylinder recordings.
Marston revealed his disappointment that four McCormack recordings between 1906-9 for the Odeon company were unavailable on CD because multi-billionaire John Paul Getty II had died a week before he was due to fund restorations.
Through Jeremy Meehan’s fundraising, The John McCormack Odeon Edition was released in 2014, an event that Gramophone magazine termed “one of the major historic CD releases of the last decade”.
Meanwhile, Marston had released The John McCormack Acoustic Edition, covering the period 1910-24.
That just left the 1904 cylinder and disc recordings and those from 1925-42, which followed the invention of the microphone”, said Jeremy.
Following four further years of fundraising, with Marston working for a minimal fee, the project is complete. Jeremy “hopes to break even” on the collection, which is limited to 1,000 sets worldwide.
The collection also includes the singer’s complete extant American and British radio broadcasts and a booklet of essays and notes by leading McCormack authorities Gordon Ledbetter and Michael Aspinall.
The work will be released prior to Christmas with advanced subscription now available at a €60 reduced cost of €99.95 +€12 p&p.
