The remarkable story of how modern Irish music was shaped and spread through the brash efforts of a Chicago police chief. Irish music as we know it today was invented not only in the cobbled lanes of Dublin or the green fields of County Kerry but in the burgeoning American metropolis of early-twentieth-century Chicago. The boundaries of the genre combine a long vernacular tradition with one man's curatorial quirks. That man was Francis O'Neill: a larger-than-life Chicago police chief, and an Irish immigrant with an intense interest in his home country's music. Michael O'Malley's The Beat Cop tells the story of this hardly unknown yet little-investigated figure, from his birth in Ireland in 1865 to a rough-and-tumble early life in the United States. By 1901, O'Neill had worked his way up to become Chicago's chief of police, where he developed new methods of tracking people and recording their identities. At the same, he also obsessively tracked and recorded the music he heard from local Irish immigrants, favoring specific rural forms and enforcing a strict view of what he felt was and wasn't authentic. His police work and his musical work were flip sides of the same coin: as a music collector, O'Neill tracked down fugitive tunes, established their backstories, and formally organized them by type. O'Malley delves deep into how O'Neill harnessed his policing skills and connections to publish classic songbooks still widely used today, becoming the foremost shaper of how Americans see, and hear, the music of Ireland.

About the Author
Michael O'Malley is professor of US history in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University and the author of Face Value: The Entwined History of Money and Race in America, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews
"What O'Malley accomplishes in The Beat Cop is a highly readable, lush, adventurous examination of Chief O'Neill as a whole person, not just as the collector for the Irish musicians' Bible. The stories of O'Neill's adventures are entertaining and enjoyable, and O'Malley's writing is welcoming to both informed insiders and newcomers." * Sean Williams, coauthor of Bright Star of the West: Joe Heaney, Irish Song-Man *



Book Information
ISBN 9780226818702
Author Michael O'Malley
Format Hardback
Page Count 352
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press