I hate it when music goes the way of the Dodo Bird.

I was watching The Legend of Zorro when the Pinkertons were mentioned. I couldn't remember much about them, so I went over to Wikipedia and read up on them. I followed several links, including one that went to The Molly Maguires.

One of the first tape someone lent me when we started playing Irish music was about The Molly Maguires... well, mining songs in general. But I just made a copy of a copy and thought the group was called The Molly Maguires until I met a band in TN who owns the copyright for a band named The Molly Maguires.

*breath*

So that page listed a group called The Irish Balladeers who wrote a song called "The Sons of Molly". So I searched there and found that Chuck Rogers from PA was the author of the song and a member of the group The Irish Balladeers.

So finally, I found that The Irish Balladeers were the authors and performers of this much loved album of mine. But the sucky thing is... the album is no longer in production! That bites hard. Cuz it was an awesome album. I haven't, yet, learned their songs, but there's a few I would love to learn if I could understand the lyrics.

I wonder if I can get ahold of someone from the band?

Hmm. Ah well, Kathleen Rogers is apparently the daughter of Chuck Rogers. She is now the owner of The Banshee, a pub in Scanton, PA.

Some Liam Clancy's website, I found that the album was released in 1968 on the Avoca label.

The band members were mostly brothers: Chuck Rogers, Bob Rogers, John Rogers, and their brother-in-law, Ted Andrews.

The recording also featured their father, Charles, Sr. on accordion and Eddie Lennihan. Avoca Records is no more. I wonder if the band is able to re-release the album independently?

There's more information about the band at Mudcat.

Fantastic! The email address for Bob Rogers worked.

THE MYSTERY REVEALED
Well, after lots of searching, the disappeared band is not so gone. In fact, The Irish Balladeers have seven albums and are still playing weekly at The Banshee. It looks like they are still selling their albums at the pub. I even found an MP3 of theirs that I downloaded a long time ago from MP3.com. So now I just need to see about purchasing their CDs.