Daniel Sullivan, comments and selected references

Daniel Sullivan was a mainstay among Irish musicians in Boston around the turn of the twentieth century. He was a mentor to respected musicians of a younger generation, among them William F. Hanafin and Shaun O'Nolan. Francis O'Neill thought well of his playing and mentions him as the source of at least one tune in his collections, "Bean Dubh an Gleanna," or, "The Dark Woman of the Glen."

Sullivan was known principally as a fiddle player, but according to O'Neill played flute "in his young days." O'Neill visited Sullivan in 1905, at which time he was "just learning to manipulate" a new pipe chanter. He was probably in his mid-fifties in 1905.

Violins made by Sullivan have come up at auction in recent years. They do not fetch high prices. Dan Neely has seen an auction lot of tooling, violin parts and clamps once owned by Sullivan, and nothing was there to suggest he made chanters.

Daniel Sullivan's eldest son, Dan Junior, was a successful musician and songwriter, and the founder of Dan Sullivan's Shamrock Band, active in the 1920s and 30s. Recordings of the Shamrock Band survive and in this way he is better remembered than his father.

Nick Whitmer July 2020
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Irish Traditional Music Archive playlist "Dan Sullivan's Shamrock Band 78s, 1920s-1930s"
https://www.itma.ie/features/playlists/dan-sullivans-shamrock-band

O'Neill, Francis Irish Minstrels and Musicians Chicago 1913 pp. 328, 370-71