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Mick Moloney

Irish-born American musician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 13, 2025
Entity authorityQ6838343
Source-derived summary

Michael Moloney (15 November 1944 – 27 July 2022) was an Irish-born American musician and scholar. He was the artistic director of several major arts tours and co-founded Green Fields of America.

Early life

Moloney was born in Limerick, Ireland, on 15 November 1944. His father, Michael, was the head air traffic control officer of Shannon Airport; his mother, Maura, worked as the principal of a Limerick primary school. Moloney first played tenor banjo during his teenage years. He studied at the University College Dublin, graduating with a bachelor's degree in economics. He then relocated to London to be a social worker assisting immigrant communities, before joining the Johnstons. After playing with the group for five years, he immigrated to the United States in 1973. He initially settled in Philadelphia and eventually became an American citizen.

Career

Three years after moving to the US, Moloney co-founded Green Fields of America, an ensemble of Irish musicians, singers, and dancers which toured across the US on several occasions.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Mick Moloney” is irish-born American musician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Mick, Moloney and Irish-born, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1944, 2022, 1973—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1944-11-15. For this dossier, Mick, Moloney and Irish-born is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “irish-born American musician” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 13, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6838343. VIAF identifies the subject as 13573190. The Library of Congress control number is n78072451. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944, 2022 and 1973.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Mick Moloney”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mick Moloney primary sources, Mick Moloney archive and Mick research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Mick Moloney”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Mick Moloney” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.