“Daley’s Reel” (also spelled “Daly’s Reel” or “Dailey’s Reel”) was published in 1911 by Joseph M. Daly (1883–1968), an Irish-American composer and music publisher best known for “Chicken Reel,” published the year before in 1910. Daly’s American-published reels became fixtures of the early-20th-century Irish-American fiddle scene and crossed into broader American fiddle traditions over the following decades.
The tune is an American reel in structure, but the influence of Irish fiddle vocabulary — the ornamented melodic line, the AB structure, the open-string tonality — reflects Daly’s own Irish-American background. The piece’s clean construction and memorable melodic shape made it a natural workshop tune that traveled widely through fiddle-contest and dance-band repertoires of the early 20th century.
“Daley’s Reel” was popularized in bluegrass circles by Kenny Baker, Bill Monroe’s long-tenured fiddler, who recorded it and brought it into the bluegrass-fiddle repertoire from the older fiddle-tune tradition. Joe Greene also carried versions. The tune has crossed back across the Atlantic and is now also played by contemporary Irish musicians, including Dermot Byrne and Northumbrian piper Pauline Cato — an unusually full transcontinental round-trip for a tune that started its commercial life in early-20th-century American sheet music.