A Spontaneous Performance Recording

A Spontaneous Performance Recording!: The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, sometimes simply called A Spontaneous Performance, is a 1961 collection of traditional Irish folk songs performed by The Clancy Brothers with frequent collaborator Tommy Makem. It was their first album for Columbia Records. The group would continue to record for Columbia for the remainder of the 1960s. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1962 for Best Folk Recording.

The LP had originally been considered a self-titled album with "A Spontaneous Performance Recording!" merely a description of the record for the cover. It is referred to as The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem in the original reviews of the album and for its Grammy Nomination. It later became known as A Spontaneous Performance Recording to avoid confusion, because the group already had released a less popular album entitled The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem on the little Tradition Records label that Paddy Clancy ran.

One of the leaders of the American folk music revival, Pete Seeger, played the banjo on the recording. In 2007 on the BBC, influential folk singer and songwriter Christy Moore chose the song, "Brennan on the Moor," from this album as one of his desert island discs. He introduced the song by noting, "The Clancy Brothers changed my life," because through them he discovered a love for Irish folk music.